Erik Swahn: Inside Soma

Artist Erik Swahn in conversation with Leyla Fakhr and Jamie Gourlay.

ES:  I believe less and less in the sort of separation of generative art and other contemporary art. I think computer art didn't start with computer art, and generative art didn't start with generative art, it's all part of the same thing. And, the things that I do, it's 2025, but it could have been 1925. To me there's no real sort of forwards and backwards in art history, it’s all one big moment. 

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JG: Thank you so much everyone for joining us for another episode of Verse Talks. This is a one-off midweek very special interview episodes with Erik Swahn. Erik is an artist that many of the Verse team and a lot of the wider collecting space have been, I don't wanna say obsessed with, but I think it's probably fair to say that some of us are borderline obsessed with your work, Erik, and have been for a while.

And we are currently working on an upcoming release with SOLOS that we're really, really excited about. So Erik, thank you so much for joining us. Really looking forward to digging into Soma and discussing your work, more broadly catching up, how you doing? 

ES: Yeah, pretty good. Thank you for having me. Yeah, let's go with the obsessed. 

LF: I mean we have to keep Ivan (Lonliboy) out of this conversation because he wouldn't let anybody talk, I think for Ivan, when he thinks about Verse, he associates it purely with Erik Swahn. Like it is a big part of how he considers the identity of Verse I would say.

It's really exciting to present your work as part of SOLOS. I look forward to digging a bit deeper into who you are as an artist, as a creative, but also learning a bit more about your other works.

I think you have a quite quiet personality online, and it'd be nice for collectors and artists to get to know you a bit more as a person. 

ES: Hmm. I'll try to dig deep and find my loud, inner self. 

LF: It's gonna be great. 

JG: Well, we last worked together with Autoscope, which was released in April 2024. Erik, we'd love to just hear how you've been since, what's been going on?

ES: Yeah, I've been, pretty good. I find that I needed more and more time between releases, and I've also taken some time off social media and am just trying to concentrate on doing the work basically. 

With all the releases, there's been a lot of attention and it's very flattering and it gives a lot of energy, but also it can be a bit, not paralyzing, but it can be a bit detrimental, I think to the creative process sometimes, but it might be different for other people 

JG: Because it influences you in ways that maybe isn't in the works best interest?

ES: Just having people look at what you do, it changes the nature of the creative process I suppose. This time I've tried to have a sort of more work-in-the-basement, so to speak, and maybe not share the complete process of everything.

All the releases have been very exciting, but also quite exhausting. It's very intense, especially seeing all the reactions, people sharing iterations and it's quite an overwhelming experience, especially with the collective curator pieces where the viewership becomes a part of the artwork and the experience as a whole.

JG: I feel Soma has been more, everything about it feels calmer. We've got on our current kind of agenda how you're thinking about what Soma is, what it's about, and how it's going to be released. 

LF: Before we get into that, I really want to rewind back into how it all started for you, because you are an architect, and you were practicing as an architect and as far as I know, the very first work you released was on hic et nunc, right? Can you tell us a little bit more about when exactly that was and how long was the buildup to that?

ES: Yeah, exactly. I haven't really taken a very sort of straight path towards anything in life. So I originally studied computational linguistics, a long time ago. I worked as a translator for many years, and then I started studying architecture. 

JG: I’m sorry, what is computational linguistics? 

ES: Well, it's about different ways of working with language using computers, so natural language processing and machine translation and stuff like that. So I was very much into languages and you learn a lot of programming. 

LF: So did you decide that that wasn't for you? Is that why you got into architecture? 

ES: Well architecture was kind of number two on the list of things I originally wanted to study. So after a while I just wanted to do something else, but I didn't really have any intention of working with algorithms or programming originally.

Then after a while, after a few years of studying, I got more and more into algorithmic architecture and using these generative methods and coding as a way of design methods. And towards the end of my studies, I became interested in AI and machine learning. So that was my thesis project was back in 2019. And that work kind of tied into the first things I released on hic et nunc.

LF: How did you even find out about it? 

ES: Well, I started looking at what people were posting on Twitter in terms of machine learning. So people like Robbie Barrat, Mario Klingemann, Memo Akten, Mike Tyka, people were doing very interesting things in AI which was sort of adjacent to art and using it in creative ways.

