Che-Yu Wu

Artist

Che-Yu Wu · cheyuwu.com ↗

Based

Born 1995, Taipei, Taiwan. Lives and works in New York, New York.

Practice

Generative artist and educator whose algorithmic systems draw on physics simulation, particle dynamics, and mathematical structures to explore vitality, emergence, and immersive audiovisual experience.

Now

Co-founder of Formosa Art Bank DAO, active educator, and creator of large-scale physical installations that extend his generative practice into public and performative contexts.

Raster

raster.art/artist/che-yu-wu ↗

In the set

Electriz ↗ · 910 editions

Links

Full bibliography ↗

Che-Yu Wu occupies a distinctive position at the intersection of engineering discipline and artistic inquiry.^1410188 Trained first as an electrical engineer and subsequently in integrated digital media, he approaches code as a medium for constructing observable worlds rather than as a tool for representation alone. His projects consistently return to questions of how rule-based systems can give rise to behaviors that feel alive, responsive, and affectively charged. This orientation found its clearest expression to date in the 2021 Art Blocks release Electriz, a collection of 910 editions that translates the visual language of the cloud chamber into a fully on-chain generative framework.

Wu's formation reflects a sustained engagement with both the material history of computation and the pedagogical transmission of creative coding. After completing undergraduate studies in electrical engineering at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, he pursued a master's degree in Integrated Digital Media at NYU Tandon School of Engineering.² There he served as a teaching assistant for creative coding courses, an experience that sharpened his conviction that technical fluency and poetic expression are mutually reinforcing. Early experiments shared on OpenProcessing and fxHash demonstrated a preference for particle systems, flocking algorithms, and physics-informed simulations. These sketches established the vocabulary that would later scale to platform-level projects.

The transition to Art Blocks was catalyzed in part by an earlier incident in which a series of Wu's "Strange Robots" sketches was closely replicated on the platform. The ensuing community and founder attention ultimately positioned him to launch his own project. Electriz appeared on December 7, 2021, as project number 216.¹¹² Each edition is generated from a unique hash that determines both the spatial configuration of a digital cloud chamber and the initial conditions of a particle simulation. The resulting visuals register the traces of these virtual particles as they traverse and interact within the defined volume, producing images that oscillate between diagrammatic clarity and organic turbulence.

I paint with math.

The phrase, offered by Wu in a 2022 interview, captures the economy with which he compresses scientific reference, formal constraint, and expressive intent.³ Rather than illustrating physical principles, Electriz enacts them at the level of the generative procedure itself. The hash functions as both seed and archive: it fixes the initial geometry and velocity field while remaining legible on-chain, ensuring that every collector possesses not only an image but also the complete specification of its becoming.

Technical Description and Generative Logic of Electriz

Electriz operates as a self-contained observational apparatus. The underlying system constructs a three-dimensional volume whose bounding surfaces and internal partitioning are parameterized by the token hash. Within this volume, virtual particles are released according to initial conditions also derived from the hash. Their subsequent trajectories are governed by simplified physical rules that include diffusion, attraction, and boundary interactions. The visual output records the paths these particles describe over a fixed number of simulation steps, rendered as luminous traces against a dark field. Variations in chamber architecture, particle density, and interaction parameters produce a wide but coherent family of outcomes. Some editions emphasize linear, almost crystalline traces; others generate dense, cloud-like accumulations that evoke the original Wilson cloud chamber photographs while remaining unmistakably computational.¹

The decision to foreground particle traces rather than fully rendered volumes aligns with Wu's broader interest in legibility. The viewer is invited to read the image simultaneously as aesthetic surface and as record of an underlying process. This dual address distinguishes Electriz from purely decorative generative systems and situates it within a lineage of artistic engagements with scientific visualization that includes both historical precedents and contemporary on-chain experiments.

Because the simulation runs deterministically from the hash, the work satisfies the Art Blocks requirement of on-chain reproducibility while still delivering substantial visual diversity across its 910 editions. Collectors and researchers can therefore reconstruct or extend the system locally, a property that has contributed to the project's longevity within secondary markets and archival discussions.

