'Frank'. A Diary of Confinement
Frank is a long-form generative art project inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank, one of the most widely read and enduring testimonies of the twentieth century. Written while Anne Frank and her family lived in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the diary has become far more than a historical document. It is at once a personal journal, a coming-of-age narrative, and a reflection on hope, fear, freedom, and the experience of waiting. More than eighty years later, its pages continue to resonate because they speak not only about a specific moment in history, but about a universal human condition. Frank approaches that legacy through the language of generative art. Rather than illustrating events from the diary, the project attempts to translate some of its underlying sensations into an algorithmic form: confinement, repetition, silence, uncertainty, the slow passing of time, and the persistent awareness of a world that exists just beyond reach.
The collection
The project consists of 163 unique artworks, corresponding to the 163 diary entries Anne Frank wrote during her years in hiding. Each piece is titled with the date of its corresponding entry, transforming every output into the algorithmic equivalent of a single day.
The material: concrete
The visual world of Frank is built almost entirely from concrete. Concrete is a material loaded with symbolism. It is a material that evokes the architecture of totalitarian regimes, it is the material of bomb shelters, bunkers, and concentration camps. Yet it has also been embraced by Brutalist architects and contemporary designers for its raw beauty, material honesty, and capacity to record the passage of time. In Frank, concrete becomes both image and metaphor. Its stains, fractures, erosions, imperfections, and subtle tonal variations form a surface that feels at once monumental and fragile. Each work appears as a fragment extracted from an unknown interior, a wall that has silently witnessed the passing of days, seasons, and lives.
The passing of time
Across these surfaces, light slowly moves. A beam enters through an unseen window and drifts throughout the day before disappearing again into darkness. This movement constitutes the central event of the artwork. Nothing dramatic occurs. No narrative unfolds. The work simply watches time pass. For those living in confinement, time acquires a different density. Days become repetitive. External life continues elsewhere. The changing position of sunlight, a distant sound, or the movement of a shadow can become the only evidence that the world beyond the walls still exists. The light in Frank functions as a reminder of everything that remains inaccessible. It speaks of life outside the frame. Of places not visited. Of experiences not lived. Of time that cannot be recovered. It is, perhaps, a form of nostalgia for the present.
Anne’s handwriting
Fragments of Anne Frank's own handwriting emerge throughout the project. Every character was individually extracted and reconstructed from the pages of the original diary, allowing the algorithm to write using her script. These marks appear like traces embedded within the material itself, halfway between memory and disappearance. Writing occupies a special place within the project. For Anne Frank, writing became a way of resisting erasure, a means of preserving identity within circumstances designed to suppress it. The diary transformed an anonymous hiding place into a space of reflection, imagination, and personal freedom. In Frank, those handwritten traces become echoes suspended within stone and light.
The project also draws from ideas developed by anthropologist Marc Augé, particularly his notion of the non-place: spaces that generate neither belonging nor identity. Airports, highways, warehouses, and transit infrastructures are examples of environments we pass through without inhabiting. The secret annex can be understood through this lens. An anonymous workspace hidden behind a warehouse became, through necessity, a temporary home. A place never intended for living was transformed into a place where life persisted. This tension between shelter and prison, between protection and restriction, lies at the heart of the project.
The conceptual side of the algorithm
At its computational core, Frank employs systems based on wandering movement and spatial constraint. Random trajectories drift through hidden architectural boundaries, slowly revealing the contours of an invisible floor plan. These algorithmic structures are not used merely as technical tools but as conceptual devices that embody movement without freedom, repetition without destination, and presence without visibility.
The code itself participates in the work's meaning. Algorithms become metaphors. The project proposes that computational structures are never neutral. Like language, architecture, or images, they can carry emotional and philosophical significance. Generative systems can do more than produce variation; they can become vehicles for memory, reflection, and cultural meaning.
More about 'Frank'
This dossier provides a comprehensive overview of the Frank project (PDF - download recommended).
A universal message
While rooted in the story of Anne Frank, Frank ultimately extends beyond its historical source. It is a project about all forms of confinement. About isolation, waiting, displacement, invisibility, and resilience. About the experience of watching life continue elsewhere. About the fragile conditions that allow freedom to exist. It is also a project about remembrance. Not remembrance as historical reconstruction, but remembrance as presence: the persistence of a voice, a gesture, a fragment of handwriting, a beam of light crossing a wall.
Produced entirely through plain P5JS code, without photographs, textures, scans, shaders, or external assets, Frank explores the possibility of an algorithmic image capable of carrying emotional weight. A form of generative photography constructed from memory rather than documentation.
Stone, light, ink, and code.
A diary rewritten as an algorithm.
A call for tolerance. And for freedom.