Series Intro

If classical logic is a manner of representing what is or isn't, then modal logic extends this to explore obligation, belief, necessity, possibility and knowledge. This series lives in the exploration of what must or might be.

The goals of this series are to:

• explore color and perspective, mostly through geometric abstraction
• keep simple and limited in file size
• investigate the further usage of parent-child inscription structures
• be the algorithm in what appears to be a generative collection
• express and develop thoughts about the path from nothing to consciousness

Gradient includes 256 generative gradients in 3:1 banner aspect ratio (48x16). Each is composed of a base layer followed by three gradient layers starting from 2, 4, 8, or 10 o'clock on the frame. Nine base hexes were used to form the foundation of all shades expressed per gradient, and these nine colors/hexes are red f00000, orange ffa500, yellow ffff00, green 00ff00, blue 0000ff, purple 4b0082, pink ee82ee, black 000000 and white ffffff. The resulting gradients serve the purpose of providing hex codes for works in the following subseries.

Each piece is inscribed using the "Gradient" parent as well as all of its composite colors (those used to create the Gradient itself) as parents. This kind of parent-child structure is a recurring theme throughout all of the additional subseries as a way of making on-chain exploration much easier to visualize and navigate— rather than adding tons of on-chain metadata and relying on marketplace indexing to remain digestible.

This is the only collection that could be considered generative in the larger series of works to be derived from Gradient, and this is very much on purpose. I meant to use only the base ROYGBIV(ish) + black & white in order to randomly layer gradients that I'd then be forced to work with in the later works. In the other works I've made in the past, I very clearly have not only difficulty picking palettes to use but also have a few favorite colors that my brain leans into even though they may not be what's best for the piece. I wanted to go as far in the opposite direction as I could from my usual, making sure to set up constraints I'd have to follow in the next related works.

I generated and inscribed the first 256 of the more than 10k possible unique combinations as PNGs at the smallest resolution possible. I know everybody is using webp or SVG these days, but I don't want any compression applied, don't need native upscaling desperately and wanted to prioritize quick load times on explorers and marketplaces due to very compact file sizes.

Banners might be under-utilized as social media statements, but in addition, the length of these pieces adds two distinct features that weren't present in square format. The first is that when looking at one side, it's difficult to keep track of the other, so it allows you to get lost tracking where the colors meet in the gradient. The second is that we're afforded much more color diversity in this format since there's a lot more runway for colors to shade in and out.

As far as developing a standard for how to derive a hex code from the 768 individual possible shades on each Gradient, I decided after a few alternative attempts to count two pixels inward in each direction from each corner and use those four hexes as base direction in their corresponding work. Put differently, the third pixel over and in from each corner.

With regard to the vision and how this fits into a larger ideology, the gradient series can be viewed as a story about the initial building blocks of the universe. The formation of these gradients is a metaphor for the formation and distribution of atoms/elements. Each of the eight sub-series after this will be half the size of its previous, illustrating that we are continuing the combine and compact pre-existing materials.

The Cohesion series of 128 pieces is to represent the organization of atoms/elements into molecules for deeper complexity. This might appear to be a generative collection, but it is not. I made rules for myself in terms of each lines direction, organization, and overlap, and forced the use of only corresponding gradient-derived palettes. For example Cohesion #1 uses the palette derived from Gradient #1– and as such, is parented by both its collection parent and source Gradient. Same for Cohesion #2 & Gradient #2 and so on.

The rules were that two colors would be striped to form the base either horizontally or vertically, while the other two colors would follow the same direction as the base, but would extend atop starting from opposite sides, never fully cross, and mandatorily intersect. The goal was to not only use these palettes I sometimes despised, but also to see what shapes could be made where no shape really was while observing how this impacted perception of the colors involved. Just as a molecule becomes more than its parts, these pieces form additional shapes that are a byproduct of their structure.

Each gradient is 80x45. This felt like the minimum needed to achieve the range I was hoping to see. 16:9 is just about the aspect ratio of the human field of vision, as they are meant to appear to be an incomplete snippet of a larger whole/item/space. No borders, no contained shape, and clearly the implication of continuation. Again, these were inscribed as PNG so that their load time is super quick and file size very small.

The Identity series is formatted to be a conventional pfp square. 16x16 pixels felt like exactly enough room and not one bit more than needed to illustrate the point and achieve diverse expressivity. Identity #1 uses hex codes from Gradient #129 since the first 128 Gradients were used for the Cohesion subseries. Hence, Identity #2 would be derived from Gradient #130 and so on.

All backgrounds are black in order to keep consistency across the pieces, as black typically lends well to the pfp use-case. Along with the four hexes pulled from the corresponding Gradient pieces, direct compliments of those colors were added resulting in eight total colors to be used per piece. I divided each character into 8 color sections and used a color-by-number style system, though I chose the placement for each color rather than just laying them down in order. This gives the collection the visual consistency and maybe appeal of something generative despite not being conventionally generative. Each piece is multi-parented by the collection, gradient and character parents. As usual, viewing the item will give you information such as the collection in which it resides, which gradient informs its palette, and in this case to which character group it belongs. As such, clicking on a character parent will reveal all of the characters beneath that parent, allowing a form of trait sorting directly from explorers.

