This year was a challenging mix of uncertainty and turbulence. At no point did the world feel calm, and it was filled with noise. Sometimes it felt loud and obnoxious, sometimes disorientating and painful, but it was always present and inescapable. Within that, a quiet mind was elusive. I was always moving, always trying to maintain center. Tranquility was never easily found, and cultivating it required real effort. Success in achieving it was never guaranteed. I needed something that could give me structure, something to anchor to and to ground me.

While I worked on various projects throughout the year, one in particular resonated deeply with me and my relationship to the present world. As it evolved, working on it became a practice of attention and focus. It allowed me to quiet and find order within the loud and fragmented world I felt moving around me. In the process, it helped me find stillness within the complexity, and it reminded me of a line from a poem by T. S. Eliot: “At the still point of the turning world.” That line, this year – especially this year – connected with me so strongly. I found both challenge and release in it, inspiration and acceptance. It became the title for the project, and the project became a way of holding myself present in the turning world. It helped me structure the chaos and bear witness to the motion surrounding me.

This algorithmic project is an abstract portrait of my experience this year, but it’s not representative of only me. It can act as a mirror. If you’ve found yourself feeling like you’re standing in the center of a turbulent world, you may recognize yourself here too. I hope it offers a place to pause.

_/\_

Matto

More info, links, and live art generators: https://matto.xyz/project/at-the-still-point-of-the-turning-world/

This essay was inspired by Tyler Hobbs’ essay, The Rise of Long Form Generative Art. For fun, I’m using a very similar structure in this essay, and I’m also adapting portions of that essay here. If you haven’t recently read his essay, please take a few minutes now.

https://tylerxhobbs.com/essays/2021/the-rise-of-long-form-generative-art

Long Form Generative Art (LFGA) has eaten the generative art world, and artists aspire for their projects to join the hallowed halls of ‘grails’. To recap LGFA, we go to the source. Tyler describes how LFGA is distinct from earlier forms of generative art in two key ways:

“First, the script output goes directly into the hands of the collector, with no opportunity for intervention or curation by the artist. Second, the generative algorithms are expected to create roughly 100x more iterations than before.” -Tyler Hobbs

These differences from earlier forms of generative art create new requirements of the algorithm:

“In summary, long-form generative art introduces the new demands of consistent quality and high variety, while maintaining the existing need for unity across all output from a program.” -Tyler Hobbs

Fidenza by Tyler Hobbs is, obviously, a phenomenal example of LFGA. 999 high-quality outputs were generated with no artistic curation, and they are firmly rooted as NFTs minted on Art Blocks. These outputs will not change. The collection is final, and no others will exist…well, more specifically, no other official Fidenza NFTs will ever exist.

There are actually countless other outputs that the Fidenza algorithm can make, but these cannot be made into Fidenza NFTs. Many artists and collectors consider this kind of output an ‘out of band’ (OOB) or simply an ‘exploration’ output. They are outputs, but they’re not saleable and not part of the official collection.

The fact that exploration outputs cannot be sold doesn’t diminish the community interest in them. The popularity of the project inspires many to generate dozens (or thousands) of these outputs for fun. Instead of the traditional meaning of ownership, these outputs are ‘owned’ by whoever happened to generate them, i.e. “This is my favorite Fidenza OOB from this week.” Those who appreciate the artwork and explore the algorithm through OOBs feel a personalized sense of ownership over an output, even if they can’t literally own it.

These collectors are deeply exploring the output space of the algorithm – much more deeply than the Fidenza collection did with its predetermined quantity of saleable outputs. These collectors are creating value by engaging with the algorithm, but nothing they can do will change the 999 pieces in the Fidenza collection. Fidenza, is not malleable.

Experimental generative artists have asked, what if aspects x or y could change about a project after it is minted? What if an output, or the collection of outputs, was malleable?

I’ve explored this question in many projects. Most specifically, in both BLONKS on the EVM and Chainlife in JS I explore the possibilities of a project being more than one thing, of having dynamic outputs that change as they move across accounts, and of using different rendering algorithms selectable by the owners. Many other artists have explored similar and other opportunities as well, including Tyler Hobbs and Indigo with their collaborative, user-curated project, QQL. In this project, each token’s parameters are selected by collectors of a mint-pass, who can lock in those values by using the mint pass and add their preferences to the collection with their finalized QQL.

This project is malleable in that the collection is created as a result of owner action and because the collection isn’t yet finalized – it’s still taking form. As great as QQL is, many projects demonstrate more malleability. Examples include Mathcastles with the ‘state-shifting’ Terraforms. makio135 & clemsos with the mutable Shapes2048. Kim Asendorf with the evolvable Alternate. My own projects, and many, many others.

These all exemplify varying differences from the LFGA form, but consistently they incorporate direct user input. Not only can this art be owned in the literal sense, but the art is also ‘owned’ due to the personal manipulation of the malleable work by the owner. Regarding an owner-customized output: it isn’t just owned, it’s their own. This is new, and it’s a big deal. Malleable generative art enhances ownership.

Quality generative art algorithms now have new aspects on which they’re able to be gauged, and the most important distinction is that these kinds of works encourage owner interaction to shape the collection. With every action, an output changes, and the collection changes. Not only does this allow an individual to make their mark, it creates a time-based evolution of the collection as a whole. The evolution may be permanent (QQL, Alternate, sometimes Terraforms), or it may be infinitely temporary (BLONKS, Chainlife, Shapes2048, some Terraforms).