Live on Art Blocks: electriz-by-che-yu-wu ↗

From Screen to Space: Installations, Collaborations, and Institutional Contexts

Wu has consistently tested the portability of his generative logic across media and venues. His first major physical solo exhibition, Chaos Laboratory, opened in 2022 at Taipei 101 AMBI SPACE ONE. Five large-scale projection surfaces and millimeter-wave sensors transformed the gallery into a responsive environment in which visitors' movements influenced ongoing simulations.⁴¹⁵¹⁹ The exhibition demonstrated that the same algorithmic concerns driving Electriz could be re-embodied at architectural scale without sacrificing precision or conceptual clarity.

Subsequent projects have extended this trajectory. The Soul, presented by Unit London in 2022, combined generative visuals with an audio component whose parameters responded to the evolving image field. The work positioned a monumental, slowly shifting ocular form within a darkened space, prompting reflections on observation, interiority, and the projected gaze of digital systems.⁵ Participation in the 60th Venice Biennale's Personal Structures section in 2024 with SoulFish further confirmed the capacity of Wu's generative organisms to migrate from blockchain mint to institutional collateral exhibition.⁴

Commercial and institutional collaborations have also shaped public perception of his practice. The 2021 Sliderverse project with White Castle constituted the first brand partnership realized through Art Blocks' generative minting infrastructure, producing 5,001 unique editions.⁶¹³ While distinct from Electriz in thematic register, Sliderverse shared the same commitment to parameter-rich, hash-determined variation and on-chain transparency. International gallery presentations at M.A.D.S. Art Gallery in Milan and group contexts in Madrid and London have situated Wu's output within broader discourses of new media and post-digital abstraction.⁷¹⁷

Community Infrastructure, Pedagogy, and the Question of Legacy

Beyond individual works, Wu has invested in the institutional conditions that sustain generative art communities. In 2021 he co-founded Formosa Art Bank DAO (FAB DAO), an initiative that channels Web3 mechanisms toward support for Taiwanese digital artists and socially oriented projects. The DAO's Project % was presented at Ars Electronica in 2022, demonstrating one model for aligning charitable distribution with artistic production.⁴

Parallel to these efforts, Wu has maintained an extensive teaching practice. His online courses in creative coding have reached more than twenty thousand students, primarily in Asia, and he has held an adjunct position at his alma mater's Institute of Applied Arts. This pedagogical commitment reflects a conviction that the future of the field depends less on any single artwork than on the widespread capacity to read, modify, and extend algorithmic systems. In interviews and public talks he has emphasized that generative art is inherently collaborative: the artist authors the rules, yet the collector, the curator, and the subsequent programmer all participate in the work's ongoing realization.³¹⁶

Wu's trajectory therefore encompasses not only the production of editioned objects but also the construction of platforms, curricula, and physical contexts through which those objects acquire meaning. The 910 editions of Electriz function simultaneously as aesthetic artifacts, technical demonstrations, and nodes within a larger ecology of collectors, researchers, and institutions that continue to iterate on the questions the work raises.

Philosophical Orientation: Systems That Approach the Soul

Throughout his statements and projects, Wu returns to the problem of imbuing algorithmic processes with qualities conventionally associated with life and interiority. He has described his ambition to "forge eternal life and emotions in the digital realm" while remaining precise about the technical means employed.⁹¹¹ The cloud chamber of Electriz serves as both literal reference and metaphor: it renders visible what would otherwise remain invisible, translating probabilistic motion into legible trace. The same impulse animates later works that incorporate audio synthesis, real-time interaction, and large-scale projection.

This orientation distinguishes Wu from artists who treat generative systems primarily as sources of novel imagery. For him, the system itself constitutes the primary artwork; the minted image is one possible observation of an underlying process that could, in principle, continue indefinitely. The collector acquires not a finished picture but a vantage point onto a world whose rules remain open to inspection and, in some cases, local re-execution. Such an approach aligns with longstanding artistic interests in cybernetics, systems aesthetics, and the poetics of simulation, yet it is distinguished by its insistence on on-chain verifiability and by its explicit dialogue with the histories of scientific visualization.

Wu's refusal to allow the NFT format to define his identity further clarifies this position. While early market success brought visibility, subsequent statements frame the blockchain as one distribution infrastructure among others. The more durable contribution, in his view, lies in the expansion of what counts as a legitimate site for serious algorithmic inquiry, whether that site is a smart contract, a gallery projection, a concert hall, or a classroom.⁴

Bibliography

The references cited in this essay are listed below. For the complete bibliography see the Che-Yu Wu links page ↗.