May 2024
Constant
“there are two strains of *nft art* emerging - one is an extension of postinternet as the production of unique images using the legder as means of distribution. The other strain is creating experiments with the material (code) and structure of the chain itself. Image vs Process” - @brachlandberlin
Constant grew from a few ideas; one was a return to the topic of symmetry, explored in Token Hash among others, and the idea for a new mechanic of using wallet address as seeds for a generative artwork.
My first explorations stemmed from Natural Static, mirroring random pixels to reveal the inherent lack of randomness in their distribution.
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These tests were interesting at scale, but one thing I wanted to bring to Constant from my previous online work was an understanding of context. Most viewers will see the work as a thumbnail; where density does not translate well.
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I reduced the grid of pixels to a line traced through random points, drawing a line through the set, and then imperfectly mirrored these points to create asymmetry. I was reminded of my choreographic work, how working with two dancers becomes so much more relationally charged than working with more.
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I also explored pixel-like forms, with some Harm van den Dorpel-esque imperfect symmetry studies, but these felt like territory I had explored before, with Proof of Work and Natural Static.
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Working with rectangles and rotation, a clear relational dynamic became visible; who takes more space, who is leaning on who, where is the connection? I also liked how the rotation broke the cartesian grid of so much generative work, and how its simplicity resisted the tendency to complexity in digital art.
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Throughout my practice, the visual content of a work has not been my primary interest. What excites me more is the creation of a protocol that enables connection, or shapes experience.
One of my first works, Shadowing, is a good example of this. The system captures the movements of people under a streetlamp, and plays them back with a delay. The visual of silhouettes is in service of the recognition of oneself and others, and the greatest joy I received from the project was not creating the visual language of it but was in watching people play under the lamp.
My favourite works from the NFT canon are not those that make pretty pictures with code; they are those that use the affordances of the blockchain to create propositions with pleasing tension; Stevie P’s Money Making Opportunity, or Rhea Myers Proof of Existence come to mind.
In a recent inteview in Outland, Myers stated that the point of her work is to raise the negative; claiming that a hash on the blockchain is proof of existence immediately raises objections.
“The objections are the point. That’s the point of the artwork—this doesn’t work. Let’s think about why not.“ Outland, 2024
Constant works in a similar way - wallet addresses are not equivalent to their owners complex and rich personalities, and blockchain transactions are not equivalent to real connection.
But in creating a work that shifts each time it changes changes hands echoes the fragility of our real rich relationships, and reminds us that behind each blockchain address is you and me.
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Constant opens May 29 at 1pm EST on constant.jonathanchomko.com
“there are two strains of *nft art* emerging - one is an extension of postinternet as the production of unique images using the legder as means of distribution. The other strain is creating experiments with the material (code) and structure of the chain itself. Image vs Process” - @brachlandberlin
Constant grew from a few ideas; one was a return to the topic of symmetry, explored in Token Hash among others, and the idea for a new mechanic of using wallet address as seeds for a generative artwork.
My first explorations stemmed from Natural Static, mirroring random pixels to reveal the inherent lack of randomness in their distribution.
These tests were interesting at scale, but one thing I wanted to bring to Constant from my previous online work was an understanding of context. Most viewers will see the work as a thumbnail; where density does not translate well.
I reduced the grid of pixels to a line traced through random points, drawing a line through the set, and then imperfectly mirrored these points to create asymmetry. I was reminded of my choreographic work, how working with two dancers becomes so much more relationally charged than working with more.
I also explored pixel-like forms, with some Harm van den Dorpel-esque imperfect symmetry studies, but these felt like territory I had explored before, with Proof of Work and Natural Static.
Working with rectangles and rotation, a clear relational dynamic became visible; who takes more space, who is leaning on who, where is the connection? I also liked how the rotation broke the cartesian grid of so much generative work, and how its simplicity resisted the tendency to complexity in digital art.
Throughout my practice, the visual content of a work has not been my primary interest. What excites me more is the creation of a protocol that enables connection, or shapes experience.
One of my first works, Shadowing, is a good example of this. The system captures the movements of people under a streetlamp, and plays them back with a delay. The visual of silhouettes is in service of the recognition of oneself and others, and the greatest joy I received from the project was not creating the visual language of it but was in watching people play under the lamp.