Algorithms that encourage owner interaction require a different developmental approach. No longer are some LFGA requirements firm, but with malleability comes a new requirement: engagement. On-chain actions have a literal cost, and that cost must be offset by the engagement created in the artwork’s audience. This can be through gamification (on- or off-chain) or through personal interest in the output space. Without engagement, a malleable project might as well be as fixed as Ether Rocks!

Gauging engagement is less straightforward than gauging the average quality of an algorithm’s output space. This is especially true when owner-curation is allowed, and the output space becomes massive. While technical quality will still be achieved between outputs, aesthetic quality may not – and this can be acceptable!

If a malleable algorithm/system maintains engagement, then its malleable nature will be explored. This allows the merger of both kinds of ownership as discussed earlier, the traditional ownership and the personalized ownership. Now, one can own something they personalized through their action. How much collectors value this engagement in personalization is how such a malleable project must be evaluated.

New platforms will lean into malleable generative art, and with them, artists will be better equipped to explore their creations. Intrinsic.art (launching with my project, Metta) allows for a new and unique malleability: artworks can be ‘unminted’ to reclaim their traits, which can then be mixed and reminted into new artworks. This allows a focused exploration of a project's generative system, while also allowing an incredible level of personalized engagement. As each artwork can forever evolve through the actions of each individual owner, so too can the entire collection. At any time, the collection may well represent the aesthetic tastes of the collection owners.

(strikethroughs are of the original text, italics are my additions)

In summary, long-form malleable generative art introduces the new demands of consistent quality engagement and high variety, while maintaining the existing need for unity across all output from a program. Right now, few artists are capable of navigating this balance, but I have no doubt that will change. The art form is just ramping up, and generative artists are starting to become familiar with the new dynamic. Short-form generative work [and long-form generative work] will continue to exist and will continue to be the best fit for many artistic visions, but right now long-form malleable is the fertile, unexplored space. I look forward to seeing all of the amazing work that will be created over the next few years!

PS: Tyler, I hope you interpret the above paragraph and the structure of this essay as a humorous homage – you’re brilliant, I’m a goof, see you around. :)

My creative frameworks:

• 100x10x1

• BLONKS

• Chainlife

• Experimental Film

• Haiku

• LIGHTS

• Matto's Fine Art (MFA)

• Tokenized Texts

• Zenerative Art

That may seem like a lot, and it is, but with these I can continue to create my work within them for many years.

100x10x1

Experimental, collaborative EVM generative art

(This project has been through so many iterations and versions - I had to get it right!)

100x10x1 is a conceptual framework and platform to create works in that are each made of 100 layer tokens (each consisting of 10 layers), together forming 1 composite (100x10x1). The first project in this framework, is Composition A, (full title 100x10x1 Composition A or 100x10x1-A for short). It is inspired by abstract expressionism, and it uses a palette based on sunsets in Durham, NC where I and my family live.

Technically, the hardest parts were ensuring that the entire project from art generation to collector interactions were handled by the EVM. All assets are generated on-chain, and the project is dynamic/evolving based on actions performed by the community of token owners - on chain and interacting with the token-controlling contract. This framework creates collaborative art pieces, where in each project, every token owner can put their mark on the collective artwork, while always retaining their own unique mint.

In the first project, Composition A, I explore simple random 'marks' like small ellipses resembling drips, simple and complex curves, and simple and complex lines. Each mark is completely random, but always using a deterministic subpalette.

100x10x1-A is (hopefully) launching Winter/Spring '23 '24. ;-)

100x10x1 projects are deployed by my developer account dev.monkmatto.eth (0xF8d9056db2C2189155bc25A30269dc5dDeD15d46)

BLONKS

CC0, EVM generative, dynamic, evolving PFP+

BLONKS was my first 100% solidity and SVG project, where a random hash generated at mint plus the current owning account's address together seed the contract code to generate an image. 4,444 tokens were minted, raising 10k for me and 10k for charity - but that's just the beginning of the story.

I wrote the scripts to allow upgrades and add ons (not by proxy). This has allowed me to execute the Shapeshifter upgrade earlier this year. Now, BLONKS tokens, while they were dynamic before, now can evolve. Owners can switch which code to execute when rendering BLONKS, and I can add new code variants whenever I like. These new 'Shapeshifter States' are selectable by the owner, always at no cost, but in limited quantities. Here again you can see my desire to add value to- and not be extractive to my collectors.

BLONKS is still awaiting a final upgrade (hopefully coming within the month), but currently includes 4 image renderers (Shapeshifter states):

1. BLONKS

2. DarkBLONKS

3. PepeBLONKS

4. BLOOPS

   and MANY more are in the works!

My vision for BLONKS is for them to be the generative art connoisseurs PFP, and to make that a reality, I will continue to add new features and EVM renderers as my SVG skills improve.

BLONKS are deployed by my developer account dev.monkmatto.eth (0xF8d9056db2C2189155bc25A30269dc5dDeD15d46)

Chainlife

Expansive and evolving world of interactive tokens

Chainlife is an on-chain JavaScript project, but it has a major distinction: it's dynamic, evolving, cooperative, AND it's not just one generative script. It's a collection of generative scripts, some apply to the individual tokens, while others are used in ways to visualize all the tokens, dynamically as they continually evolve and change.

