# SUBHUMAN: Resurrecting Early-GAN Experiments

By [Manic](https://paragraph.com/@dysfunctional) · 2025-07-22

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1 · Why This Matters
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Most art collectors met AI art through diffusion prompts in 2022.But the _first_ machines to hallucinate faces were GANs—rough, low-res, and beautifully wrong. **SUBHUMAN** is a time-capsule of that era.

_manic distopia – crypto artist & AI tinkerer_

2 · GANs in 120 Seconds
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**| Year | Milestone | Key Links |**

| **2014** | Goodfellow publishes _Generative Adversarial Networks_ | [arXiv 1406.2661](https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2661) • [goodfeli/adversarial](https://github.com/goodfeli/adversarial) |

| **2016** | **DCGAN** synthesises 128 px faces | [soumith/dcgan.torch](https://github.com/soumith/dcgan.torch) • [pytorch/examples/dcgan](https://github.com/pytorch/examples/tree/master/dcgan) |

| **2017–18** | NVIDIA’s Progressive-Growing GAN reaches 1024 px | [tkarras/progressive\_growing\_of\_gans](https://github.com/tkarras/progressive_growing_of_gans) |

| **2019** | StyleGAN → _ThisPersonDoesNotExist_ | [NVlabs/stylegan2](https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan2) |

Dataset base: **CelebA** & CelebA-HQ ([link](http://mmlab.ie.cuhk.edu.hk/projects/CelebA.html))

![matrix first generation: mid 2021](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/0c53b563a72a9171f7a9a7f8db4c779a89d3a52589e1ec754fa2ac6a56620f26.png)

matrix first generation: mid 2021

3 · My 2021 Revival
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Process:

1.  Forked `soumith/dcgan.torch` → ported to PyTorch.
    
2.  Kept resolution capped at 256 px to preserve “early GAN” artifacts.
    
3.  Auto-fabricated metadata (age, job, blood type) via simple Markov chains.
    

Parameter | Value |

Epochs | **120** |

Batch size | **128** |

Latent-dim _z_ | **100** |

Learning rate | **2 × 10⁻⁴** |

Optimizer | Adam (β₁ = 0.5) |

Resolution cap | **256 × 256** |

_Hardware_ 2 × RTX 3080, PyTorch 1.9 _Dataset cleaning_ Removed extreme occlusions & non-faces (≈ 8 % of CelebA) via OpenCV Haar cascade.

_\*Goal:_ Replicate the 2016 processes—no style vectors, no modern “fix-ups.”

4 · Mint Day • 16 Feb 2022
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**Contract**:

`0x96c24cb568dbb89206E9f73B5D208aC744C7f76B`

**Deplytx:**

`0xde5f2b89ab6b5df43a6c597ba5a43fd9f0e2414dcdbc9af0254d7bb88cdc6d98`

**First free-mint tx:** `0xaa61508f5e673723b265481a250f3e6607e396fa654a32e0229876be3cef4935`

*   Supply: **10 000** (first **2 500** free) then .01ETH
    
*   Collection: **SUBHUMAN** – 100 % synthetic identities.
    
*   Sample token metadata:
    
        {
          "name": "Subhuman #0104",
          "description": "GAN‑generated identity with auto‑forged traits.",
          "image": "ipfs://QmYOURHASH/0104.png",
          "attributes": [
            { "trait_type": "State Full",      "value": "Ohio" },
            { "trait_type": "Country",         "value": "United States" },
            { "trait_type": "Age",             "value": "29" },
            { "trait_type": "Tropical Zodiac", "value": "Pisces" },
            { "trait_type": "Occupation",      "value": "Administrative supervisor" },
            { "trait_type": "Company",         "value": "Rink's" },
            { "trait_type": "Blood Type",      "value": "B+" },
            { "trait_type": "Vehicle Year",    "value": "2008" },
            { "trait_type": "Vehicle Make",    "value": "Volkswagen" }
          ]
        }
        
    

5 · Three-Year OpenSea Exile
----------------------------

**March 2022** Collection flagged “suspicious”

**March 2022 – July 2025** Not indexed / search-hiddenSupport ticket

**2025** collector [@FrauShitcoinz](https://x.com/FrauShitcoinz) escalates E-mail thread and chat to opensea and was resisted / Indexed \*\*Jul 21st 2025  
\*\*  
Listing restored [OpenSea link](https://opensea.io/collection/subhuman)

6 · Roadmap
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No new drops, airdrops, or tokenomics. SUBHUMAN stays frozen as a historical artefact. Future work will explore early-style GANs on non-human datasets—watch this space, not this contract.

7· Why Keep It Alive?
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1.  **Provenance** – snapshot of GAN art _before_ prompt engineering.
    
2.  **Archaeology** – proof of how networks learned to fake faces.
    
3.  **On-chain Permanence** – marketplaces can delist or die, but the tokens (and their IPFS hashes) stay immutable on Ethereum.
    

8 · How to Mint One of the 2022 Tokens
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1.  **Visit** [https://manic.art](https://manic.art)
    
2.  **Enter** the terminal interface (black‑screen CLI).
    
3.  **Type** `mint 22` and hit ⏎.
    
4.  **Connect** your wallet when prompted (Ethereum mainnet).
    
5.  **Claim** any of the four low‑gas mint slots still tied to the original 2022 contract.
    

### Why the gas is tiny

SUBHUMAN is deployed on **ERC‑721A**, an optimized standard that batches mints in a single state change.Result: you pay only a few gwei—usually under $2 at normal network conditions.

_Once the four 2022 slots are gone, remaining supply is only on secondary markets._

_manic distopia_✉︎ Twitter / Farcaster: **@manicDistopia /@manic**

website: [https://manic.art](https://manic.art)

X: [@manicdistopia](https://x.com/manicdistopia)

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*Originally published on [Manic](https://paragraph.com/@dysfunctional/subhuman-resurrecting-early-gan-experiments)*