That's when I found out about NFTs and I started seeing people, not just people working with AI, but people working with sort of generative methods, and I got to know hic et nunc but it was very esoteric and secretive, it was kind of exciting like, I don’t know, finding like a little town in the desert. It was small and big at the same time, and very low stakes, so a very easy thing to enter. 

I liked the open, pioneer spirit of it, everything was very equal, so quite famous people would be sort of be next in the catalog to someone who wasn't known at all, like myself.

So I started posting things that were kind of architecture related, but mostly with the machine learning type techniques. 

JG: So the Rome works aren't code based? 

ES: It’s code based, but it's not like JavaScript in a browser type thing. So that was more training machine learning models on your own stuff, and writing Python scripts that did different things and rendering in blender and so on. So, I mean, it was very computational, but not sort of in a sort of contained JavaScript environment or anything like that. 

JG: And then came fxhash?

ES: Yes, now it seems like quite a long time ago, I'm not sure what year it was, but I saw what people were doing on Art Blocks, I was very inspired by Meridians for example. And then when, fxhash started, it felt quite exciting to have it on Tezos. 

I just wanted to release something as quickly as possible, so I released a few series with just a few months in between because I had this backlog of ideas of the things I wanted to try and I was very eager to release.

JG: And how come you were interested in racing on Tezos in particular? 

ES: I don't know, I think it was this sort of esoteric, small scale vibe of it. At the time there was a lot of sort Eth-maxis and I felt maybe it wasn't really my type of culture at the time, it all felt a bit foreign to me.

LF: Did you ever apply to Art Blocks Curated? 

ES: No, I just released a few things on fxhash, and I think that's basically when people started noticing it on a bigger scale. There had been quite a lot of interest, I mean, in a very small scale, but from the sort of machine learning community in the things that I've posted on Twitter in, in relation to architecture, but with fxhash, it was lovely to see this sort of enthusiasm that the projects received. 

JG: I mean, I think it's fair to say that Farbteiler was kind of the one. Do you have any thoughts on like what it was about Farbteiler that caused it to strike the note that it did? Was it in part your work, in part timing. What was it about Farbteiler?

ES: It’s quite hard to wrap my head around. In general I've been kind of surprised that people have been as interested as they have. I mean, with the Farbteiler, it's a very simple idea and a simple execution, but still with quite a lot of variation. I'm not sure that explains the interest in it, but for me that particular project started with my oldest son who was very young at the time, and I tried to make like a color system for sheet music so we could play things on the piano, and then I started thinking about combining different colors, so it's kind of a sheet music system almost. 

And all my works with the colors and color interaction, I think of it kind of as music or I use them, I look at them the way I listen to music. 

LF: That’s a very lovely way of thinking about color. I don't think I've thought about color as musical. 

ES: Well, you know, when we talk about color, you often use words like harmony and there there are quite a lot of similarities to the sort of spectrum aspects of music and the spectrum aspects of color. It might sound a bit weird, but the way that colors interact, it's kind of similar in my mind to the way pitches can interact in harmony.

LF: So would you say that is sort of at the core of your explorations, because I can see that in Soma as well. 

ES: I think so. When I was younger I used to make a lot of music. That was kind of the main thing I was working on, like electronic music. But then I stopped after a while and I think the visual art has become sort of a replacement for that, or maybe even a continuation. It's still about composition and harmony, and looking for expression. 

JG: Can you, can you hear any of your works? 

ES: I can't really hear it. I’m not synesthetic or anything, it’s mostly how I think about it. But I mean, with Soma for example, some of them are kind of bombastic and sort of like an orchestra hit or something. And others are more muted and somber. So they work in, in the same way as music, but I personally can't really hear them.

LF: Because if somebody was to ask me about your work, I would say, well, it's very architectural and that's why I felt like Soma was quite a departure from your previous work. But hearing your sort of core influence being color and music, I can see it all come together, but I just didn't make a decision. 

JG: I'm already seeing Fields a little bit differently. 