My favourite works from the NFT canon are not those that make pretty pictures with code; they are those that use the affordances of the blockchain to create propositions with pleasing tension; Stevie P’s Money Making Opportunity, or Rhea Myers Proof of Existence come to mind.
In a recent inteview in Outland, Myers stated that the point of her work is to raise the negative; claiming that a hash on the blockchain is proof of existence immediately raises objections.
“The objections are the point. That’s the point of the artwork—this doesn’t work. Let’s think about why not.“ Outland, 2024
Constant works in a similar way - wallet addresses are not equivalent to their owners complex and rich personalities, and blockchain transactions are not equivalent to real connection.
But in creating a work that shifts each time it changes changes hands echoes the fragility of our real rich relationships, and reminds us that behind each blockchain address is you and me.
Constant opens May 29 at 1pm EST on constant.jonathanchomko.com
Natural Static
NFT series, 2023, 260 tokens
NFT series, 2023, 260 tokens
Natural Static feeds videos of natural motion feeds into a pixel-based water simulation, creating a representation of physical motion that is both highly digital and deeply analog.
Click Generate on the embedded version below and see the range of the system, or use the full-frame generator.
Natural Static was released with JPG alongside an online exhibition curated by Brian Droitcour and was the subject of a solo exhibition at Public Works Administration in New York City in October 2023. View minted works here.
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Traits
The piece uses WebGL to turn each pixel on your screen into its own feedback system. Each pixel has a high probability of sampling its previous state, and a low probability of sampling the underlying video.
Information on the filming location, weather and time of day for video can be obtained by calling getVideoInfo(tokenId) on the contract. In the case a video file is lost, the artist authorizes the collector to re-create the video using the parameters in the video info file.
Click Generate on the embedded version below and see the range of the system, or use the full-frame generator.
Natural Static was released with JPG alongside an online exhibition curated by Brian Droitcour and was the subject of a solo exhibition at Public Works Administration in New York City in October 2023. View minted works here.
Traits
The piece uses WebGL to turn each pixel on your screen into its own feedback system. Each pixel has a high probability of sampling its previous state, and a low probability of sampling the underlying video.
- Feedback Type
- Increment - pixels are incremented until they reach max brightness , then roll over to min brightness.
- Decrement - pixels are decremented until they reach min brightness, then roll over to max brightness.
- RGBIncrement - the red, green and blue channels of each pixel are incremented at varying rates, and are individually rolled over to 0.
- RGBDecrement - the red, green and blue channels of each pixel are decremented at varying rates, and are individually rolled up to 1.
- Feedback Speed
- A value between 2 and 5 is used to select the speed from a list of pre-calculated frequencies, which are pulled from the videos using Fourier transform analysis. This mathematical function finds the dominant frequencies in a signal. Videos with gentle motion will have a lower set of frequency values than videos with strong currents.
- Colour Mode
- Colour Mode translates the pixels in the feedback system into the final output you see, performing various combinations or translations of the base RGB values in the feedback system.
- Video Speed
- Either half or full, and changes the rate at which the underlying video is played back at.
- Video Id
- The index of the video which your piece samples from.
Information on the filming location, weather and time of day for video can be obtained by calling getVideoInfo(tokenId) on the contract. In the case a video file is lost, the artist authorizes the collector to re-create the video using the parameters in the video info file.
Sept 19 2022
Colour Time Verse
I’ve been developing two new Colour Time works for an upcoming show with Verse in London.
Colour Time Sync is a 20-minute-long colour animation which is synchronized across all representations of the work, allowing viewers in the gallery and online to experience the colour shifts at the same time.
Colour Time Generative is uses the same colour sequence as Colour Time Sync. Instead of animating through time, Generative draws this colour sequence into a gradient. As pieces are minted, the gradient is streched. Each buyer owns a section of this ever-expanding continuum. The appearance of a buyers section continually shifts as the gradient expands until the sale closes.
Below are some outputs from the generative system, which will on display in the gallery as prints. The numbers in the titles indicate the token ID and hypothetical collection size.
![Colour Time Generative 5 of 116]()
![Colour Time Generative 14 of 45]()
![Colour Time Generative 22 of 110]()
![Colour Time Generative 48 of 100]()
In a standard generative release, the decisive moment occurs during minting, random values collected and hashed into a random seed which determines the output.
