blockchain

specture readings 04

multispecies storytelling, ecology, sound & listening, kinship structures, landscape, AI classes ::: 20230412–20230419

reading and watching

::: These Lizards Stress-Eat When Loud Military Aircraft Fly Overhead ::: via This week in sound ::: Stress eating checkered whiptail lizards in Colorado — an impact of modern life I hadn't considered before. What other ways are species adapting to cope with noise pollution

::: Nature, Crisis, Consequence exhibition looks at the social and cultural impact of the environmental crisis on different communities across America.

::: artists:

specture readings 01

filtered news ::: 20230329 - 20230407
a loose collection of news and links collected during this period, often shared via twitter

reading and watching

::: art and climate - from conversation to action https://www.artshub.com.au/news/features/art-and-climate-from-conversati...

::: a changing world: computational creativity https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/changing-world-computational-c...

::: trial and theresa women's vj collective in berlin http://trialandtheresa.de/about/

::: teia DAO LLC announcement https://blog.teia.art/blog/registration-announcement

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Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons @ Hayward Gallery, UK

"Constructed with materials scavenged from salvage yards, junk shops, auctions and flea markets, the immersive installations have a startling life-like quality.

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Espacios comunes as places of connection

Espacios comunes is a code-based, generative artwork by Javier Graciá Carpio (jagracar) minted on fx(hash), with the main version plus 512 iterations. The drawing is made using P5.JS, with pixel sorting and added noise / texture via GLSL shaders.


Jagracar. Espacios comunes. 2023. Digital artwork. Variable sizes. Reproduced from Fx(hash), https://www.fxhash.xyz/generative/slug/espacios-comunes.

Initially I saw digital landscapes built up from atoms/points, forming over time. After reading the artist's description and translating the title as common spaces, I interpret the artist's intention of a collection of spaces as more socially based places. Jagracar describes the work as: "Horizontal, decentralized societies. Espacios comunes. We can see the circles, squares, plane cuts, but we cannot give them an order or authority" and further explained via a tweet: "It's more or less what we are doing in Tezos, right? Different backgrounds and shapes, but all well mixed and at the same decentralized level :)" By adding the social aspect to these spaces, Jagracar has reinforced their use as places — this fits with my research on the exploration of the blockchain as not a placeless space, it is actually a Place in the architectural and geographical theory sense, due to the communities active on it and social aspects. Jagracar's views of Espacios comunes could be seen as the topographical map, extending from and sitting alongside Paul Baran's decentralised network topologies diagram (as used by Vitalik Buterin also), to see the societies' view — another view of Haraway's tentacular thinking, where the interconnections between nodes/communities are closer, as with Tezos and its communities themselves.


Jagracar. "Tweet". 2023. Image of tweet reproduced from Twitter, https://twitter.com/jagracar/status/1629227616090587137?s=20.


AliaK. Paul Baran's network topology map, also used by Vitalik Buterin. 2022. Image screenshot reproduced from AliaK.com, http://aliak.com/content/specture-topology-and-context.

Espacios comunes is a durational work — the points creating the forms appear over time, drawn using P5.JS code. The points are displayed simultaneously, growing in intensity, so you see the whole image appear gradually, rather than it building different areas of the drawing sequentially — aligning to a progressive scan rather than interlaced scan; the digital over the analog. Texture is added via the addition of noise from the shaders, which are also doing some pixel sorting. In this world communities have grown in parallel, together, rather than sequentially where they would be waiting for one to start and finish before the next can be formed. The work uses varying colours from tuned palettes. Though it's described as a flat, 2D work from a conceptual perspective, the use of colours and textures applied via the shader provides dimensional and tonal aspects to the work.

The work is bounded by fixed borders, yet each iteration has a different support size. Instead of making a uniform dynamically sized work, the overall collection of iterations provides the variation in dimensions. Each collector's iteration depicts a new layout of the places, a new configuration of social interactions, new perspectives. This adds a multi-dimensional aspect to it. There are control commands which can be used to adjust the dimensions of the work, if the viewer wishes to interact with the work, in the same way that members of the communities can interact with and adjust the sizes of the communities and their involvements.

Overall, a beautiful debut for the artist on fx(hash) platform. Jagracar's earlier works can be found on Teia also via https://teia.art/jagracar
View the work and its iterations at https://www.fxhash.xyz/generative/slug/espacios-comunes

::: these notes / analysis are based on the context of my specture project research
::: also published at https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/espacios-comunes-as-places-of-connection and https://medium.com/@aliak/espacios-comunes-as-places-of-connection-d8c00...

Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Experimental Futures). Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Buterin, Vitalik. 2017. "The Meaning of Decentralization." Medium. https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentralization-a0c92....
Rand Corporation. 2022. "Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet." Rand Corporation. Accessed on 15 September, https://www.rand.org/about/history/baran.html.

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Flora | Fauna #2 exhibition

The Flora | Fauna #2 exhibition opened at Tz1and place# 474 on 28 May 2022. Organized by the bad lament (#154) and Pearl Hyacinth (#162) and presented by CleanNFTs, Teia and Tz1and, the exhibition included works minted exclusively in Tz1and from artists and Tz1andians: 852Kerfunkle, AliaK, anahdraws, Blase, Carla Knopp, Chris Coleman, Filipe Mecenas, Kelly Richardson, Keram Malicki-Sánchez, Kheelk, Luis E. Fraguada, Malicious Sheep, mawcreature, moonsoon, Ned Boyanov, Orfhlaith Egan, Ottis, Pearl Hyacinth, James Alec Hardy, Simon Wairiuko, Stu Sontier, thebadlament, v1tb1t, and We Throw Rocks. It followed on from the Flora | Fauna #1 exhibition held in Cryptovoxels in April 2021 for Earth Day.