LF: Same here, and speaking of which, maybe we can talk about Fields because obviously you had very successful releases on fxhash and the attention was coming in a bit. And also just learning about you as a person, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure you love tons of attention, I mean, we all have a bit of a love hate relationship with it, but then of course came Fields shortly after, which was really, really successful, and I just wonder how that affected you. 

You mentioned attention can be detrimental, but I also wonder how this impacted your creative process because Funktor wasn't very long after Fields, actually. How would you define those different series from each other?

JG: And also what happened going from Punktwelt to Fields? It felt like it went from pretty geometric to something a bit more organic and flowing about Fields, and sublime, more abstract. 

ES: I think maybe you can sort of categorize the different projects in a few different categories. So, I think Soma is more related to Fields than any of the others, because it's about abstraction and color for the sake of color, whereas the other projects are kind of sculptural.

With Farbteiler and Funktor, it's kind of basically objects in the subject matter, and it's much more about form and structure, whereas in Soma form has been exploded, and even the colors have been sort of exploded into these very tiny particles.

And with Autoscope, I mean, that's the closest I've come to something figurative. It was still kind of abstract, but it was quite figurative. But with Soma, it's not about figuration. It’s still in a way about bodies or objects, but without these very defined borders or anything. 

I'm not sure, it always takes a while for me to sort of zoom out and understand what it's about, but it's certainly more towards the abstract and, um, formless. 

LF: It’s almost like they are auras. 

ES: Yeah I think both with the Fields and Soma, I'm not saying they're sublime, but from an art history perspective, it's more related to maybe the idea of Romanticism and the sort of idea of the sublime and looking for that kind of beauty within randomness and noise. 

JG: Are you, are you kind of making an active effort to kind of make your work feel more organic and less computery? I mean, just going from Farbteiler to Fields feels like you're kind of heading in that direction, and then Soma's just kind of going there a bit more. Is that deliberate? 

ES: I wouldn't say it's purely deliberate, but it's perhaps a natural evolution. Lately I've been more interested in older paintings. I'm not sure why, but I've looked a lot at Baroque era painting. But in a very superficial way, so I'm, I'm not really that interested in the theory, I look more at the sort of surface level and detail. I just love the way paint is used, these minute brush strokes and the painting of clouds and aura like images. 

And it's kind of a banal in a way, but a lot of the previous projects have been on a bright background, but with Soma it is much darker. And it sounds like it's small, different, but it's quite a different thing because I thought about the previous works more as pigment on paper, but now I think of it as light in darkness and in Baroque painting, you know, like Caravaggio or Rembrandt, I just love the way they use the darkness of the background to make things appear out of it. It's almost like, I don't know, it’s super real. It kind of emerges from the void. 

JG: So, I'm really sorry, can I just ask a couple more Fields questions because I'm a big fan of the work. Has your kind of relationship with Fields changed in the years since it minted, because when it went out, it was one of the most exciting releases we had ever done. And I'd love to get your thoughts on this as well, Leyla, because it feels like such a Verse piece to us as a company.

It's such a special project and I can't really kind of articulate how the works that I own feel different to me today versus two years ago, but something's changed. They kind of feel old and familiar in a good way. They've aged well, they feel like they're always gonna be there. I don’t know, I’d love both of your guys’ thoughts on what Fields means to you today versus then. 

ES: I mean, at the time of the release, it's still a very sort of active and living thing and me as the creator, you looked at tens of thousands of iterations, tweaking parameters, and then changing the algorithms and sort of shaping the process of the final thing.

So it's not really the sort of individual iterations that shaped my understanding of, of the work at the time, but. Now looking back, I mean, it's really interesting that feeling to see a particular iteration I saw two years ago and one year ago and six months ago. And it is certainly gets more and more character, it gains a particularity with time.

That is quite interesting because with these generative works, and especially with collector-curated, it's like a sort of never ending stream and you can catch a fish, but you can catch a number fish. And it's never ending. But once you sort of catch a fish and put it up for display, after a while it grows on you in an interesting way.

JG: You caught two. Do you feel differently about the two that you own versus any of the others for the fact that you own them? 

ES: You know, I think there's a particular thing with having found something, I can kind of remember the feeling of finding them, and I look at them sometimes, but I mean, in general, I don't spend an enormous amount of time looking at my old stuff. I try to think forward, but sometimes I go back, and of course on social media I see what other people post and reminded of the past. Yeah, it’s interesting how they age. 

