In a movie theater, it doesn’t matter how real the images look, some part of the brain knows they’re fabricated. “Not true” here simply means the situations on screen didn’t unfold in the world as depicted. And often, films hit hardest not when the image is most realistic but when the story and direction capture something essentially human.

Furthermore, most of us aren't going to watch a movie to see real events but for entertainment or to be amazed by the technical aspects of the creation (for the most technical ones). It'sike a contract made, we agree to "trust" the director in order to bring us into his world for our reasons but that contract fades away once going out of the theatre.

We seem to carry a learned mental switch that separates fiction from non‑fiction, a way to treat a film as crafted illusion and a documentary as evidence. That framing lets the brain read images as representation rather than reality.

The internet began as a place saturated with human‑made photos and videos of real life. That signal has been eroding with the professionalization of creators and is poised to break further with the rise of generated images and video. Most of us “know” that not everything online is true, yet in practice our brains still grant much of what we see a presumption of truth. It’s a habit we may need to unlearn and make it fast.

I recently came across a research claiming that machine‑generated articles are overtaking human‑written ones. There’s little reason to think images and video won’t follow. As feeds fill with synthetic media, especially for younger audiences, we may learn a new default: the internet as a theater for AI, where most things are staged and therefore not inherently true. At that point, opening an app might trigger the same mental dissociation we reserve for movies, applied to nearly everything on our screens.

The open question is whether trusted zones will emerge online, spaces where images and video are verified as authentic or whether trust will shift to different networks, or even offline. Or perhaps, as with television, the lines will blur but within clearer, organized systems of labeling and accountability.

eyesobscura.

PS: Of course the image is generated, Fortnite's galaxy skin came long after Heat was released. Original image comes from the movie.

Eugène Boudin spent years making pastel studies of clouds in remarkable volume, meticulously recording contextual details such as weather, wind, and light. This discipline allowed him to develop a unique ability to render the power and contrast of light on clouds, an understanding later distilled into Monet’s work and it left behind a vast corpus of drawings that document his acquisition of skill.

This brings me to the point: similarly to Boudin, a photographer who applies the same discipline to street scenes would produce a large body of images that show the evolution of their practice. From this perspective, the artistic process in photography can be documented and demonstrated, underscoring its status as an art.

However, a key difference appears when we focus on material traces. Drawings and paintings carry their making in a physical way. An erased line dents the paper and influences subsequent marks. In painting, layers of pigment build the desired effects. These traces are visible to a discerning eye and serve as a kind of proof of the work’s creation process. In live arts, the process is even more accessible, because the work is as much the result of preparation as of the moment of performance.

A single photograph generally carries few, if any, visible traces of its own making. A skilled street photographer may capture an everyday scene perfectly, thanks to experience and countless hours spent searching for that light, moment, and vantage. Yet the resulting image could look identical to one a novice snaps by chance on a smartphone. Without the context of long-term practice, it can be impossible to determine which image is intentional and, consequently, a potential work of art.

This ambiguity introduces an underlying doubt when we encounter a singular photograph, and it helps explain why photography is such a contested art form. That said, it also opens a field of inquiry: how might photographers embed or otherwise document traces of a photograph’s making within the work itself?

This post isn't coined but if you'd like to support you can either share, subscribe, collect cover on rodeo or get a few of my creator coin on zora.

eyesobscura.

This realization highlights a crucial, yet often overlooked, aspect of artistic creation: the immense investment of time dedicated to practice, experimentation, and contemplation. This intense activity is condensed into a final artwork that can be experienced in moments, a few seconds for a painting, sculpture, or photograph, a few hours for a film or a book. At times, this condensation of effort is so dense that a novice observer may not fully grasp its significance. In such cases, the insights of critics and guides become essential to contextualize the artwork, explaining the artist's process and the work's historical importance.

The analogy to the "proof of work" concept in cryptocurrency could end here, but further reflection reveals deeper parallels. A primary question arises: if every artwork is the culmination of countless hours of refinement, why do the prices of an artist's works vary, and why are there significant price differences between the works of similar artists? The conclusion I've drawn is that in this comparison, the "mined block" is not each individual artwork. Instead, it is the select few pieces that are deemed pivotal to the advancement of their art form, making them virtually priceless.

Why is this the case? Not every artwork or artist manages to perfectly encapsulate the resonance of its context or discipline. This is where a competition, analogous to proof of work, unfolds. Each artist, in their own way, strives to capture the essence of their domain. These "artwork blocks" represent a condensed understanding of their time, a mastery of technique or method, and a dialogue with the art that came before.

