Beervangeer

Artist

Beervangeer · beervangeer.nl ↗

Based

Netherlands. Lives and works in Netherlands

Practice

Interactive media artist working in biofeedback art and generative systems, creating modern rituals through physiological data and computational geometry

Now

Recently launched MazeFlipper (2025), a collaboration supporting Shipibo communities through generative art and physical embroidery

Raster

raster.art/artist/beervangeer ↗

In the set

HyperHash ↗ · 369 editions
EnergySculpture ↗ · 369 editions
UltraWave 369 ↗ · 369 editions
HashCrash ↗ · 369 editions
The Field ↗ · 369 editions

Links

Full bibliography ↗

Beervangeer, the working name of Beer van Geer, operates at the intersection of biological sensing and computational aesthetics. His practice emerged from early experiments with consumer neurofeedback devices in 2009, when affordable EEG headsets first reached the market ¹. What began as interactive mandala systems responsive to brainwaves evolved into a sustained inquiry into the relationships between physiology, geometry, sound, color, and harmony ². The artist describes his work as creating "modern day rituals, in which generative art is used to gain insight in the human unconsciousness" ³.

The transition from biofeedback installations to blockchain-based generative art represents not a departure but an extension of these concerns. Where early projects like the Biodome installation translated visitors' heart rates into immersive audio-visual environments ⁴, his Art Blocks releases encode similar principles of transformation and emergence into deterministic algorithms. The continuity lies in a fundamental question: how can invisible systems, whether cardiac rhythms or cryptographic hashes, be made visible and meaningful through geometry and color?

"The laws of sound, the use of harmonics and resonance are really the fundamentals of our universe. When you understand the working of sound, you can also understand the working of for example the human heart." ⁵

The Realm of MU: Five Collections on Art Blocks

Beervangeer's generative work unfolds across five interconnected collections released on Art Blocks, collectively forming what the artist terms "The Realm of MU" ⁶. Each collection comprises 369 editions, a number carrying symbolic significance that recurs throughout the artist's practice.

HyperHash, released in January 2021, was the artist's debut on the platform and appeared in the landmark "Natively Digital" sale at Sotheby's alongside foundational Art Blocks projects ⁷. The collection explores "the possibilities of representing abstract data on Ethereum as intuitive color and geometry spaces" ⁸. Each of the 369 iterations generates unique colors, geometry, and motion signatures through shader code executed on the collector's GPU, creating what the artist describes as "a futuristic, telepathic & symbolic language for Etherians" ⁹.

EnergySculpture followed in February 2021 as part of the Art Blocks Playground collection. The project's narrative framing invites collectors into a mythic space: "To become an Energy Sculptor, you first have to find your way into MU. Once arrived, an extensive period of trials will test your capabilities for earning the right to be an Energy Sculptor" ¹⁰. This gamified, world-building approach distinguishes Beervangeer's work from purely formalist generative art, embedding each collection within a speculative fiction that rewards sustained engagement.

UltraWave 369, released in September 2021, extends this cosmology. The artist describes the collection as reflecting "our deep longing for unity, belonging and understanding of the universe" ¹¹. The 369 units function as "light seeking enlightenment," merging harmonic principles derived from the artist's biofeedback research with the visual vocabulary of waveform propagation ¹².

HashCrash, released in 2022, compresses and reconfigures the visual language developed across previous collections, treating the blockchain transaction hash as a generative seed that "crashes" into emergent form ¹³. The work demonstrates the artist's maturing technical approach, deploying more sophisticated shader techniques while maintaining the symbolic coherence of the broader MU narrative.

The Field, released in January 2023, represents the most conceptually ambitious collection in the sequence. The artist describes the work as "inspired by the current trend in image synthesis made possible by machine learning technology" ¹⁴. By compressing several hundred artworks from HyperHash, EnergySculpture, UltraWave, and HashCrash into a 64x64 matrix, Beervangeer created a noise image that serves as the generative substrate for new iterations ¹⁵. This meta-compositional strategy, in which the artist's own corpus becomes training data for further variation, raises questions about authorship, memory, and the recursive nature of generative systems.