From launch, the project included multiple scripts and methods for owners to interact both with their token and with other owners' tokens, and the project allows me to add new scripts over time, as I wish. The default script runs a cellular automata based on the owner's address and the prior owner's address. Also, each token includes a 'level' aspect that changes with on-chain activity, and each level of the Chainlife world can be played as a cellular automata simulation. Additionally, a different kind of script, using webGL is on-chain and in conjunction with a smart contract function, allows token owners to switch the rendering program their token uses, from the default cellular automata script to one that generates a dynamic and evolving 3D environment.

To say there's a lot going on there is an understatement. I've since added a new generative script that creates a large and highly detailed 'history' painting. Current plans include 2 other very specific scripts, but they are on hold while I develop other projects.

The motivation behind chainlife is to create a dynamic collection that invites collaboration between token owners. The collection follows themes of "life" and of the environment. Ultimately, I hope to incorporate an IRL reforestation project into the chainlife project, and link plots or individual trees to each token. We'll see - that's a pretty crazy idea in the current crypto-world, tbh.

The project is still open, with plenty of tokens left to mint. We'll see how many get minted this year. :)

Chainlife is deployed by my developer account dev.monkmatto.eth (0xF8d9056db2C2189155bc25A30269dc5dDeD15d46)

Experimental Film

Avant-Garde / New Media / Frontier Video Art

Photography and film (along with coding) were my first creative outlets. From middle school in the darkroom, to being a photographer in high school, to taking over entire computer labs in college to process my digital video abstraction scripts.

My experimental films have won many awards and have toured internationally to over 75 festivals and university exhibitions. While the last film I made was in 2012, I know I will continue producing work within this framework.

These are passion projects, traditionally only costing money (and not making any). Financial challenges paused my filmmaking, but hopefully with my newfound stability I can revisit and reignite my practice.

"Haiku"

Poetry project, an AI project, and more

Freestyle Haiku is my poetry blog (freestylehaiku.com) that I've kept for over ten years. Currently, I've published more than 1250 poems there. I hope to keep writing these spiritual and haiku-like poems for as long as I live, and publishing them for free on my blog...

"Freestyle H-ai-ku" is an AI-enhanced exploration of my Freestyle Haiku poetry. This project utilizes AI as a collective unconscious that not only intensifies the expressiveness of my poetry but also unveils hidden truths and newfound meanings within my words. Each poem is individually stored in the smart contract, while image media, AI-generated poem interpretations, and attributes metadata is stored on Arweave. The resulting work is more than a poem or a visual, it is also a vehicle for the introspection of the human condition through the lens of early Artificial Intelligence systems.

This is a creative framework for a few reasons. First, it's not a one-time mint, but a rolling mint allowing me and the AI tech to evolve. The first chapter of poems will all use the same tools and versions, but later chapters may adopt different tools, models, or techniques. With over a thousand poems to mint in this contract, I have plenty of room to explore over time.

Also, because this project puts the poetry on-chain in a composable format (as opposed to merely stored like a backup), other apps and smart contracts I launch can use these poems. So, this Freestyle H-ai-ku collection becomes an integral part to other projects utilizing my poetry.

Due to the amount of data stored with each token's mint, the gas cost is significant. I'm currently listing each token at 2-3x that amount. The 'meta' right now is not prioritizing this kind of work or this kind of release method, but over time I'm confident that I can find an audience who wants to participate in the project by owning the tokens.

This project is created by my general purpose creator account artist.monkmatto.eth (0xA6a4Fe416F8Bf46bc3bCA068aC8b1fC4DF760653)

LIGHTS

Light-hearted handcrafted designs, photographed

LIGHTS is a project where all images are made by hand with 65x65 pin light-brite devices. There is a nostalgia in using these devices, and a freedom for me as an artist. I don't have to use a computer for anything - I just play with colors and make a design.

The first mint in the collection was for 'Folded Hands', a design based on the folded hands or pray emoji, which I see as a symbol of gratitude, appreciation, and humility. Over 3000 editions were minted at a very low cost. Each new token in the contract is inexpensive to create, and free for collectors to mint (by burning Folded Hands tokens). This low barrier for creating and collecting is important to me (a theme that will come up again...)

Tokens minted to far in this collection are:

1. Folded Hands

2. Paris

3. NDS 3 (Nude Descending a Staircase)

   and many more to come.

LIGHTS is an erc-1155 large edition burn-to-mint collection, with assets on the decentralized storage network Arweave. Producing an image takes significant time, but the process is fun and I'm happy to do this for my prior collectors.

This project is created by my general purpose creator account artist.monkmatto.eth (0xA6a4Fe416F8Bf46bc3bCA068aC8b1fC4DF760653)

Matto's Fine Art (MFA)

Fine art on a custom contract allowing various project types and experimental features

Besides making generative art, I've also made award-winning films and photography series. Very little of my photography work has been minted - only some early experiments of old work on Rarible, and some free claim photos of flowers on a manifold contract. I wanted to create a contract that could allow various projects to be released on it though, from on-chain gen-art, to decentralized-storage still images or films, or EVM generated.

I launched a custom contract that will allow me to mint this great variety of work, and customized my API to properly show these projects. The first mint on the contract is AnnoMetta, a web-art piece that creates infinite art, deterministically, changing every hour of every day.

Projects I plan to release here include some photography projects, some experimental animation/film work, and some individual SVG paintings.