This final point of comparison addresses the concept of artistic lineage. It is often said that every creation is inspired by another and that nothing is truly "created" in a vacuum. This is where the "chaining" in our analogy becomes apparent. An "artwork block" can only be "mined" if the artist has meaningfully incorporated a vast array of references that are consistent with their discipline, thereby influencing the work they create. Without this meaningful integration, the artwork would not be considered notable or important, it would not be an "artwork block."

Whether one appreciates art or not, understanding the value proposition of Bitcoin and its foundation in proof of work can offer a new lens through which to comprehend the immense value attributed to certain artworks. In a way, the Bitcoin protocol is more straightforward because the outcome of the "work" is immediately and objectively verified. The artistic process, on the other hand, generates a vast number of creations that are art but not "artwork blocks." Furthermore, identifying an "artwork block" is an incredibly difficult and subjective process over once it's done, the value remains, for centuries.

Given how poorly this new creative material has been utilized, few have realized the significance of what's approaching. For music recorded in the US, the transition to public domain occurs after 100 years, meaning songs from the 1920s enter public domain annually. You might wonder: "Which 1920s songs are considered great or foundational?"

The answer is surprising: Almost none by today's artistic standards.

The Foundation Years

However, the 1920s were foundational for the modern music industry, which truly emerged in the 1930s due to widespread electricity, radio, and phonographs enabled by improved recording quality. This means 1920s recordings are actually listenable today, even more enjoyable if you appreciate that vintage crackling sound.

If you've started exploring this era's music, you're probably cursing me for introducing you to Foxtrot. This genre disappeared for good reason when modern music evolved, every song sounds identical, with strange instruments and awkward rhythms.

Why This Matters

Despite the questionable artistic merit, the 1920s launched the careers of musicians who would revolutionize music in subsequent decades. Louis Armstrong was playing with the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band, while Duke Ellington was already composing under his own name.

This new wave of musicians brought intense energy that was refined throughout the 1920s and 1930s, creating Jazz and subsequently influencing almost all music we know today.

The Sampling Revolution

Understanding this historical context becomes crucial when considering how sampling reshaped the music industry. Sampling transformed recorded sound into a playable instrument, enabling new genres and production methods while democratizing music creation and forcing new business models around licensing and rights.

Emerging from hip-hop and spreading through electronic and pop music, sampling made collage a core aesthetic, allowing producers to weave nostalgia, cultural references, and audio micro-fragments into entirely new works. Affordable software and vast sample libraries lowered barriers for bedroom creators, while crate-digging and archival reissues created a marketplace for rediscovery.

Simultaneously, high-profile lawsuits and clearance requirements professionalized the practice, spawning specialized legal workflows, sample-clearing services, and new revenue streams for legacy catalogs.

The Coming Opportunity

This incredible wave of public domain transitions will lower entry barriers to the music industry, allowing anyone to sample classics and innovate freely. The next few years will bring experimental rhythms from the 1920s and 1930s, but soon rock classics and iconic movies will enter the game.

The opportunity extends beyond music—entire cultural catalogs will become creative raw material. This democratization could spark innovation comparable to how affordable recording technology revolutionized music creation.

Let's embrace this sampling revolution and discover the gems hidden in our cultural archives.

Important note: This opportunity exists only if copyright laws aren't extended beyond the current 100-year term.

Tinkering lets you build with the lowest acceptable mastery of the underlying discipline. In a world where every idea has supposedly already been theorized, it gives anyone who isn't the best in a domain the chance to create unique things across an infinite number of fields.

Recently, I've realized that among all the creative activities I've pursued, most were more or less forms of tinkering. I tinkered with music through sampling for over 10 years and spent countless hours tinkering with code to build websites and applications in recent years.

During the last four years, I've worked to improve my photography practice, aiming to capture the beautiful compositions that catch my eye (my bio explains this clearly, I hope). Thinking about it, photography is the most tinkering art, because most photographers capture the world we all live in, and their talent lies in how they arrange the light, colors, and shapes to create beautiful images. Few of them invent the light, colors, or shapes they capture. This gives photography a unique place in the arts, as theoretically anyone could take the same picture as a great photographer, but 99.99% won't.

I've spent a lot of time pondering why and how photography qualifies as art, what makes a photograph a piece of art, and whether my own photos are art or just content. I still don't know.

