The last few years have been transformative for me, on different levels.
Artistically, it was my move to making art with code. Thanks mostly to the prodding of @alejandra.her, my wonderful fiancee, I got into p5.js last year in early February. Inspired by the incredible work of the great Matt Kane, I started ℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက.
In the beginning, all I knew is that I wanted an eye gazing at the viewer, looking around, at them and at the world around them. After some weeks, as you'll read below, it all started evolving into a much more profound work than I had at first anticipated.
An example iteration of ℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက
℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက: |
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| ℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက is about identity; both individual identity as well as our collective identity as a species. Since the very beginning, human beings have been fascinated by the world around them. We have tried to understand it, our place in it, and ourselves. In this process, faced with chaotic complexity and forces we couldn't comprehend, we gave significance to otherwise meaningless events, and created a meaningful world for ourselves within the greater unfathomable universe. Things do not have names, nor exist in inherent categories. Humans are responsible for these... We are the inventors of meaning. With this in mind, I present my own creation: ℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက |
I'm a single human, attempting to be humanity itself in my own analogy, with my creation as a metaphor for all we have created.
℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက is an ever-evolving artwork that focuses on the experience of existing as a human being; our grappling with the apparent chaos we find ourselves in and our constant attempts at finding order and meaning in this chaos.
And just like our lives, there are random, meaningless elements in it, there are deliberate, purposeful elements in it, and there are elements that depend on your interpretation as to whether they have any meaning or not. ℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက asks you: Do things have inherent meaning, or are they empty of it until human beings consider them worthy of consideration? And it dares you to find meaning for your own life in it.
Thus, when you look at your ℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက, you will have questions about the meaning of its elements, just as we have questions about the meaning of everything we experience, including our own existence. And while all the answers to the latter might not ever be fully understood, the answers to the former can be found with the help of one of humanity's greatest modern inventions: the internet. Whether this then goes on to help you find meaning in your own life is up to you.
℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက's evolution is inspired by the lives of humans, as well as by the arbitrary, irregular clock of that which humans give importance to. Thus its deterministic design rules give the illusion of random evolution, as well as celebrate sporadic points in time determined beforehand, mimicking how human lives seem to progress chaotically except for certain moments in our lives that feel like "destiny".
These moments only seem this way, however, with hindsight - when we look back, see our own personal story, and try to make sense of it. In the same way, ℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက will change according to celebrated dates in the past from the date they were created, regardless of whether those days continue to be recognised or remembered in the future.
This pseudo-random evolution is also meant to be an analogy for compatibilism when it comes to free will. Compatibilism says that even though everything, past and future, is all predetermined, we can still act with free agency in what we perceive as the present moment. In the same way, all the randomness of the colours, characters and positionings of the characters of ℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက are hard-coded in. But when actually looking at the work in the present, all these elements seem to change randomly.
In the end, humans and their culture all still fall under the great umbrella that is nature/the natural world. As much as our ancestors tried to deny it, we are as much a part of nature as the lowliest slimes - we just follow different rhythms, and at its core, this is what ℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက is a celebration of: The wonderful fact of our existence as a result of simple, natural processes in the natural world, and our unique complexity that is so remarkable as to fool itself (ourselves) into thinking that we're something apart.
℈ℽ⍷-ᚤက Symbology:
All the GIFs you see on this page are only that: GIFs. If you'd like to see the live version, and/or play with the algorithm yourself, go to the project page on Prohibition, the platform where I published this work: prohibition.art/project/-1
There you will be able to see the 72 ℈ℽ⍷s that have already been minted, and you can mint your own for 0.028 ETH
Finally, I want to show you something cool. I minted several eyes myself, and gifted @alejandra.her one of the most special ones: A rare diamond-shaped pupil (4%) that is also blind (3.5%) =) So, look what she did a few months ago:
She painted the Eye as it was on August 26th 2023 - .. In the background, you can see the Eye as it is right now, and if you want to see it live as it was back then, change your computer's date to Aug 26th and refresh the page ;)
Ok, that's it for now. Thank you so much for reading all that <3 I hope is that I will find fellow coders as well as fellow philosophers through these posts.