This is an art project that is now entering a third phase.
Version 1 – 2023
This was a text art generator that used a grid with colour overlays, along with randomised words and images. It had an ‘origami’ option where white overlays tha,t when printed, created shapes that could be folded into blocks, cones, pyramids etc. to create model ‘cities’.
Version 1 was shown in the 2023 Computer Arts Society show – read the Catalogue (pdf, p9).
Version 2 – 2025
I started with new hand-drawn illustrations for a novel, and used an image generator to create variations. As usual this led to vast overproduction, so I used these images to create multiple frame animations. These images were put into my computer art program that displays them in a grid, which can be a single image, 2, 4, 6 images etc., with colour overlays and changing speeds.
This algorithmic animation system has been exhibited, most recently at the V&A Digital Design Weekend (2026) and the Computer Arts Society Drivers Exhibition (pdf, p8) (2025).
Version 3 – 2026
This uses the scene animations, such as the flying planes above, along with music and audio loops to make very short films. This is work in progress (October 2026).
The Book
The novel was fininshed ten years ago and will be out on an indie publisher at some point. The artworks exists independently from the book. Due to AI hostility in the publishing industry, the original human-drawn illustrations will be used in the book. Any taint of computer is enough to incur the wrath of the AI haters.
ANIMATIONS
(Above) Pattern City animations shwoing the sequence of images with no story text.
Geoff Davis, Pattern City, CAS Drivers Exhibition 2025-2026 – also (on the black tablet) Minimal, a 2 year pixel art program from Micro Arts 1985.
The animation was intended as a figurative ambient art companion to the novel, with grid changes, colour overlays, layered motion, dissolves. Shifting variations resemble constructive memory or imagination, where images remain provisional and change with context.
Geoff Davis is a PEN-published author and digital artist; founder of Micro Arts and Story Software, along with the AI Creative Anthology. He has a Masters in Electronic Arts by Research from Middlesex University Lansdown Centre (2003); and MPhil from research into AI and Text from the University of the Arts London (2026).