In Conversation with Omar Lobato on Ghost by Jimi Wen
In an interview with Jimi Wen, Omar Lobato discusses his evolution from early web development and cybersecurity to engaging in music, generative art, and adapting to life in a bigger city. Starting with web projects as a youth, he diverged from a path in law, inspired by his father, to pursue technology and art. He touches on making commercial websites, his music projects, and a stint in cryptocurrency, highlighting the shift from small-town familiarity to the anonymity of city life in Belo Horizonte. Omar Lobato also explores how conditions like sleep deprivation enhance his creativity, leading to discussions on latent inhibition and the creative process. His upcoming work “GHOST” illustrates his minimalist approach to generative art, balancing order with disorder. The interview showcases Omar Lobato’s diverse talents and anticipates his future contributions to art and technology.
Profile of Omar Lobato：
https://www.instagram.com/omarlob/
https://twitter.com/seigneurrrr
===========================Background=======================
Jimi Wen:
Cool, are you still in school?
omarlobato:
No, I finished my computer science course in 2021, but I’ve been playing with HTML, CSS, and WordPress since I was 12. I’m 27 in April.
Jimi Wen:
So, you were making your own website since you were 12?
omarlobato:
Yes, I worked a lot on websites since I was a kid. I also played with a Linux distribution called BackTrack (now Kali Linux), did tricks with pentests, DDoS attacks to test security, but I always liked making HTML and CSS websites.
Jimi Wen:
Wow, you started earning income when you were a kid?
omarlobato:
Yes, I worked on commercial websites for local stores using Joomla or WordPress, basically for local people. This was back in the 2011s.
Jimi Wen:
Nice, helping society to get on the internet or reduce the gap in internet connectivity.
omarlobato:
I had some musical projects and a band, so I spent on instruments or equipment. I produced rap beats/electronic music before starting to create generative art. I also got into crypto in 2013, mined BTC using an ASIC miner, but only earned around $25 in a month, which I spent in one day at the bar.
Jimi Wen:
Did you hold on to your BTC?
omarlobato:
No, sadly.
Jimi Wen:
Why did you enrol in law school?
omarlobato:
My father is a lawyer, and I tried to follow his steps, but I didn’t like the course. It wasn’t for me. After that, I switched to a tech school.
Jimi Wen:
I see, my parents are professors, so I got a PhD, but I didn’t stay in academia.
omarlobato:
It’s a very valuable degree. I will have a PhD one day and will focus on studies in the future.
Jimi Wen:
PhD is printed, no fixed supply, lol.
omarlobato:
Yes, but I think it’s a very valuable thing for a person to have that title. It’s not necessary, but it adds a lot to your professional standing.
Jimi Wen:
Inequality is quite large in Brazil, right?
omarlobato:
Yes, in all places we see inequality here.
Jimi Wen:
Given your parents and family members’ professions, you would be either upper-middle or middle-upper class. So, you would be more privileged than the average fellow countryman.
omarlobato:
We are middle class. My father earns $1000 a month in his work, and my mother has a law degree but works as a Portuguese teacher in high school. I’ve become more established after Web3 and generative art two years ago.
Jimi Wen:
But you would have less economic burden to provide for your family and pursue your own dreams?
omarlobato:
Yes, for sure!
Jimi Wen:
How many percent of Brazilians have a degree like you?
omarlobato:
I think around 30–40%. Some areas are very saturated, like law, urban engineering, philosophy, and there’s a “hype” for tech courses like computer sciences and system engineering. But these maths courses are very hard for the majority to complete.
Jimi Wen:
I like maths; I was a high school champion at the school level. Other than generative art, what other art forms did you practise?
omarlobato:
I used oil paints, took photographs, made music, and tried to make good food. I think making food is an art, like you. I’m not good with texts, but I love to read.
Jimi Wen:
Yes, totally. I notice you didn’t mention poetry. Linguistic art is itself another form.
omarlobato:
I’m not good with texts. Lyrics in music were my weak point. I have a bit of difficulty writing texts or articles. But I love to read.
Jimi Wen:
So, when you made rap hip-hop tracks, your friend wrote the lines and rapped?
omarlobato:
No, I wrote, but it’s difficult. I try my best at composing lyrics/poetry, but personally, I think it’s not so good. I’m better at composing with musical chords and notes.
Jimi Wen:
When did you find out generative art was one, if not your favourite medium to express creativity or emotion?
omarlobato:
In November 2020, a friend introduced me to Objkt, and I started creating something on Blender. I was learning about 3D models, but then my friend showed me FxHash and generative art with the Hydra-synth by Olivia Jack. So, I started coding in Hydra and was amazed because I never thought before that we could make art with code.
Jimi Wen:
Which of your works resulted in “aha” moments for you? The ones where you felt you grew as an artist or human being?
omarlobato:
Yes, I have “Secret Stairways” and “Stains on a Canvas” for generative art. In music, I designed an album cover for a great friend who passed away one year ago but left behind beautiful music. I’m glad to have been a part of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L7fz-X78aQ
[Secret Stairways]
https://www.fxhash.xyz/generative/slug/secret-stairways
[Stains on a Canvas]
https://www.artblocks.io/project/365
Jimi Wen:
Did you use shaders on the album background?
omarlobato:
No, I used the Perlin noise function in colours and Photoshop filters.