This project is created by my general purpose creator account artist.monkmatto.eth (0xA6a4Fe416F8Bf46bc3bCA068aC8b1fC4DF760653)

Tokenized Texts

Exploring experimental publishing methods

I spent years writing a series of novels that I self-published rapid-fire in 2016. I learned a ton in the process, especially about what's broken in the publishing industry. Once NFTs came around, I experimented with publishing the books in NFT format, but none of the angles I tried ever quite fit right.

Finally, now in 2024, I think I've figured it out, and I'm going to try again. I love to write, and I have so much that I've written besides the Infinite Vampire series (pictured above). I'm quite excited to experiment with a new publishing method and share the results as I go.

As of this writing, I haven't published these new tokens, but I will as soon as I finish building the support structures that will go with them... :)

Tokenized Texts will be created by my author address author.monkmatto.eth (0x1f2b8fBc917ac9BEd978a5d766FfC61902DEfb94)

Zenerative Art

Zen-inspired generative art (on-chain)

"Zenerative" is one of my most well-known frameworks. The projects within this framework are rooted in Zen (and Ch'an) Buddhism, which plays such an important role in my life that it is inextricable from my creative practice. Sharing this with others is important to me, both to express the beauty I see and to spread Buddhist ideas and aesthetics.

The core projects in this framework include:

1. Enso

2. FOCUS

3. Scratch

   and some projects releasing soon...

4. Time Between the Lines is Thread Through the Mind

5. Working Title Code: "VV"

   and hopefully many more to follow!

These core 'Zenerative' projects all utilize on-chain javascript, while additional projects associated with these projects vary from EVM generative svgs to personally animated video clips.

All Zenerative projects are created by the same Ethereum account Zenerative.eth (0x983f10B69c6C8d72539750786911359619DF313d)

2023 was a very busy year for me and my art. I did a ton in those 12 months! Reflecting on it now lets me realize: it was a year of building, of creating, and of positioning myself for continued exploration. I've organized this recap into two sections: Projects I Released in '23, and Projects in Production '23 (hopefully releasing in '24).

Projects I Released in '23

LIGHTS

Exploring 'burn to mint' mechanics, I made an open edition (Folded Hands) and released three limited edition artworks that cost one burned Folded Hands token. The best part: I can keep making new artworks, and appreciators can collect them for essentially free.

https://matto.xyz

Lights

I launched LIGHTS because I want to create some fun! Sometimes crypto/nfts can be so serious due to their financial aspects, but not everything has to be that way. I'm looking forward to having a lot of fun with the project. And how can I not? I'm using parts from kids toys!

genPepes

Exploring live-code art websites, I made genPepes(.com / .nft) for fun. I wanted to celebrate the best qualities of the Pepe meme (as the artist intended), and show my support for their effort to keep the meme positive and good-natured.

Scratch

The third project in the Zenerative series of Zen-inspired generative art, Scratch is an homage to creative blue-collar workers. A small series of 64, it is also my first foray into plottable projects. It allows both plotting of the work via a pen plotter and etching of the design via CNC machine.

Proceeds from the mint went to buying a CNC machine kit, (I have to make a custom one), and the CNC machine is nearly complete! That machine, alongside my plotter that I won in Marfa, will allow me to create physicals of Scratch and other generative art projects.

https://matto.xyz

Scratch

This project utilizes p5.js to create the artwork. Each generated image uses values from a unique transaction hash provided by the platform (plottables.io powered by artblocks.io) to determine material, finish, number of rings, density of rings, style of rings, and more-all with the goal of creating a simple yet serendipitous artwork.

CoinTokens

An experimental solidity contract, this is possibly the world's first truly liquid jpeg.

https://matto.xyz

CoinTokens

The contract should only send $LFG to an account if LFGCoinTokens are liquidated from that account. Has this contract been audited? No. While I believe I coded it well to protect from hacks, please consider it a risky experiment with no warranties. Cost? Fees? Royalties?

BLONKS "Shapeshifter" Upgrade

Shapeshifter is a new URI contract that allows me to add additional and fully on-chain/in-chain renderer/shapeshifter contracts (and more yet to be announced)... I launched it with three new, alternate renderers, bringing the total available to BLONKS owners to four: OG, DarkBLONKS, PepeBLONKS, and an all new ridiculous thing - BLOOPS. Takeaway: BLONKS continue to be the most dynamic and unique 100% on-chain PFP project in existence! (imo)

This upgrade will allow me to add new dynamic EVM renderers for owners to use, basically creating a unique, EVM platform for me to use - and I don't have to sell a single token to do it!

https://blonks.xyz

BLONKS CC0

BLONKS CC0 Website.

AnnoMetta

Continuing my exploration of live-code websites, I created a singular project that creates infinitely evolving and deterministic art, viewable/interact-able at AnnoMetta.com, and minted on a custom contract that allows various kinds of mints to coexist (onchain like annometta, and not).

Freestyle H-ai-ku

AI is fascinating, and I used it (am using it) to explore my own creative poetry. Instead of merely having an AI imagine what my poem looks like, I had AI interpret my poem, identify key themes and images, then craft instructions for other AIs to imagine an image. A back and forth collab between my poems, 4 different AIs, and me, Freestyle H-ai-ku is a unique project that immortalizes periods of time both in my life and in the development of AI systems. Also, because the poems are stored individually in a solidity-composable format, they're not only available to web apps but smart contracts as well...

https://matto.xyz

Freestyle H-ai-ku

"Freestyle H-ai-ku" is an AI-enhanced exploration of my Freestyle Haiku poetry. This project utilizes AI as a collective unconscious that not only intensifies the expressiveness of my poetry but also unveils hidden truths and newfound meanings within my words.