Live on Art Blocks: hyperhash-by-beervangeer ↗

From Biofeedback to Blockchain

Beervangeer's trajectory from physiological sensing to generative art reflects broader transformations in digital art practice during the 2010s and 2020s. His early work with the HeartLive device, developed in collaboration with Dutch harpist Gwyneth Wentink, created generative systems that responded to the performer's heart rate and breathing patterns ¹⁶. The resulting compositions visualized "how music and biofeedback flow as energy in motion," establishing a conceptual framework that would carry into his blockchain work ¹⁷.

The artist's involvement with the Biofeedback Art Research Network (BARN) situates his practice within an international community exploring "the intersection of biological data and creative expression" ¹⁸. BARN members investigate questions of embodiment, agency, and what it means to be human in an age of pervasive sensing and algorithmic systems, concerns that resonate throughout Beervangeer's generative collections ¹⁹.

This background in biofeedback informs the distinctive phenomenology of his Art Blocks works. Where many generative artists emphasize formal exploration or mathematical beauty, Beervangeer's outputs consistently evoke organic processes: pulsing rhythms, respiratory cycles, cardiac waveforms. The shader-driven animations in HyperHash and its successors suggest living systems rather than purely geometric abstractions, a quality that may account for the sustained collector interest in his work.

Social Practice and Indigenous Collaboration

In 2025, Beervangeer launched MazeFlipper, a generative collection created in collaboration with SuperGood and the NGO Nouvelle Planète to support Shipibo communities in the Peruvian Amazon ²⁰. The 96 animated artworks draw on Kene patterns, traditional Shipibo visual systems that represent spiritual communication through geometric tessellation ²¹. The project enables collectors to order physical embroideries handcrafted by Shipibo artisans, creating a bridge between digital generative art and indigenous craft practice ²².

This initiative reflects a mature social practice that extends beyond the gallery or blockchain. By drawing explicit parallels between "the recursive nature of Kene patterns and contemporary computational art," Beervangeer positions generative algorithms within a longer history of rule-based visual systems ²³. The collaboration with anthropologist Jérémy Narby, a specialist in Amazonian indigenous knowledge, lends scholarly rigor to the project's cultural engagement ²⁴.

Live on Art Blocks: energysculpture-by-beervangeer ↗

Live on Art Blocks: ultrawave-369-by-beervangeer ↗

Live on Art Blocks: hashcrash-by-beervangeer ↗

Live on Art Blocks: the-field-by-beervangeer ↗

Technical Innovation and Market Recognition

Beervangeer's work has achieved significant recognition within the generative art market. Individual works from the HyperHash collection have appeared at major auction houses, with pieces offered in Sotheby's Digital Art Day Sale ²⁵. The artist's inclusion in the "Natively Digital" sale alongside canonical Art Blocks projects like Ringers, Archetype, and Chromie Squiggle established his position within the first generation of platform-defining artists ²⁶.

Technically, the collections demonstrate progressive sophistication. HyperHash relies on p5.js and GLSL shaders for real-time GPU generation ²⁷. Later collections incorporate more complex noise functions and feedback systems, with The Field explicitly engaging machine learning aesthetics through its compressed matrix approach. Throughout, the artist maintains a distinctive visual identity characterized by saturated color fields, rhythmic pulsation, and symbolic geometry that resists easy categorization as either purely abstract or representational.

The 369-edition format across all five major collections creates a consistent scarcity model while enabling sufficient variety for the algorithmic systems to demonstrate their range. This edition size, combined with the artist's narrative world-building, has supported active secondary markets and sustained collector engagement over multiple years.

Bibliography

The references cited in this essay are listed below. For the complete bibliography see the Beervangeer links page ↗.