Combining early pixel-art aesthetics, glitch culture, and the optical warp and weft of woven carpets, Travess Smalley builds “rugs” from thousands of coloured pixels. Subjected to layering, tiling, and compression, these compositions become a distortion of colours and textures, familiar patterns broken down into something luminous and hypnotic.
Rooted in the generative pieces he released on the Tezos platform hic et nunc during the explosive spring of 2021, and continues to release on Teia, the book follows the project’s evolution through studio sketches, code snippets, and essays that situate Pixel Rugs beside Harold Cohen’s plotter drawings, the procedural maps of early roguelike games, and the optical dynamism of Op Art. The result is a body of work that feels at once hand-knotted and digitally generated – a meditation on how images travel from loom to bitmap and back again.
The book also includes essays by Casey Reas, artist and Processing co-creator, and Anika Meier, curator and writer.