Projects in Production '23

These projects have been made in '23 and are awaiting finalization and release in '24!

"Thread" (unreleased/unannounced)

This will be the fourth release in my "Zenerative" line of Zen-inspired generative art projects. It's a plottable SVG project created in vanilla JavaScript.

"Metta" (unreleased/unannounced)

An experimental project for an experimental platform, Metta will be a long-form generative art project that allows infinite remixing of traits to yield near-infinite artworks. The project is complete but the platform isn't ready to launch, yet. SOON(tm)

"EE" (unreleased/unannounced)

"EE" is not an art project, but is instead a 'primitive' that can enhance the UI/UX of all Ethereum apps and dApps.... Intrigued??? More detail to come, the web-designer is almost done with the beta site.

"VV" (unreleased/unannounced)

Sorry! I can't share any outputs yet... "VV" will be another "Zenerative" release. It'll be my first AV crypto project, exploring generative image and sound in JavaScript. This one is not quite final, and is still in production. My hope is to release it in '24 on a "premium" platform.

"MFA" Photography

I've been working on images for release on a custom smart contract: "MFA" (Matto's Fine Art). AnnoMetta (above) is minted there, but the contract will also include my original and experimental photography. I don't have any examples to show from it yet, but I've been shooting tests with models. Like most my art, this is very experimental, and it's not a simple process to create an image. I'm actually continuing experiments/studies that I began more than 20 years ago when I lived in NY... The series of art will be more varied than a typical project (those displayed on this page), but it will allow me to craft a story thread and theme through the various images.

100x10x1-A

Originally I hoped to launch this beast of a project in Spring '23 (mainnet contract was deployed in '22!), but I'm glad I waited and kept working on it. I've since made major renovations to the contracts and code, and it has improved significantly. This is an epic project that I hope to release verry sooooon. The infrastructure to support this entirely on-chain project is rather counterintuitively intense, but it's ok - it's almost complete. Once the system is ready for 100x10x1-A, it'll be ready for further experimentation with 100x10x1 compositions.

This is one of the only projects I have in production with publicly available links and info, testnet: https://www.substratum.art/project/100x10x1-a-goerli

'23 is a Wrap!

In case you lost count, I listed more than a dozen art projects that I released in '23 or that I worked on for release in '24. Most of them are 'foundational' in one way or another, core to my creative exploration of key themes and ideas.

I'm all fired up to have an epic '24, and man do I have work to do. Later! 👋

Paragraph seems different, I'm excited. It's free, it's web3 aware, and I think it'll be easy for me to keep active with it. Also, I'm going to approach writing differently. In the past, I pressured myself to output content, and that pressure didn't help me create better content - if anything it encouraged me to produce lesser quality content more frequently. Some people think that's the way to go, to stay relevant, but it didn't work for me.

In Matto's Meadows, I have different 'communities' where I can post content, when I want to on my terms. Here are the communities I've set up:

• Pensive Pavilion (Buddhist stuff)

• Toolshed Chats (technical talk)

• Fields of Fantasy (speculative fiction)

• Hiking Trails (reflections on the path)

• Galleries in the Grove (ART!)

Like everything in my life, this is an experiment. Let's see what happens.

Huge thank you to those who have followed me on - and from - other platforms! I'll try not to disappoint. ;)

_/\_

Matto

I still have the receipt from when I bought the Processing book from a Borders bookstore in 2006. I was an award-winning experimental filmmaker at that time, working on a master’s degree in Film, Video, and Computer Animation. I taught myself Processing and some other stuff in order to experiment with creating programmatic visuals to use in my films. These films were travelling around the world in film festivals and were being shown by professors at universities as part of their programs.

After graduation, I used my credentials to convince a high-end educational content production company to hire me as a producer, and in my free time, I continued making art. I didn’t call it generative – I called it procedural. I started with an input, ran it through scripts, and I curated the outputs. It was a time of exploration and experimentation more than commercial success. I was in some group and solo shows, but I never found my niche and I stopped showing. I didn’t stop creating, though, and I saved much of my work. One project made during this time, I later reworked into the Crystallized Illusions NFT collection.

In 2013, I turned my part-time lecturer gig into a full-time professorship. I became more interested in theory, and I produced less work while I was refining my voice. Meanwhile, crypto had been happening for a couple years, and I had been following along. When Ethereum launched in 2015, I was very excited and I began experimenting with solidity.

Creating experiences with art was something I was well versed in, but I wanted to try doing so with games, too. I started to create my own board games, and I dreamt of someday creating a crypto-powered game that utilized blockchain activity and live interactivity together in creating experiences. When I discovered crypto kitties in 2018 and learned about their ‘kitty DNA’, I knew I wanted to create a project that combined a user’s crypto address and a generative piece, but the gameplay aspect was still a far-off dream.

When Rarible democratized NFT creation mid-2020, I dipped my toes in and minted some early procedural work as experiments. I also had refined my idea for Chainlife by this time; it would be a generative ‘live’ project that explored cellular automata using the owner’s crypto address as the population. I started collecting NFTs from creators who I believed were doing cool things and creating interesting work, and I went hunting for avenues to create my own vision. I saw Snowfro on twitter talking about Art Blocks, and I dove in. The platform wasn’t designed to do what I was hoping to create with Chainlife, but it ticked a number of the boxes for what I wanted to create. I jumped at the opportunity to experiment and learn.

