The early anchor: can a machine surrender for us?
New Media · Generative · Systems-Based · Digital Installation
Mark Walhimer
I make artworks out of code that run live — on a screen, in a projection, or across the walls of a room. Each one grows from a single seed I call Machine DNA, and takes many bodies. The room is the art.
I am a generative artist and digital installation artist. I build immersive digital art and digital art installations for museums, lobbies, public spaces, and private collections — works that generate in real time, in p5.js, WebGL, and GLSL, and change with every viewing.
Acquire or commission.
Limited hardware editions and site-specific works for institutions and private collections — direct from the studio, reply within 48 hours.
Series
06 bodies · one Machine DNA
02
Centered
Breathing planes of soft gradient. The first 55-inch monitor work.
Living pictures seen through one window. A hidden motion map drives colour, sound, and volume on the GPU.
A machine witness. Face signals, testimony, and a room that watches back.
Seeded flowers, grown in code.
06
Bloom
Bloom / Four Walls and the Bloom family. A generative four-wall environment, 22 blooms, one pentatonic piano note each.
Practice
“I use code and real-time systems as a lens for acceptance, control, and agency.”
Machine DNA — one seed, many bodies.
Artwork series include Surrender Machines, Centered, Invisible Layer, Witness Mirror, Artificial Flowers, and Bloom. The early anchor was Surrender Machines — the question of whether a machine could surrender for us. What started as a pun became a serious structure for thinking about acceptance: what part of life can be controlled, and what has to be accepted?
From abstract painting systems and geometric studies, the work evolved toward light-sculptural environments: cubes, rotating fields, color architecture. The shift was from producing static pictures to staging live behavior — immersive digital art installations that a visitor walks into, not pictures on a wall.
After beginning blockchain-based digital work in 2022, the practice moved from platform-bound outputs toward site-native, browser-native systems built and hosted directly — outside any platform's control. Moon Walking and Bloom / Four Walls continue the same inquiry. The goal is to build perceptual situations where viewers can feel the tension between control and release, and decide how they want to participate.
p5.js · WebGL · GLSL shaders — all works run live and generate in real time.
Biography
Mark Walhimer (b. 1964) is a new media, generative, and systems-based artist working in digital installation art.
His practice uses real-time systems and generative code — Machine DNA — to build perceptual environments across series including Surrender Machines, Centered, Invisible Layer, Witness Mirror, Artificial Flowers, and Bloom.
He began in the studios of Judy Pfaff (1985) and Donald Lipski (1987). His institutional work spans three continents — a career spent designing spaces that respond to the people who inhabit them, which feeds directly into a studio practice concerned with co-creation, emergence, and shared space. He is also Managing Partner of Museum Planning, LLC, and author of Museums 101 and Designing Museum Experiences (Bloomsbury).
Working in p5.js, WebGL, and GLSL shaders, he builds browser-based works that run live, generate in real time, and change with every viewing.
Selected exhibitions
Upcoming
Miami · Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2026
- Aug 12, 2026 The Wrong Biennale — Eclipse Online
- Jun 11 – Oct 5, 2026 Technical Objects Exist — Surrender Machine 77823 ICA Miami, Loop Art Critique
- Feb 13, 2026 Miradas Tangentes Sala Siroco, Madrid
- 2026 Async Museum — Bloom / Release — Four Walls Online
Commission a digital art installation.
For a museum, a lobby, a public space, or a private collection. Limited hardware editions and site-specific works, direct from the studio — reply within 48 hours.
Inquire