Animating Quines for Larva Labs presents a behind-the-scenes look at a project that merges code and artwork. Quine is described as a generative art project that blurs the line between its code and the art it outputs, with every piece containing embedded code that can generate the next image. The collection uses quinities to indicate generations and features rare forms such as Perfect-Quines and Pseudo-Quines. To convey the mechanism, the animator team turned to physical metaphors—printing like an inkjet, or screen-printing with separate color passes.
They try a few variations (linear vs eased, single direction vs bidirectional sweeps) and land on a slow, mechanical feel because it builds anticipation and makes the process obvious. Then they realize an important storytelling issue: printing the code and the pixel layers at the same time makes them feel equal, and the code is the whole point. So they change the sequence: print the code first so you can’t miss it, then layer the squares on top, even letting the code invert as the image resolves. It’s a small move that dramatically clarifies what’s special about Quine: there’s real, meaningful code inside the artwork—not decorative “code aesthetic.”
There’s also real-world context that collectors will care about. Larva Labs announced Quine on Art Blocks and auctioned 477 of the 497 pieces, with the sale closing at 7.56 ETH (about $31,000) per Quine. After the auction, Larva Labs presented an expanded installation at Art Basel Miami, featuring framed prints, a giant table grid showing all Quines, and a 4K TV looping through sequences. The animation system itself extracts the embedded code to generate the next sequence, effectively making the artwork a generator of generators.
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