WALLED GARDEN :: J.R. LEEGTE

In the evolving topography of generative art, Jan Robert Leegte continues to excavate the foundational structures that shape how we see, own, and inhabit digital space. His latest work, Walled Garden, curated by Fakewhale, unfolds as an immersive, photorealistic environment distributed across 150 Ethereum-based NFT editions. Each edition functions as a fixed perspective into a shared digital garden, recalibrating the idea of ownership as spatial participation within a larger generative system.

Built in JavaScript using Houdini and Babylon.js, Walled Garden presents a single, living environment experienced through discrete openings, viewports cut into a circular architectural wall. Each NFT corresponds to one of these vantage points, assigning a specific location within the structure of the work. Ownership emerges as a matter of place, defined by relational geometry.

“Ownership becomes positional,” Leegte explains. “You’re not just holding a token, you’re taking a place.”

This spatial reframing of the collector’s role extends Leegte’s earlier project, Web (2023), in which 1,000 hyperlinked NFTs formed a distributed, contract-based network. With Walled Garden, the logic becomes more intimate and more architectural. Collectors engage with a system where perspective arises through structure. The collector holds a view, inscribed within a precise orientation. A presence shaped by alignment.

The gesture activates multiple dimensions: ecological simulation, networked identity, and the material memory of interfaces. At the center of the garden stands a sculptural scrollbar, a cryptic remnant rendered in high-resolution 3D, part relic, part interface, part conceptual fulcrum. It carries symbolic weight while remaining embedded within the spatial system.

“To me, the scrollbar is the nude in Étant donnés,” Leegte offers. “It links back to something outside the wall. But it’s also a poetic gesture.”

Throughout the project, the threshold between visibility and tactility defines the entire experience. The garden remains inaccessible yet fully constructed. Each NFT acts as a viewport, a frame charged with both observational and performative energy. Names and wallet addresses appear directly in the frame, linking ownership to visibility and placing the viewer within the scene itself.

“In The Garden, ownership implies visibility,” Leegte says. “You’re part of the scene, not just watching it.”

The structure brings social mechanics into the heart of the piece. The circular wall does not isolate. It provides orientation and relation. The system becomes its own interface, inviting gestures of attention, observation, and self-awareness. Exhibition and participation align within a singular frame.

Leegte’s work has long examined the ontology of nature mediated through the networked computer. His landscapes operate as systems of visibility, processed through code, protocol, and frame. The garden channels a romantic impulse without leaning into nostalgia. It uses simulated nature to construct a theatrical container. The viewer becomes part of that theatricality through architectural immersion.

“We still respond deeply to natural environments,” Leegte reflects. “The Garden taps into this longing… but that mediated nature also becomes theatrical. It sets a stage for the collector to perform in.”

With a background in sculpture, Leegte engages the screen as a tactile limit. His earlier pieces, scrollbar sculptures and button drawings, treat interfaces as sculptural elements. Walled Garden extends that approach through immersion and spatial orchestration. The presence of the wall becomes a surface of reflection, both literal and conceptual.

“The screen seduces us, but also holds us at a distance,” Leegte says. “That distance brings the digital experience back into material terms.”

Fully integrated into Web3, Walled Garden proposes a new direction in digital art. The project advances a logic where generative systems define authorship, access, and orientation. The medium of the network operates as conceptual framework, not as aesthetic layer. The result is a structure that reshapes how collectors relate to space, signal, and presence.

Alongside Walled Garden, Leegte continues to develop parallel investigations. A blockchain-based project interacting with Web2 infrastructure and a generative audio environment are already in motion. His practice expands across platforms while remaining centered on the digital condition as compositional material.

“Mediated nature is one of the central threads in my work,” he affirms. “It ties into generative art, the structure of the internet, and our broader digital condition.”

In Walled Garden, this condition becomes architecture. Each edition operates as a spatial link. Each collector assumes a location. The work evolves as an ecosystem built through angles, frames, and attention.