In Colour Time Generative the seed of randomness is the market as a collective force, turning not just the minter but the market as a whole into co-creators of the work.
https://verse.works/exhibitions/colour-time
I’ve been developing two new Colour Time works for an upcoming show with Verse in London.
Colour Time Sync is a 20-minute-long colour animation which is synchronized across all representations of the work, allowing viewers in the gallery and online to experience the colour shifts at the same time.
Colour Time Generative is uses the same colour sequence as Colour Time Sync. Instead of animating through time, Generative draws this colour sequence into a gradient. As pieces are minted, the gradient is streched. Each buyer owns a section of this ever-expanding continuum. The appearance of a buyers section continually shifts as the gradient expands until the sale closes.
Below are some outputs from the generative system, which will on display in the gallery as prints. The numbers in the titles indicate the token ID and hypothetical collection size.
In a standard generative release, the decisive moment occurs during minting, random values collected and hashed into a random seed which determines the output.
In Colour Time Generative the seed of randomness is the market as a collective force, turning not just the minter but the market as a whole into co-creators of the work.
https://verse.works/exhibitions/colour-time
Apr 5 2022
Colour Time Development
Colour Time is a series of twelve on-chain animated SVGs created during a motorcycle trip from Montreal to Los Angeles in November of 2022.
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The origins of this series lie in earlier explorations on colour, notably Colour Calendar and colour-time.com. Colour Calendar explores the effect of relative contrast on colour perception and our emotional relationship to colour.
colour-time.com explores complementary colour after-images, presenting a slowly shifting pane of colour. Upon viewing, the eye becomes saturated and begins to generate a complementary colour after-image, which is then met or challenged by the on-screen colour.
These on-chain NFTs are the third iteration of this exploration, and combine the effects of colour relativity and complementary colour afterimages. Named for the location in which they were created, they attempt to express the impossibility of capturing and relaying a day's driving, expressing instead a slice of colour and rhythm.
Each work consists of two planes of colour, which shift between two points of colour. Each plane shifts at a different speed, ie 20-second loop for the background, 13-second loop for the foreground, building visual complexity as loops phase in and out of sync.
http://colourtime.jonathanchomko.com/
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Sale opens Thursday April 14 at 10 am PST, 1 pm EST, 5 pm GMT. Tokens are priced at 1 ETH.
Colour Time is a series of twelve on-chain animated SVGs created during a motorcycle trip from Montreal to Los Angeles in November of 2022.
The origins of this series lie in earlier explorations on colour, notably Colour Calendar and colour-time.com. Colour Calendar explores the effect of relative contrast on colour perception and our emotional relationship to colour.
colour-time.com explores complementary colour after-images, presenting a slowly shifting pane of colour. Upon viewing, the eye becomes saturated and begins to generate a complementary colour after-image, which is then met or challenged by the on-screen colour.
These on-chain NFTs are the third iteration of this exploration, and combine the effects of colour relativity and complementary colour afterimages. Named for the location in which they were created, they attempt to express the impossibility of capturing and relaying a day's driving, expressing instead a slice of colour and rhythm.
Each work consists of two planes of colour, which shift between two points of colour. Each plane shifts at a different speed, ie 20-second loop for the background, 13-second loop for the foreground, building visual complexity as loops phase in and out of sync.
http://colourtime.jonathanchomko.com/
Sale opens Thursday April 14 at 10 am PST, 1 pm EST, 5 pm GMT. Tokens are priced at 1 ETH.
Token, Hash
To buy an NFT is to pay to put your wallet address beside a number in a distributed database. This database becomes the point from which all the social and emotional dynamics of ownership emerge, yet the link between this distributed database and its visual representation can be quite tenuous.
CryptoPunks attempt to solidify this link between ID and image by embedding an encoded version of all the punks in their contract. This image circulates freely online, but the authenticity of any image can be verified by entering the image data into a cryptographic hash function and comparing the output to the hash encoded in the contract.
![To find your CryptoPunk using its token ID, count the punks from left to right, top to bottom until you reach your token ID.]()
Artists such as Deafbeef have taken further steps to strengthen the link between token ID and artwork by encoding the parameters for each audio-visual artwork on-chain, and embedding the scripts used to generate the work on each transaction. This provides the collector with all the code necessary to recreate the artwork, should the original render be lost or damaged.
