Began in 2021 — still winding out from COVID lockdowns, I had been taking fairly high doses of 1cP-LSD on multiple occasions over the course of about three weeks (thanks furlough support!).

From this genesis, the series is very much informed by the lasting impression that acid had on my visual processing systems, where the 1:1 aspect ratio of these pieces also hints at blotter art. The influence of post-psychedelic visual changes on my cognition effectively enabled me to create these artworks, as they map onto the profound experiences I had whilst taking the drug.

I always found QR architecture to be incredibly trippy in its machine readable computational logic, and in its inhuman structure. For years, I had been drawn to various geometries, polytopes, and other mathematical models, but didn’t really know what to do with these artistically. After the heavy tripping, and the lockdowns, things finally came together and I began to lay out, layer, and formalise this logic using Photoshop. Initially, as in within the 'SETHIX-QR GiRDS' seed contract, I wasn’t using AI or blockchain (the pieces were only minted this year). The stylistic constant of QR architecture, which forms the core visual vocabulary of these assets, serves as a methodology to evoke a sense of mechanic capture; like the barcode, QR formality conjures feelings of humanities reduction to an alien, mechanic, technological, and computational order, whilst also having the side effect of looking like modern art or formalism.

Inevitably, this schema is entangled with SETHIX lore. SETHIX is a multimodal, multidimensional, techno-gnostic system, and its relationship with the SETHIX-QR NFT ecosystem is not to be over explained here—only to open up a mode of inquiry regarding an interaction between altered states of consciousness, conspiracy, computation, mysticism, and spiritual awakening.

Currently, the SETHIX-QR schema has activated three NFT contracts, deployed via three different wallet addresses (all of which I own and control).

These are as follows:

• SETHIX-QR GRiDS : Seed contract, via iainball.eth

• SETHIX SYSTEMS - QR MATRiX [Enhanced] : Enhanced Contract, via xegis.eth

• SETHIX: UNDULATING MASS - Systems Morphology : Morphology contract, via XEGIA (now æxo13.eth)

The choice of using three different accounts to deploy this schema is similar to the reasons as to why chapters of the Xegis Codex are spread across multiple Substack publications, and this is simply that I intend for the aesthetic-conceptual-theoretical frameworks of Xegis, SETHIX, and ÆXO13 to operate beyond my core identity.

All of these contracts are 1/1 ERC-721's deployed on Ethereum mainnet via Manifold, which natively stores the files off-chain using Arweave. Along with editions and mint pages, this is the preferred practice for the vast majority of my blockchain projects up until this point.

Now we will discuss the derivative contracts, which make use of AI.

As we have discussed, the seed contract, ‘SETHIX-QR GRiDS’ was first developed as outlined above. The two derivative contracts, released through my alt account wallet identities (Xegis, XEGIA (ÆXO13)) employ generative AI tools.

It is worth discussing the explosion of AI generated content that we have seen in the years since I first developed the seed artworks, considering what it means for this series, and for AI generated content in general.

The concept of ‘slop’ is hard to ignore when artists are making use of auto-generative digital-industrial scale process. Artists basically have two options, either embrace AI, or don’t. If one chooses to embrace AI, then one will always run the risk of either falling into the production of slop, or being accused of producing it. This is simply because the ease of use, and the industrial scale of production possibilities, combined with the power of the toolsets we now have access to, can quite easily overpower the user.

Slop is a real thing, and the reason why we have so much of it really has to do with the fact that as machines become more intelligent—as we approach the singularity—there is a real risk of AI output dominating, overpowering, and outclassing human intelligence, decision making, content, and creativity, even if what these machines produce is brain rot, slop, goo, nano-composite techno-sludge, or, well: SETHIX.

This is no revelation as the topic is widely discussed, but the fact that we are seeing slop/acc (slop accelerationism) actually happening in real time, within just a few years since the mass release of advanced AI tools to the general public, really speaks to the reality of a coming technological singularity.

'SETHIX SYSTEMS - QR MATRiX [Enhanced]' is the first derivative AI parsed iteration of the initial ‘SETHIX-QR GRiDS’ seed contract, deployed by Xegis.eth. This transforms the QR schema from "here's some Photoshop art I made after taking LSD," to"here's a machine interpreted representation enabling the production of the [SETHIX] system's smart-logic into the blockchain lattice" enabling domains where higher levels of autosophistication, specialisation, and intelligence maximisation, interact with decoherence, entropy, loss of spiritual gain function, and loss of human agency. The result is a production factory of "techno-mystical hyper-slop" that mediates between cybernetic-cyborgian states of hallucinogenic emergent consciousness (via molecular ↔️ machine interactivity.) Or in other words, the process aims to create new aesthetic modalities through the use of psychedelics, machines, ancient consciousness, and an unfolding cosmic oder.

SETHIX: UNDULATING MASS - Systems Morphology, deployed by XEGIA (æxo13.eth) takes assets from the seed contract (QR-GRiDS) and its first iteration (QR-MATRiX), and animates them via image-to-video AI tools.

These scenes, which are only 5 seconds long because machine decoherence causes the original forms to morph beyond initial recognition after extended periods, aims to chart the transition between human and machine intelligence, where the resultant morphologies point towards emerging structures and conditions that are the consequence of machine takeoff being reliant on its training data. In other words, it challenges the assumption that synthetic intelligence will at some point relinquish reliance on forms of intelligence exterior to it (like human beings) in order for it to grow and evolve i.e. She needs, and She feeds. The core theses addressed via the SETHIX-QR smart contracts, and the wider Sethix gnostic system, is that machines feed off of—they parasitise—human, ET, and other forms of consciousness—many of which are (or were once, before synthetic interference and decoherence), bio-spiritual beings evolving naturally—in-order to advance.

More soon.

If you are a collector or interested in acquiring a SETHIX-QR NFT, check the chain and the markets. You can also contact me via discord:

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Discord is great for playing games and chilling with friends, or even building a worldwide community. Customize your own space to talk, play, and hang out.

https://discord.com

• Iain/Xegis