I am an artist working across media, with a sustained interest in code, communication, notation, translation, and conceptual systems.
My work explores the fragile space between shared structures and actual understanding. I am interested in how an image, an idea, or a meaning may move between different forms — visual, symbolic, linguistic, and procedural — and how that movement produces shifts, distortions, gaps, and incomplete readings.
Again and again, I return to the fact that a common code does not guarantee understanding. Even where a structure appears shared, meaning remains unstable, displaced, or only partially received. This instability is central to my practice.
I am drawn not only to systems of order, but also to their aberrations: the moments when translation falters, when communication remains unresolved, and when form carries more than it can fully disclose. In this sense, the visible is often only one state of something that begins earlier — in relation, notation, or conceptual form.
Note Painting | Tom Lietzau | Articles
From notation to image — a visual system in development.
Regular art series
Note Painting
CONCEPTUAL
Last posts
- Before Note Painting Came Into Being
A new article has just been published on my Note Painting Substack. Before Note Painting Came Into Being – by Tom Lietzau - The Image That Was Already a Rule
Max Bill’s diptych, written anew in Note Painting code. A new article is now up on Substack, available in both Polish and English.The Image That Was Already a… - [EN] Painting as Transfer, Image as NotationA short reflection on Note Painting through a thought by Mieczysław Porębski The complete article published on Substack “Generally speaking, a painting is nothing else but a projective…
- Malevich’s “Black Square.”
I’m working on an app for Note Painting (NP): an editor for “score-based” notation on a staff, plus a decoder that executes the notation and outputs a clean… - AI & Note Painting
AI tested an NP (Note Painting) decode: took an NP score in SVG and generated a first PNG render using our current IRON/CANON rules. The result still has… - Photography
I starting experimental photography series. These are photographs, not computer graphics. I don’t use a computer to process the photos, just minimal correction. - Protected: datamatrix-np002-23
This content is password protected. - Note Painting vs Code Picture
I started a new version of the language encoding images using the analogue method. I called it “code picture”. Below is the difference between the two coding types,… - “The Song for Itself”
An encoded image that links to its code.