Unsatisfied with this question, I started considering how to tinker with photography as a way to bridge that gap. Surprisingly, I realized that no major photographer has used their photographs to create mosaics. Thanks to AI (which makes software tinkering so easy), I've built a program to do just that. Even though my goal is to eventually create them physically, this project lets me tinker while dreaming that I'm creating art. And I like it.

eyesobscura

This post isn't coined and not mintable, if you want to support you can get a few of my creator coin on http://eyesobscura.vercel.app or on zora or participate in Real[ter]ity auction, starting at 0.0003eth or get a few of my photographs on https://rodeo.club.

First mood drops is Exaltation: a very strong feeling of happiness

To mint first capture and participate to this adventure:

Collect NFT

What are the Mood drops ?

Mood are complex concepts and in order to retrieve them as precisely as possible it was necessary to go further than photography (my common focus) by adding two other dimensions.

1. Photography will remain a major part of the projet with the goal to set a global ambiance

2. AI, through Gen2 from allows me to add motion to this ambiance in order to precise the mood described

3. Music, through sampling allows me to add depth to the mood drop. I choose to sample music that have recently fallen into the public domain meaning they were realized in 1923.

This combination of three dimensions is producing an entire mini-universe dedicated to the mood by leveraging authenticity of last century music and the power of AI.

How will collection work ?

The collection will be minted on base network on an irregular basis, depending on inspiration and raw materials. The collection will be splitted in two parts:

• The mood drops captures: "Free" mint ERC-1155 image on zora.co and announcing the coming mood drop 3 days later. No maximum mint will be set.

• The mood drops collection: unique ERC-721 video auctioned on manifold with a starting price at 0.02eth. First offer will launch a 3 day auction.

The goal of this split is to allow the last important part of this new project: supporter revenue sharing.

Supporters revenue sharing framework

As I have a strong belief that onchain creators communities should be rewarded beyond pure speculative instrument, the two mood drops collections will be aligned to this idea.

Revenues will be shared by using mutable and immutable splits from splits.org and will depend on collection parts:

• The mood drops captures: 30% of all rewards and royalties will be redirected to supporters of my previous projects (other collections owners, subscriber here, previous mood drops captures/collection owners). This will be done through a mutable split (supporters split) updated manually before every capture release.

• The mood drops collection: 20% of all primary sales and royalties will be redirected to owners of the corresponding capture through an immutable split (capture owners split) created before ERC-721 mint and 10% sent to the supporter split.

Supporter split will be updated using the following dune dashboard: https://dune.com/eyeviewnft/eyeviewnftsupporters

To create or update splits, the wallet list will be deduplicated, so each wallet can only appear once in supporters split and in capture owner split with the same share as any other wallet in the split.

If you want to read more on motivation and philosophy of onchain creator revenue sharing toward communities please read the following article: https://paragraph.xyz/@eyeviewnft/community-rewards-proposal

On a creator perspective, NFT standards brought the opportunity to earn royalties when our work is used as a speculative asset and that was a giant footstep driving us to join the onchain adventure. From my point of view, everything should have royalties, from wine to sculptures, because every creator should get a direct share of every benefit made with their creation. Although royalties have been around, especially in the music industry, blockchain technology has made it possible to automate the process.

The same applies to ownership. NFTs and blockchain technology make ownership trustworthy and immutable, enabling communities to own their contributions to ecosystems and sometimes even profit from them. However, the current state of the NFT market leaves much to be desired. Either creations must be treated as assets, requiring community members to take speculative risks to own them, or they hold little value due to widespread distribution, lack of uniqueness, or over-specialization.

Considering the influence of communities in the success of a creator and the time and effort invested without proportionate rewards, it appears that onchain creators have missed an opportunity to leverage blockchain capabilities to better reward their communities for the support.

The bread crumbs to a better taste

Last bear market has been fruitful in terms of innovations regarding the composability of financial flux, especially for NFT flux. Zora and Mirror teams innovated much in this direction allowing a better dispatch of income between, platform, creator(s) and ... the first collector.

Why prioritize the first collector? One might speculate that the concept originated from someone who spent years mastering the art of being first to comment on YouTube videos and decided it was time to monetize this skill. On a more serious note, the intention appears to have been to reward communities. However, determining how many individuals should be rewarded beyond the first collector remains a challenge, and this approach still represents a significant step forward.

Rewarding only the first collector seems a bit arbitrary, considering the global nature of onchain communities. This method often enables farmers and bots to claim a substantial portion of these rewards. Moreover, it's important to recognize that communities are composed of many individuals, not just one. Therefore, a more comprehensive and inclusive reward system should be considered.

Let's eat together !

Most of those composability innovations on income flux were brought by splits.org offering infinite and open composability. When I discovered their work, I realized what was missing: sharing direct income of creations with the community.