I had written over a thousand haiku and spiritual poems by this time – poems that were inspired by Ch’an and Zen Buddhism – and I decided to try and create a generative project with them on Art Blocks. To do that, I had to learn JavaScript and/or p5.js. With my experience in Processing, I went the p5.js route. I learned p5 and created a project using it. After showing the results, I was urged to remake the project in vanilla JS, so, I did. When the vanilla version was ready to release on Art Blocks, the platform had just created the curation board, and the board did not approve the project for curated status.

I was offered a day-0 ‘factory’ slot to release the poetry project. At this time, gas would have cost me about 12 Eth (iirc) to put my 1250 poems on-chain, and there was no evidence that the project would recoup that cost – especially with the untested new label and non-curated status. Instead, I asked if I could release Ensō – a p5 project with a much smaller script that I had been working on in parallel while remaking the poetry project in vanilla JS.

Time was tight, and I could either wait for the curation board to revue it the next time they met, or I could release the project with the other day-0 factory projects. I decided to just release it, and in March of 2021, Ensō went live.

It took a while to sell out, but it did. Meanwhile, I had been toying with a more interactive project: FOCUS. It was more in line with my broader goals but still rooted in the ‘Zen-inspired generative’ art exploration I had begun investigating on Art Blocks (what I call ‘Zenerative’ art). It launched during a challenging time and with additional technical front-end display challenges, but I’m happy with the project and stand by its value.

While promoting it, I started to hunt for new possibilities to release Chainlife. I teamed up with a small group of generative art collectors and devs with the goal of launching a new generative art minting platform that offered custom on-chain interactions and a more DAO-centric structure. Chainlife was to be its genesis project. We made significant progress, and I refined the ideas and execution of the Chainlife project further as I was getting ready to release it. Unfortunately, after a few months and a lot of effort by all involved, the platform project failed and the team disbanded.

We went our separate ways, but I had invested too much – and was too close to releasing Chainlife – to give up. I knew I had to upgrade my dev skills, so I decided to play! I relearned solidity, and I launched BLONKS (a 50% to charity project made of five smart contracts working in tandem to deliver owner-reactive on-chain svgs).

I experimented with cross-contract interactions and different types of entropy, and I released deFOCUSed (a free gift to FOCUS collectors, composed of three contracts interacting with Art Blocks contracts to create live, animated svgs that closely pair with FOCUS tokens).

I investigated smart contract minimalism and basic game-theory, and I released Texture and Hues (a free gift to early BLONKS supporters, made from a single smart contract that generates minimalist svgs in a somewhat predictable way…thereby inclining some collectors to wait to claim).

Meanwhile, through local connections, I found a pair of developers who were hungry and excited to try something new. With their expertise and willingness to work with me on building something different, we created a platform API for blockchain-interactive projects that was efficient, flexible, scalable, and carbon neutral: Substratum.

It took months, and during that time, I continued to refine Chainlife. I ran user-groups, added and removed features, pitched it to trusted members in the space, and elevated the project far beyond my initial notions from 2018, 2020, and 2021. After a successful testnet and platform beta release, the project was deployed to mainnet on November 6, 2022 and the first Chainlife token was minted. Below is a randomly generated output from the Chainlife algorithm, (static download).

Chainlife is hugely significant to me. It’s the culmination of a long road to begin a new journey. It’s the genesis project of my own platform that I can utilize to unleash my creativity, and it’s an avenue I can share with other artists who – like me – dream of making interactive blockchain projects.

Chainlife is here – Substratum is here – and I’m here. Let the games begin!

Using Less, Achieving More

A piece of art should communicate something to the viewer, but in some Zen aesthetic, less is used. A piece might limit detail, use less color, or use simplified shapes–all methods of abstracting away the extraneous. Similarly, the artist might limit the extraneous by limiting themselves in medium, technique, or scale. But to me, the core of this concept is communicating more without using more to do so. Speaking to the spirit, calling more to mind, or connecting with a viewer’s emotional state can often be achieved by a talented artist, but when ‘less’ is involved and present to grab the viewer, it can be missed. For this, an attentive viewer is crucial. An installation of a crumpled-up piece of paper casting a shadow on the wall might easily be missed by a rushing visitor, but if someone gives the art directed attention, then they might see that the shadow looks like a face in ecstacy (of some sort or another!).

The Zen practice of drawing ensō, is a nice example of this. By quick glance, it’s a circle. By longer glance, it’s a rough circle typically made by a single brushstroke of black ink on paper. But by true appreciation, it’s the memory of a moment of pure expression and little inhibition by the practitioner… It’s still a circle made of a simple brushstroke on paper, but it can communicate much more.

Artificial Space – Abandoning the Reality of our Senses

From a biological standpoint, our senses help us understand the physical environment around us, but they are imperfect. Take sight for example: it’s slow. By the time a baseball rockets out of a pitcher’s hand, it’s cruising toward a batter faster than they could visually track the ball with their eyes. Our mind plots a likely trajectory for where the batter thinks the ball will be, and they swing. Sometimes they hit, sometimes they miss, but it’s not a craps shoot, it’s the experience they’ve gained through the game that helps them create the mental model to predict where the ball will be. In the same sense, our mind is relied on to ‘complete’ our sensual experiences, and in reality, we don’t have to precisely sense the real world to be able to navigate it. You can extrapolate this further into the realms of Buddhist illusion, but it’s not necessary to illustrate the point, so I won’t!