LF: They’ve grown more into themselves with time. I think at the time maybe the novelty actually of collector-curated was almost overtaking the work as well. You know, there's too many things going on at the same time. And I think the nice thing is now people really see the work for itself now more than before. 

I remember, I think we printed four of your works quite large scale because we installed them in London and I remember, it's a funny one, whenever we do print works, we never know really how it looks. With yours they arrived and it was just like suddenly they were glowing in the gallery space and you could see the texture of them, the color and everything just kind of came more to life. That doesn't always happen. Some works just don't translate well from the digital to the physical. But Fields really did. And that's definitely something that left an impact on me. I still remember the moment we got them and we unpacked them. 

And I remember your sale, I was saying earlier it was, we were on our way to Tyler Hobbs’ opening at Unit London, Jamie, do you remember the sale was going on? And it just kept going, it just kept selling and selling and selling and selling. It felt all really exciting. That other people can see as much as we did, like what a great series of works it was. 

JG: It’s so true what you said at the beginning there, Leyla, about the kind of collector-curated novelty. I mean, if you buy a Fields today, there is none of that in your mind whatsoever when you're collecting today.

LF: No, you’ll just scan and look for the best piece. 

JG: Time has kind of faded out that bit in a nice way. 

ES: Yeah. With Fields, it was kind of interesting because, since I knew it was going to be an exhibition, the Imperfections exhibition, I sort of had envisioned the large scale prince when I created it. So I think that also was part of the context in my mind, because I mean, it's quite a different thing to having an image on the screen.

LF: Yeah, and it was a very like bodily relationship with them because they were long and vertical, and you were really in front of them. There were four pieces and it was probably one of the best works we've ever printed. 

JG: It feels Erik, that that your fxhash work, you mentioned that you were kind of moving quite quickly and releasing with only a few months in between. And I’m just on your page on Verse at the moment, it feels Funktor, Autoscope, Soma, somehow each one feels weightier. Maybe it's just because I know that you've spent a lot of time working on each one, or maybe not, is that a thing? Yeah, it feels these are not casual projects that you're just quickly casually releasing. 

ES: I think that there's something to be said for sort of quick spontaneous ways of working as well. 

JG: Yes I’m not meaning to put any of those works down in any way, obviously, but just scanning the kind of projects fxhash, it just feels there’s a difference.

ES: Yeah. I mean, they have taken a lot more time to finish. I'm not exactly sure why, there's a process of having them mature with enough time and sort of taking a step back, and changing directions. I don’t know, maybe the next one will be two years and then three years in between. Who knows? 

JG: Does it have anything to do with there being more pressure on releasing work now? Like, because you have a reputation as an excellent generative artist, you don't want to just put things out casually, is that part of it? 

ES: I mean, it's certainly harder to be casual, but perhaps I'm in a different phase of my journey, to speaking in a lofty language. I just feel the need to spend more time with each thing. 

And also I think I changed my perspective a bit on the so-called ‘space'. I'd rather be maybe on the outside looking in, not so much in the sort of bubble of generative art or digital art. I believe less and less in the sort of separation of generative art and other contemporary art. I think computer art didn't start with computer art, and generative art didn't start with generative art. It's all part of the same thing. And, the things that I do, it's 2025, but it could have been 1925. I really love Paul Klee and the Bauhaus tradition. To me, there's no real sort of forwards and backwards in art history, it’s all one big moment in a way. 

LF: I agree. I think, you know, you're an artist, full stop. But you are known mostly for your generative art practice ,or your work that's made with machine learning. Would you think about employing different mediums? Do you feel like that's important or is this something you're at all considering, and is it necessary?

ES: Yes, looking forward, I'm not sure where I will go, but as I said, I used to think of generative processes as a sort of essentially different thing than for example painting, but if I look at the way I work with Soma, it really is like sitting in front of a canvas with a small brush and sort of making these tiny, tiny changes. But instead I'm working with code and sort of changing parameters a bit and changing pallets, but it's quite similar actually to working intuitively with the brush and palette in a manual way.