In keeping with the exhibition's theme, the open-air gallery building created by Pearl Hyacinth allowed visitors to take advantage of the virtual world and fly above the space to see a bird's eye view of the art as well as walk around for a close-up view of the works ranging from 2D framed images and 3D art objects. Many artists created plant focused digital paintings, prints and photographic works based on both nature and imagination, with a few animals featured also, such as a pair of cats, swans, a dinosaur and a platypus. Grasses and flowers were placed throughout the gallery as well as the grounds outside, leading visitors to walk through the space in quiet contemplation of the works, taking time to explore each one. Trees sprouted multi-coloured branches and leaves through the open ceiling of the gallery, allowing the viewer to explore the works in all directions and dimensions.

Voice chats were held May 28 7AM & May 29 9PM (UTC) in the Tz1and Discord channel as part of the exhibition launch, and Carolyn and Ryan from Teia Community captured a walkthrough video of the exhibition at Teia Community /// FLORA | FAUNA 2 Exhibit in Tz1and @ Place#474

Flora and Fauna 2 Exhibition Video Walkthrough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhcKc1H1RK0

::: via: 
https://www.tz1and.com/blog/8924

specture ::: topology and context

specture ::: the topology and conceptual contexts underpinning my specture body of work ::: explorations of interconnectedness and 'evolution' of extinct species on/and the blockchain

::: speculative|species ::: future|architecture ::: https://butiq.art/aliak/specture

specture is a speculative exploration considering the interconnections and abstractions of extinct species (from NSW) on the blockchain, with the underlying idea: what if in the future this is the only place they exist?

The blockchain is an immutable technological system, where data stored on it remains forever (or for as long as the chain exists). I build conglomerations of generative, code-based systems mixed with 3D digital models to create digital drawings and animations as abstractions of the extinct species and their blockchain environment, to garner what the species might see and experience whilst inside the blockchain. These generative drawings imagine whether the species could evolve once in the blockchain, or would they reach their final form once stored there. They also reflect the decentralized entanglement in interconnectedness in both ecology and the blockchain.

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specture mindmap

specture ::: rewilding the blockchain mindmap as at 13 March 2022 (further updates yet to be added)
key artists / readings / links shown ::: others are listed separately in bibliography & project documents

green=explored (at some level)
black=to be explored
grey=excluded from current exploration (possible future)

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lament for hic et nunc

it feels like we're grieving, for the loss of a website/system, though it was more than just a website; it was an idea and some say, a movement. hic et nunc [now a broken link], designed and built by Brazilian developer, Rafael Lima, was|is a generic architecture|system|platform for exploring decentralised blockchain uses that morphed into an art focused obkjt|NFT collection space|lab|dApp on the more eco-friendly Proof of Stake based Tezos blockchain. it came with a warning — This is an experimental dApp, use it at your own risk. Lima's design is an elegant architecture that works on multi levels — the objkt (NFT/art work) level, the platform (single site/front-end) level and the network|multisite|eco system level. hic et nunc brought beauty into the tech; art into the tech; the aesthetic into the tech; art and elegance into the architecture. it felt more feminine than many of the tech-bro developed platforms that surround it in the crypto landscape. the UI design was|is simple and clean, focusing on the art, as a flat plane, that allows the eye to flow across and above and below the page|space viewing art within the webpage frame. there were no popup menus invading|colonising your space|view|frame. everything was within — a plane of immanence (Davis 2021; RainDropUp 2008; Wikipedia 2021), with simple, flat navigation, subtley showing via collections and presentation, that everything is connected to something (Haraway 2016a; Haraway 2016b; Rose 2008; van Dooren 2014*), one art work led to the next, one artist connected to another, links between them all, point to point, peer to peer. there were no leaderboards, no transcendency, everyone and every piece of art was equalised by the immanent design — by the OBJKT and the SUBJKT (RainDropUp 2008).

a wash of emotions this past week, after hearing the news that Rafael had discontinued hicetnunc.xyz on November 11, 2021 (Nov 12 in Australia/Sydney). many articles have been posted about this (plus a few posts for context):

bio-string bio-plastic bio-fabricating sustainable materials test

for my uni art project, I wanted to try some bio textiles processes using sustainable materials given the large amounts of waste and energy used in textiles and materials production. A classmate recommended I try alginate, a seaweed extract often used by dentists for their moulds. I found some recipes for bio-string / bio-plastic / bio-fabricating processes, and also discovered a collection of makers called FabLabs. my project is not strictly a textiles project, but is based on / inspired by string figures, so I was happy to find that this method can be used to create bio-string too. The main ingredients (sodium alginate and calcium chloride) were found at The Red Spon Company, a baking and food supply store in Rosebery, Sydney. They didn't have glicerine, and I check a couple of other stores and couldn't find it also, so didn't include that - one recipe included it and another didn't so I thought it might be optional.

Recipe reference ::: see Links below for general research / other links
Bogers, Loes. 2020. "Alginate String." Textile Academy. https://class.textile-academy.org/2020/loes.bogers/files/recipes/alginat....

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