In a lot of Zen art, an attempt to recreate this illusory world isn’t undertaken. Instead, an artificial space is constructed and related. Why try to precisely show the proper depth between foreground and background, when that depth isn’t the ‘reality’ of the subject. Instead, the ‘reality’ of the subject is often explored, and a lot of the details that might find themselves into non-Zen art are left out. For an example of this in particular, look at Under the Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai (the piece is often called The Great Wave).

Presented in a group of pieces “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” the image is sparse of reality. Mt. Fuji in the background is mimicked by a wave in the foreground–or is it? Is that really Mt. Fuji or just a stylized wave? Three boats are arranged on the waves, while the great wave crests. There’s no shoreline, and there’s barely any features on the people on the boats. There’s a cloud, there’s white, blue, gray, tans, and a great, impressive wave that you can taste the salt, hear the crash, and smell. To me, not only is it focusing on the reality of the subject without worrying about the detail, it’s also doing more with less. It’s a frightful, and delightful, image to come across, and as a woodblock print, the technique was quite limited by today’s standards.

Simple, Serene, and Sublime

The essence of Zen aesthetic to me is simplicity, often paired with the serene, creating the sublime. No, the great wave of “The Great Wave” may not be serene, but I believe the image to be. And I find it sublime, too. Sublime can describe something majestic, or something of high worth, typically moral or spiritual worth. That wave is definitely majestic, and when you consider that Zen has roots in Taoism which has roots in Naturalism, one could say that there’s a raw spirituality presented in the image too.

In my own work, I find myself using these kinds of aesthetics over and over. As an old example, I made a film once where I connected a brushstroke to dancer’s movement to smoke from incense. The image was abstracted and I used outdated technology to create the imagery, but the completed film communicated much more. It explored notions about the fluidity of serene human movement and it toyed with the presented space and scale of both the dancer and smoke. It surprised the viewers who looked beyond the black and white forms when ink turned into smoke turned into dancer, and back. My new work continues in this aesthetic. Often my images are serene and are created with self-imposed limitations. I always strive to communicate more, but I must hope for an attentive audience to fully realize that dialogue.

To understand where I’m coming from, it’s important to understand where ensō, the symbol, comes from. My connection to the practice of drawing ensō goes back decades, but the symbol itself goes back a millenia. The earliest known record of an ensō being painted was over 1000 years ago, in China. The Japanese Zen Buddhist philosophy has roots in Chinese Ch’an Buddhism and Chinese Taoist philosophy, and while Taoism is inherently Chinese, Ch’an Buddhist philosophy has roots in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. This legacy is important, as is the understanding of how Zen has spread in the West – particularly to me where I grew up in the farmland south of Rochester, just north of Springwater, New York.

In 1884, Henry David Thoreau introduced a portion of the Lotus Sutra, which is core to all Buddhism, in The Dial magazine, published by the New England Transcendentalist Club. In 1893, the World Parliament of Religions was held in Chicago, and Buddhist countries such as China, Japan, and Thailand sent delegates to represent and share their religions. Additionally, in the late 19th century, many Japanese teachers came to America to cater to Japanese immigrants. These were the first introductions of Buddhism at scale to Americans, but it wasn’t until after World War II that interest by non-Asian Americans increased substantially. Certainly one reason for this, and one that has personal relevance, is that some servicemen who had been stationed in Japan returned to America with a greater appreciation for Asian culture and philosophies.

My father was stationed in Okinawa for a time during the Viet-Nam war, and while he was there, he studied Shorin Ryu and earned an advanced degree. He brought back his martial arts experience, but also a quiet peace that I didn’t recognize until later as a touch of Zen. Coincidentally, we lived near Rochester NY, where Roshi Philip Kapleau – one of the “founding fathers of American Zen” – established the Rochester Zen Center. He studied under three Zen teachers in Japan, was ordained by Hakuun Yasutani-roshi in 1965, and published what is arguably the first book to explain the Zen practice to Westerners in 1966: The Three Pillars of Zen.

It turned out that some students had broken off from the Rochester Zen Center and had established a Zen community in Springwater NY, in the neighboring town to where I grew up, just a few minutes to the south of my childhood home. Zen wasn’t a formal part of my upbringing, but its presence and impacts were all around me. I took some karate classes as a boy at a local college, and my father taught me some martial arts techniques as well. As soon as I was able to access libraries and the internet, I began investigating Buddhism and Asian artistic aesthetics. A Buddhist art teacher in high school noticed me, and I was taken under their wing as I explored art and life in a way that many of the other students didn’t understand.

I started to make art with Asian aesthetics, and I read about Eastern spiritual practices. In college, I explored various martial arts until I discovered the beauty and deep connection I found in traditional Kung Fu. The school I joined was created and led by the son of a famous Chinese general. Our school’s founder, Grandmaster Alan Lee, emigrated to the United States with the whole-hearted belief that Kung Fu was not just for Chinese people, but for anyone who dedicated themselves to the art. He happened to also be a Taoist priest, and the curriculum he designed to be taught in his school included both Buddhism and Taoism.

Through my study, I began to experience Ch’an and Taoist teachings on a deeper level. Aspects and elements that were separate but present for me my whole life began to connect, and I knew that I had found my path. I can’t recall when I drew my first ensō, but I know that my practice of drawing ensōs started then, around the year 2000.