JG: So where did it originate? Where did it stem from? 

ES: Well, speaking of brushes, it kind of started with just a small technical thing of applying pigment to paper. Not as water kind of simulation, but just working with different ways of digital pigments.

JG: And was that something you'd been thinking about for a while during previous projects? 

ES: Yes so the previous projects had been Fields, Funktor, and I worked a lot with larger, dots basically, but I just wanted to break that down and work with smaller particles.

So a lot of what I do is just trying out these little technical things. I think it's been the most intuitive process I worked with so far as a project. It's not really based on a concept or a theory, or even an idea. It’s more that it gradually emerged in a quite natural way.

I didn't really have any plan or sort of end goal in mind, it just started with this pigment application process, and then it grew gradually. I think it was influenced by sort of older painting, and looking at a lot of chiaroscuro technique type paintings, like Rembrandt and so on.

I've been interested in this because it's foreign to me, it’s not how I’ve worked. But then I gradually started to work on the composition and the sort of these constellations of dots or drops of pigment. And it changed a bit throughout the evolution of it, but I started seeing these biological shapes and astronomical shapes and cellular type shapes. I became interested in the abstract expression of these color blots and how these timely color particles created new color interactions. 

JG: I kind of take the color for granted. Like, I look at your work and it's so beautiful. I'm just looking at an output now and you've got greens next to oranges, next to reds, next to blues. It should look ugly, but it doesn’t. Has that taken work and tuning?

ES: It takes a lot of tuning, but I’m also very open to the sort of accidental effects of it, and finding things that I didn't anticipate. I think my preoccupation with color, it's a lot to do with the power in color that's kind of hard to explain.

For me, especially with bright primary colors, I don't know why but they make me happy. As I said with music, I kind of use it in the same way. They both have the power to create moods and atmosphere that just intrigues me endlessly.

LF: And it affects your mood and atmosphere, like I wear color because I feel like it makes me a happier person. I surround myself with color because I really think it affects me in a very direct way. And what I really love about Soma is that it feels like you're capturing something that’s a real thing. It looks like it's something out there, but somehow you've materialized the unseen. I think that's really quite lovely and I think it's interesting that it came out of nowhere because it feels like it sort of is out there, but you can really visualize it and then you've kind of materialize something that is there.

Maybe we should talk a little bit about how we're releasing Soma. Actually, maybe it's a good time to segue into that, because it's quite different to the way we released your previous works on Verse. This one is going to be artist-curated and it's a much smaller collection. I don’t if we've determined the exact number.

JG: We’ve, we've spoken about 60, I don’t know if we've completely agreed on it yet. 

ES: It’s certainly going to be a much smaller series, I mean the collector-curated releases have been very exciting with the sort of a open nature of it. But I think with this one, I'm working at the moment on the curation and it's quite exciting to have that final say in a way.

In a way I think I use randomness in generative art as a way to sort of get away from my own tastes and preferences. It's a way of freeing yourself up to accidents and things that I wouldn't have chosen if I did it manually.

But it’s also the curation process, it’s such an interesting thing. It's defining the parameters in a different way than when I'm coding. It's quite exciting. 

LF: Why a smaller series? 

ES: Previously all my series have been kind of large, and it's a new thing for me to work with a smaller series. I think it's an interesting thing to keep it more contained and to have each piece get more space. For each iteration in the series as a whole, I think that it'll affect the identity of the particular pieces in an interesting way.

LF: Obviously we've spoken about this as a team at length as well, because it's going to be released on Verse and we do have to think about your previous bodies of works as well. It feels like if this is a smaller collection of works, it will impact the way people look at the other collections as well.

Yeah, I don't know how much there is to say about that, but it’s certainly something that we as a team have discussed a lot. Like, what is the right thing to do? Does it matter if it is another large collection of works? Or does it make it more special? And I feel like in particular, in relation to Soma, sometimes it's also the nature of the work. It feels like it fits the nature of this particular project as well. It’s very different to all your other works.

ES: I think that there's something about the nebulous infinity of each one that needs a finite frame around it. I feel like it's something cloud like that it needs to be confined somehow. 

