A generative art gallery · Accra · est. 2026
Nothing here is stored. Each work is grown in your browser from a single number — a seed — by one of three algorithms drawn from Akan visual tradition. Shuffle the seed and the wall rehangs. Keep a seed and the work is yours, exactly, forever.
Tonight's opening was chosen at random when you arrived. Reload, and the gallery hangs another.
SANKOFA SYSTEMS
, 2026
Generative ink, HTML canvas · edition of one
The sankofa bird walks forward with its head turned back, retrieving the egg it left behind. Each work grows a small flock of calligraphic spines — necks that rise, hesitate, and hook into the backward glance — over a quiet horizon.
SANKOFA SYSTEMS
, 2026
Generative ink, HTML canvas · edition of one
Studies from the same algorithm — select one to hang it on the wall
Dwennimmen — the ram's horns — holds strength and humility in one form. Here the horn becomes a logarithmic spiral, mirrored into pairs and hung on a loose grid: one focal voice, a field of smaller ones, and deliberate silences between.
SANKOFA SYSTEMS
, 2026
Generative ink, HTML canvas · edition of one
Studies from the same algorithm — select one to hang it on the wall
Kente is woven in narrow strips, block by block, then sewn side by side — a grid that was never rigid. The algorithm cuts each strip into blocks and lets a weighted table choose every pattern, under two weaver's rules: never repeat your neighbour, never repeat your ground.
SANKOFA SYSTEMS
, 2026
Generative ink, HTML canvas · edition of one
Studies from the same algorithm — select one to hang it on the wall
Every work begins as one 32-bit integer passed through mulberry32, a tiny deterministic random generator. The same seed always grows the same work — the algorithms below decide what that growth means. The guide walks through each in full.
A spine is grown by integrating a heading angle: it starts pointing up, sways gently through the neck, then a hook term turns it back through roughly 200°. Offset normals flesh the spine into a tapered ribbon; head, beak and a gold egg finish the gesture. One curve is dominant; the rest recede in scale and tone.
θ(t) = θ₀ + sway·ease(t) + hook·ease(t−0.52) x' = cos θ · ds, y' = sin θ · ds
Full walkthrough →Each horn is a logarithmic spiral drawn outside-in as a stroke that thins toward the curl. Two mirrored spirals join at the brow. Glyphs land on a jittered grid with weighted sizes — a golden-ratio cell takes the focal horn, and some cells are left deliberately empty.
r(θ) = r₀ · e^(0.20·θ) width(θ) ∝ (θ/θmax)^0.82
Full walkthrough →Vertical strips are cut into blocks; a weighted table draws each block's pattern — solid, warp stripes, weft bands, babadua, zigzag, teeth — under two constraints borrowed from the loom: no pattern repeats its neighbour, no ground colour repeats. Weft scanlines and per-strip offsets give the cloth its hand.
P(pattern) ∝ w · [pattern ≠ previous] P(ground) ∝ w · [colour ≠ previous]
Full walkthrough →Sankofa Systems is a one-room generative art studio. We write small, careful programs that grow images — then we frame the programs' best behaviour the way a gallery frames paint. Our conviction is that an algorithm can hold a point of view: margins it refuses to crowd, colours it returns to, gestures it cannot help repeating. The seed only decides which of its sentences it speaks tonight.
The gallery is also a print shop. Every work on these walls can be exported at print resolution with its museum label composed into the sheet — seed, series, year — so a visitor's edition is citable and reproducible. If you bring us the seed, we can regrow your work stroke for stroke.
Beyond the walls, the studio takes commissions: identity systems that generate themselves — marks, patterns and print collateral grown from a client's own seed words, delivered as running code rather than frozen files.
Commissions
We build identity systems that behave like these rooms: a mark, a pattern language and print collateral generated by code your organisation owns.
What you receive. A seeded algorithm tuned to your brief, the full source, a specimen book of one hundred editions, and export tooling for print and screen.
How it starts. Tell us who you are and what should grow. We reply within a week with three sketch algorithms.