These pieces are meant to illustrate the emergence of life. Eight characters are used in order to highlight human diversity. Since personality types are not evenly distributed in my experience, there are one of the first, three of the second, five of the third, and so on up to 15 of the eighth in order to make a total of 64 pieces.

This is an initial foray into the idea of an unbound face pfp. Can just characteristics be used in order to define something, or does it need confines such as a head shape or recognizable body in order to form a group? For contrast, the last and largest minority character is bound and has a neck and implied body, much like the common cryptopunk trope.

Expansion mimics the geographic spread (or containment) of culture in 32 connected 32x32 pixel pieces. They were inscribed in such a way that when laid out in order four pieces wide by eight pieces tall, the lines and themes tend to bleed from piece to piece, maintaining the colors native to that piece but taking on other information from those bordering.

Monochromatic and complimentary pairs atop four original corresponding gradient hexes were used such that the total palette includes 12 colors. This was to extend the ability to indicate layers and patterns, as culture is not particularly two-dimensional.

No two are alike although they look similar. Each has its own base layer and boundaries along with three instances of varied shape & pattern, meant to represent the cultural traditions of beliefs of that particular group. Some are self-contained and don't cross into or come from others, others are shared [sometimes vaguely] with another or across several pieces.

Each piece is parented only by its collection parent and source gradient, as there are no traits to speak of. The pieces are either singularly viewed or taken to be a part of the greater whole with no distinct subdivisions— much in the same way one can view a city as a whole separate entity or as a smaller part of a larger state or country.

In 2:3 aspect ratio like a traditional portrait or common wall poster, these 16 pieces are examples of impacts human life might have on its surroundings. They were inspired by specific events or ideas, but are meant more to evoke a similar response rather than explicitly convey that idea, and their format is meant to guide the viewer into feeling as though these concepts are being presented to them in an isolated and potentially polarizing fashion. One concept/issue is shown to you at a time using only a few snippets of the possible story as the focal point.

Only the four hexes from each source gradient were used alongside, but they're used twice each. Once to frame the image and another time to make the subject. The black and white backgrounds are not pure black nor white as they don't represent a void or presence— they represent the presentation of a specific backdrop to the viewer.

With an old school arcade game aspect ratio, Dependence illustrates our opting into increasingly mandatory interdependence. Only the four hexes from each parent gradient are used plus a black background in order to highlight the subject with no frame of reference. The background is no background, so this isn't somewhere in particular. Rather, it's everywhere or nowhere physical since its an activity.

The lines don't wrap back around to a closed loop, but in all cases they'd be either complicated or nearly impossible to untangle. This parallels our experience in a post-industrial society where water is fed to us through pipes, electricity/work through a switch, and every item in our homes a product of multiple factories and systems.

Warp pieces are 40x71 pixels when in portrait orientation, which is exactly 1/16th of 640x1136 pixels (the native resolution of the still-LCD iPhone SE). Released in 2016, the iPhone SE and its parallels ushered in a new era of social media frenzy– the short-form content doom scroll.

Using the four hexes from associated gradients as well as their analogous colors for a total of 12 per piece, these snapshots are constructed to disorient. The implied depth or direction are difficult to parse, and only an incomplete snapshot of the larger picture is shown.

No start, no finish, no discernable organization. No now, no distinct reliable memory, no possible prediction. It's easy to think there's more, and even easier to get lost.

Often it seems that individuals exist solely to take a strong arbitrary stance. Many of us will dedicate our lives to causes of which we're absolutely sure we stand on the only correct side. We're sure that unless everyone takes this specific action our species will be at risk of termination or damnation. Yet, somehow, for all of our history we've been divided— never to agree on one path. Maybe this push/pull dance is exactly the mechanism that keeps us balanced in the middle. And maybe the middle is the actually successful path.

Each of the two dichotomies is roughly the aspect ratio of two iPhone air screens side by side in a forever balanced battle of push and pull. Constant and sometimes dramatic polarization with perpetual balance. For every point to the left, a point to the right.

Using complimentary pairs, deriving their monochromatic pairs, then analogous duos from all of those we end up with 48 colors per dichotomy. They're sorted in the first piece by descending luminance and then ascending in the second such that the perceived dominance of either darkness or light at the same time by different observers presents a duality such that neither ever actually dominates.

Everything is influenced by everything, sorted by loudness, and veers only so far toward the edge of the group.

This piece is comprised of complementary, monochromatic, analogous, triadic, and tetradic pairs derived from the four hexes of gradient #255. Lowest luminance at the edges, highest in the middle. Black/white background separated to illustrate the presence but unlikelihood of extreme outcomes. Connected, and limiting.

The reinscriptions on this sat (889991108866519) are a chronologically inscribed catalog of most stepping stones in the process toward completing the Modal series. They were reinscribed rather than traditionally parented because there was no good reason to create an undetermined number of new UTXOs. I didn't want to feel limited in what I ought to be recording, so I reduced the cost and bloat of it as much as possible. If ever there were a desire to distribute any of them, delegates could be made (1/1 or editions) and locked at a specific number after co-parenting into the main parent-child tree.

There are features of many of the subseries occurring throughout, so we can think of the drafts inscriptions as saved checkpoints in the process that didn't directly become part of the final product.