Projects such as Loot are considered fully ‘on-chain,’ storing all data on the blockchain and generating the visual components of the artwork on the blockchain. This removes the need for a collector to run parameters through scripts, but introduces new challenges.
Randomness is key to generative work, but typical random functions return different values each time they are called. If these functions were used in on-chain generative projects, the image for a given token ID would change each time it was viewed.
To solve this issue, artists working on-chain generate their random values deterministically. Deterministic number generation relies on the same cryptographic hash function which CrytoPunks used to encode their image of all punks; provided with a consistent input, the function returns a consistent output. Important, though is that any small change in the input will result in a wildly and randomly different output.
In the case of Loot, randomness is obtained by giving a hash function some text in combination with the token ID. The hash function will return the same value each time WEAPON56 is input but will give a non-predictably different value if WEAPON57 is entered.
The resulting number output from the hash function is very long, and to become useful as a selector for a list of weapons, the hash is divided by the number of items in a list, and the remainder is used to choose the weapon assigned to token 56 or 57.
Autoglyphs, Loot, Artblocks et al. each input different values to their deterministic generation functions, but the central concept remains the same; use a stable input to return a stable random value.
Images for on-chain NFT projects are drawn anew each time they are requested, all randomness growing from the token ID and its hashed value.
In Token Hash these two values which originate the complex structure of the generative on-chain NFT are laid bare. The hash is rounded to the size of the collection, allowing the token ID and it’s rounded hash to express the core characteristics of the generative NFT; rarity, symmetry and beauty.
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Token Hash public sale opens Thursday Oct 7 at 10 am EST.
1000 tokens will be available for sequential minting, at 0.02 ETH each.
http://tokenhash.jonathanchomko.com/
https://opensea.io/collection/token-hash
To buy an NFT is to pay to put your wallet address beside a number in a distributed database. This database becomes the point from which all the social and emotional dynamics of ownership emerge, yet the link between this distributed database and its visual representation can be quite tenuous.
CryptoPunks attempt to solidify this link between ID and image by embedding an encoded version of all the punks in their contract. This image circulates freely online, but the authenticity of any image can be verified by entering the image data into a cryptographic hash function and comparing the output to the hash encoded in the contract.
Artists such as Deafbeef have taken further steps to strengthen the link between token ID and artwork by encoding the parameters for each audio-visual artwork on-chain, and embedding the scripts used to generate the work on each transaction. This provides the collector with all the code necessary to recreate the artwork, should the original render be lost or damaged.
Projects such as Loot are considered fully ‘on-chain,’ storing all data on the blockchain and generating the visual components of the artwork on the blockchain. This removes the need for a collector to run parameters through scripts, but introduces new challenges.
Randomness is key to generative work, but typical random functions return different values each time they are called. If these functions were used in on-chain generative projects, the image for a given token ID would change each time it was viewed.
To solve this issue, artists working on-chain generate their random values deterministically. Deterministic number generation relies on the same cryptographic hash function which CrytoPunks used to encode their image of all punks; provided with a consistent input, the function returns a consistent output. Important, though is that any small change in the input will result in a wildly and randomly different output.
In the case of Loot, randomness is obtained by giving a hash function some text in combination with the token ID. The hash function will return the same value each time WEAPON56 is input but will give a non-predictably different value if WEAPON57 is entered.
The resulting number output from the hash function is very long, and to become useful as a selector for a list of weapons, the hash is divided by the number of items in a list, and the remainder is used to choose the weapon assigned to token 56 or 57.
Autoglyphs, Loot, Artblocks et al. each input different values to their deterministic generation functions, but the central concept remains the same; use a stable input to return a stable random value.
Images for on-chain NFT projects are drawn anew each time they are requested, all randomness growing from the token ID and its hashed value.
In Token Hash these two values which originate the complex structure of the generative on-chain NFT are laid bare. The hash is rounded to the size of the collection, allowing the token ID and it’s rounded hash to express the core characteristics of the generative NFT; rarity, symmetry and beauty.
Token Hash public sale opens Thursday Oct 7 at 10 am EST.
1000 tokens will be available for sequential minting, at 0.02 ETH each.
http://tokenhash.jonathanchomko.com/
https://opensea.io/collection/token-hash