For an NFT project, it would mean sharing parts of the primary sale amount or/and part of the royalties amount with the community in exchange to time, actions or nul/minimum financial trade.

The best is that it doesn't only applies to art but to anything working with wallets payment (almost anything onchain). That might be worthy addition to airdrop and DAO by adding another blockchain enabled tool to empower community.

Let's test it

I've decided to use this framework for my new collection that will be announced on 12 March 2024 by sharing 30% of rewards, primary sales and royalties linked to it to supporters (subscribers here, owner of previous collections, owners of previous mood drops or mood drops captures etc.).

This collection will have two parts for each piece:

• An ERC-1155 preview distributed through Zora adressing rewards and royalties to a mutable split with 30% to supporters

• A unique ERC-721 minted and auctioned on Manifold addressing primary sales revenue and royalties to a immutable split with 20% to corresponding ERC-1155 owners and 10% to supporters split

For now i'll have to calculate shares manually but i deeply hope their will be a way to automate it soon, especially a decentralized one.

Thoughts

State isn't perfect for now, but splits.org with immutable, mutable and liquid splits allows much use cases, plus with a bit of manual tasks great things can be achieved.

Even with minimal financial trade, this look quite close to securities so be careful if you plan to make millions/billions with your project.

cover image: EVN043Travel12 from main collection https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0xd7159f5a5c1ce995553abfdd1fc97d64346da757/42

The first thing I tried was pure image generation. My goal was to generate simple landscape photography. If you look at my work, you’ll notice a recurring theme - sunsets.

This preference for sunsets will play an important role in the conclusion. The tool I used for this was the Stable Diffusion variant.

Experimenting with Photo Editing

Next, I decided to experiment with photo editing using the Canva AI. This led to the creation of some impossible, possible, and rare photographs.

The lighthouse image, in particular, would have probably required better tools than I had at my disposal.

However, none of the images created here are beyond the reach of a skilled photo editor.

Trying Out Gen2 from Runway ML

Like many others these days, I decided to try out the awesome Gen2 from Runway ML. I used the text prompt option.

This experimentation led me to create a short film entirely generated with Gen2 from Runway ML.

My take on AI for Photographers

If we consider that photography is the act of capturing the unexpected images the world presents to our eyes, here’s my current take on AI for photographers:

• As my sunsets highlighted, to create interesting images, we have to step away from all the images we’ve seen before, otherwise result won't be really interesting

• AI often allows only a quicker and lower-quality generation of what a good digital artist, drawer, painter, or photo editor can do.

• Creating “new” images that are not redundant and with photorealistic quality requires a lot of prompt engineering and imagination

Given all that, for me, the coming challenge with image generation as an unprofessional photographer will be the following: Emulate the surprise that compels me to take a photograph while maintaining high photorealism. Below are some examples of this surprise:

https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0xd7159f5a5c1ce995553abfdd1fc97d64346da757/15

https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0xd7159f5a5c1ce995553abfdd1fc97d64346da757/128

I have recently found a use to image generation mathing all of these requierements, and i've decided to create a "Free" collection of it on Zora.

It's called "Reloaded dreams" and it's a collection (only one for now) of image generated from pictures i had in my dreams.

If you like it you can mint it here:

Collect NFT

Stay tuned for more updates on my journey with AI and photography, something might come really soon!

1. Christopher Nolan's Photography:Christopher Nolan's previous works have often showcased his inclination towards the chiaraobscuro effect. In "Tenet," this trend continues, with the film's costumes, photography, and actors all contributing to the play between light and shadow.

2. Conceptual Orientation: One criticism often directed towards Nolan's recent films is their heavy focus on visual concepts, sometimes at the expense of character development and storytelling. "Tenet" aligns with this trend, emphasizing its conceptual orientation, which further enhances the chiaraobscuro effect.

3. Unexplained Elements:Despite careful observation, there are always parts of the film that remain unexplained, intentionally left in the dark . This adds to the mysterious and enigmatic nature of the story, keeping the audience intrigued and engaged throughout.

4. Representation of Knowledge:Throughout the film, the protagonist continuously learns new things, pushing the boundaries of understanding, but many aspects still remain in the shadows . This mirrors the experience of discovering something new or exploring a new universe, as depicted in films.

Conclusion:"Tenet" serves as a perfect example of a chiaraobscuro film, with its consistent use of shadow and light, conceptual orientation, unexplained elements, and representation of knowledge. Christopher Nolan's mastery in creating a visually captivating and intellectually stimulating experience is evident in this film.

What do you think of this point of view in order to analyse Tenet ?