LF: I agree, and I think there is something nice about a smaller collection too. You pay more individual attention to the works if the collection is smaller, whereas if it's a fairly large collection, it's really hard to do that. 

I think with this one particularly because it's quite abstract and sublime, it would be very easy to just brush through it and not really get into the details of it because it is very detailed work.

We actually just printed one yesterday and there’s just exquisite the level of detail, and it would be a complete shame to miss that if you are browsing through hundreds and hundreds of works. So it feels definitely like the right decision in relation to this work. 

LF: I’d actually love to get into the title a little bit as well, how did it come about?

ES: Well Soma in Greek, it means ‘body’. A lot of the previous works, maybe except for Fields, have kind of bodily qualities to them. In this one, it's more sort of dissolved, but it's still, as I read them, they're like particles or pigments or drops that together form bodies that might be celestial bodies or sort of atomic bodies. But it's the sort of conglomeration and the suggestion of a body, that’s what I see when I look at them. It's quite a literal title. 

LF: I love it. And I really liked when one of our collectors wrote, I'm just pulling it up because it's great. I'm going to read it out. So he says:

“In Huxley's dystopian classic, ‘Brave New World’, soma is a drug taken to produce a sensation of euphoric happiness—a literal ‘opiate of the masses’, promoted by the state to satiate people and minimise the opportunity for them to engage in subversive ideas or actions. 

“Huxley himself had based the name of this fictional drug on a ritual drink mentioned in the Sanskrit Vedas, supposedly able to confer divine visions on whoever consumes it. That Erik Swahn has chosen this name as the title of his upcoming work to be released with SOLOS on Verse is perhaps all too apt.”

It is quite long, so I don't want to read the whole thing, but have you? It's brilliant. And then he goes on about creating a generative system from which such gorgeous chromatic bursts of color can emerge. “Erik appears to give us a structure to visualise the mystical associations of ‘soma’, harnessing material form to depict the mental formlessness that this compound is supposed to trigger.”

Were you aware of this, and how uncanny is that? Just to shout out the collector, thank you @buffetlunches.

ES: I have to confess, it's not an overt reference to soma in the Brave New World. I must have read it a long time ago, so might have been in the back of my head, but it’s not a direct reference. 

I do think art is a drug in a way. I think I wrote on X that it's a psychoactive substance. And I mean, that's why we use it, right? I mean, I don't think we'd use art if it didn't have an effect on us. 

And with soma in particular, I'm not, I'm not sure it's an opiate exactly, but maybe more closer to the hallucinogenic drug that they are referring to. 

So I talked a bit about the Baroque painting and, and so on, but I mean, the work itself, it’s not really referencing anything else in art history per se. I mean, a lot of people have worked with color blots and so on, so 200 years ago there's someone called Mary Gartside who made this lovely book of color blots, but in a way Soma is maybe more related to divination and sort of telling your fortune in molten lead or coffee, uh, or sort of rorschach tests, perhaps seeing things in something that isn't really trying to portray anything. 

But it's such an exciting thing with when people read things into what you do. 

LF: It’s exciting because it shows that all these other dimensions that you hadn't even considered, and it shows that everybody views through their own viewpoint really, but through their own history.

I'm kind of curious to hear from you what you hope people take away from your practice. Like do you think about that, how you want people to feel by your work in general? What do you want them to take away from Soma? What impact do you want to leave for people, as an artist? 

ES: I think that the point of art is resonance. To have people find things in the art that makes something come alive. The things I do, I think of it as sort of building these little machines that make machines, that somehow enter the brain, so to speak, sort of pass the blood-brain-barrier and have some kind of effect in a very abstract sense.

But, the things I do, I don't really have a message or anything. I mean, if I had a message, I would just say the message. I think the intention behind the work, I think that's typically the least interesting thing about the work. I'm more interested in the unintended communication and the things that the artist isn't really in control of.

You know, I just hope that what I do has some of that quality, that unintended message. I think the power of art, it's the shared attention between the artist and a viewer, that power and the link of looking at the same thing outside of time, that's the power of art. And that's what I try to inject. 

Amazing. That's a really nice way of closing off. So thank you so much, Erik for joining us, it’s been really delightful. 

ES: Thank you Leyla.