===========================LonelyMetropolis=====================
omarlobato:
-I invite you to come here; you are very welcome! I was born in Belo Horizonte, but I lived my entire life in Pompeu. I moved to Belo Horizonte two years ago. I really don’t like big cities.
Jimi Wen:
Beautiful city! Thanks, it would be my pleasure. For university, you had to go back to Belo Horizonte?
omarlobato:
Belo Horizonte has 2 million people, and is 150 km far from Pompeu. Yes, I studied at UniBH.
Jimi Wen:
Was there any particular city you had in mind for your upcoming work “GHOST”?
Omarlobato:
All those big cities.
Our biggest city is Sao Paulo, 11 million.
Then Rio with 10 million.
Jimi Wen:
So Sao Paulo, Rio.
Omarlobato:
Metropolis is full of people but at the same time, I feel alone in the crowd.
Jimi Wen:
Is Belo Horizonte considered big?
Omarlobato:
Yes, the smallest of the big. The other cities in Minas Gerais have a maximum of 100k. There’s a joke that Belo Horizonte is a great countryside.
Jimi Wen:
Lol, because it doesn’t have 10 million people? But I saw some lake or something quite beautiful.
Omarlobato:
Yes, and because there isn’t much to do there. It’s the Pampulha Lake, where Niemeyer projected that church.
Jimi Wen:
See, everything is connected.
Omarlobato:
It was very controversial in that epoch.
Because mostly the Catholics were familiar with Gothic or Roman architectures. So Oscar made a totally different church. People complained, but nowadays it’s an icon of architecture.
Jimi Wen:
I admire the confidence Oscar had.
Omarlobato:
Yes, it was groundbreaking at that time. I’ve also seen Iskra Velitchkova sharing some of his projects on Twitter. This made me think his work is famous around the Brazilian bubble too. He had another edifice in Belo Horizonte, which looks like Copan in Sao Paulo but is smaller.
And also the Edificio JK in Belo Horizonte too, was projected by him, another habitational complex, one of the big buildings of Belo Horizonte, this one is more brutallistic, dont have his curves signature.
Jimi Wen:
His works are now easily associated with generativeness of forms, but his render time probably would have been weeks, if not months.
Jimi Wen:
Can you talk more about the feeling of loneliness despite being around crowds?
Omarlobato:
Yes, I lived almost my entire life in a small city of 30k people. Everyone knows who you are, and if you need help, people know you and help you. In a big city, even if there are 1000 people in a crowd, no one wants to know who you are. People just pass through you like you’re a ghost. People always run in a rush, like ants, running to finish their jobs, to gain their life. This was a big shock of reality for me when I moved to big cities.
Jimi Wen:
Yes, I feel that way too. Everyone wants to finish something rather than take time to start something.
Omarlobato:
Everyone is running, lacking time.
Jimi Wen:
Perhaps art creation is a luxury of time.
Omarlobato:
Indeed, those who have time and those who sacrifice their time to create art.
===========================Creativity=======================
Jimi Wen:
How does your creative body clock work? For me, it is very erratic.
Omarlobato:
For me, it always works in both music and art when I haven’t slept for a long time, and after fighting sleep, I can have a lot of creativity. Sometimes when I’m drunk also.
Jimi Wen:
There is science behind this. We evolved to have this function, latent inhibition.
Omarlobato:
But during the day, it’s hard. It works more in the late night when it’s all in silence.
Jimi Wen:
To focus, in order to survive. It shuts 99% of the sensation or intuition our brain is capable of processing like GPUs. Latent inhibition turns our brain more like CPU, serial processing for maximum efficiency.
omarlobato:
Yes, I think there’s some magic when we fight against sleep; we can become a bit more active.
Jimi Wen:
For me, it is very erratic. There is science behind this; we evolve to have this function, latent inhibition, to focus, in order to survive.
Yes, instead of being more focused, by daydreaming, we might find what our heart/brain is calling for.
omarlobato:
For sure!
Jimi Wen:
Back to the upcoming work “GHOST,” I think this is your largest edition yet, right?
omarlobato:
Yes!
Jimi Wen:
Since you cannot play with the palette to carry more editions?
omarlobato:
I know it’s hard to create a work fully monochrome to maintain a high amount of different variations, but this work will not repeat even with one palette.
Jimi Wen:
Yeah, it’s all in the composition.
omarlobato:
If this work has colours, it will have no soul.
Jimi Wen:
Sometimes constraints are sources to push us into more creativity.
omarlobato:
Exactly, doing the maximum with the minimum.
Jimi Wen:
It’s really amazing to see that beyond traditional optical art, the spaces you create are balanced spaces with infinite variations. That is the most difficult thing.
omarlobato:
I appreciate you liked this! This is what enchants me about randomness.
Jimi Wen:
The balance of disorder and order in GHOST. Spaces emerge, space being the order for our latter stages of our visual cortex. Disorder at two levels, line by line level, and composition level.
omarlobato:
Totally! We will have a bit of slight differences in the compositions one made with full rectangles and another with triangles.
Jimi Wen:
-Thank you for your time I think let’s wrap up here, and await your upcoming drop.