From 2000 to 2008, I studied Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Buddhism, Taoism, and Eastern philosophy in Rochester while also studying art, art history, engineering, and Western philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology. During that time, I earned a BS, an MFA, and an advanced degree in Northern Shaolin Kung Fu. In addition to the lower-level art classes I taught, I also taught Kung Fu and Ch’an Buddhist essentials to hundreds of students. I learned a lot, shared a lot, and I also drew a lot of ensōs.

Many years later, I’ve done much to share my Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, including publishing over a thousand haiku and spiritual poems for free for the world to experience. Ultimately, however, when considering the impact of publishing the Ensō project, reflecting on what ensōs were, and were not, guided me to my decision.

An ensō is a symbol of Zen and Ch’an Buddhism. Drawing an ensō is also a common activity for a student studying these disciplines as a way to practice presence and freedom of mind. But, why practice this? More importantly, why practice Buddhism? The ultimate aim of Buddhism is to end all suffering, for all beings. Not just some. If there was any exclusion to whom Buddhism was allowed to benefit, then it would be a sham, and by its own definition it would then, not be Buddhism. Buddhism is meant for everyone.

Japanese Zen Buddhism has roots that go all the way back to Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism, and it has branches that lead all the way to me. I am not Asian, nor did I grow up in Asian surroundings, but I am a student of Ch’an and Zen Buddhism. Ensō, the symbol, is a part of who I am as a Buddhist. As an artist, sharing art that is true to my human experience is who I am, as well.

It would not be very Zen of me to say that Ensō was good (or bad). But I follow the eightfold path as best as I can, and I believe that Ensō and my efforts will have a significant positive impact on the world. That, I can say, would be good.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Matto

The image above is the one I bought for myself at launch. (Sometimes the ink runs out before the circle completes! Just like a real painting, there’s infinite possibilities here.)

Note that the project creates resolution-independent images in your browser (I’ve rendered up to 16,000 x 16,000 pixels) and that the project and tokens are 100% hosted immutably ‘on-chain’ (big selling point for crypto ‘collectors/investors’). Oh yeah, and when run in a browser, the tokens have an interactive element: clicking on them shows/hides the signature stamp.

Cool huh? Anyway, I’ve sold 150 out of 1,000 so far, and I’ve just completed the first stages of a website for this and other Zen-inspired generative projects: Zenerative.com (update: I’m reworking the site into matto.xyz). There, I’ve got more examples of user-minted Ensōs, a walkthrough on how to buy an artblocks.io mint, high-resolution rendering tools, print-ordering tips, more links, and what I’m probably the most excited about: a roadmap for the larger project that Ensō started.

Without going into too much detail, I’m want to make 8 of these Zen-inspired generative art projects, and I hope to use those NFTs to start a Decentralized Autonomous Organization to support Eastern spirituality in the metaverse. (If you’re interested, you can learn about DAO’s here.)

This endeavor will take years, probably closer to a decade, but I’m really excited about it because it’ll allow me to continue to challenge myself, learn, make art, promote spirituality, and share it!

If you have any contacts that may be interested in learning more about this project, please send them a link to this post! I truly appreciate the help and interest.

Thank you for reading! 🙂

-Matto

Lots of times, I feel like I can’t keep up with my thoughts. I forget the exact metaphor Buddhists use for a wild mind, but it’s something involving a large and dangerous mammal. They might refer to it as a raging, wild elephant or something, and I can completely understand what is meant by that.

The point is though, it takes me a really long time to actually deliver the things I make. I’m no expert at what I do–that’s part of the fun for me. But it means that I’m constantly learning, and that’s never fast. Also, I’m kinda stubborn AF and might have a perfectionism-streak the size of the Mississippi River.

There’s nothing really wrong with being slow, and I’m not complaining. It does, however, impact me a great deal.

In the indie-author/publishing world, a common mantra is ‘write fast, publish often.’ Well, that’s not going to happen. I mean look at me, (LOL), I published action and adventure zombie apocalypse books (with vampires), then I went on to write contemporary romance, and now I writing both plus experimental fantasy. I’m learning and trying new things all the time, and I’m not perfecting a system that would let me crank out work.

The same is true for my art. I’m probably most influenced by Araki and Edgerton, if I had to narrow it down to two, and neither of them had a particular genre or style they adhered to. I guess Araki’s was ‘life’ and Edgerton was ‘science,’ but beyond that, they were both extremely experimental. Turns out, I am too.

One of my books is present-tense action, another is third-person romance, another project is second-person fantasy, and so on. Some of my photography is abstract flowers that grow in the garden, while others are ‘flowers’ made of composite images. My experimental films can take years to make, because they’re literally experimental, not just so in name. One required amassing a huge amount of source material, because the creative process was signal-bending an analog camcorder feedback-loop onto a digital screen… Little I make is straightforward…the only exception might be my haiku (I’ve written 1200+ in last decade), but still, I spend a lot of time editing them.

Within a medium, I’m slow, because I mix genres. Because I create in a number of mediums, I seem extra slow.

I really am okay with that, but it means that I’ll never be able to do the things other artists and authors will do. It might mean that I’ll never reach that critical mass of audience that let’s me grow to be a huge commercial success–which would be pretty cool, not gonna lie.

I had to decide though–and I suppose I continually decide this–I have to be okay with possibly never reaching the level of external success that my ego would like. That success doesn’t define my success. The only person ultimately responsible for my happiness in life is myself. So, if my exploring life and my own happiness means taking a 3d picture of my dog, or coding some software so I can more easily write a novel, or writing a crazy story about AI, or photographing an athlete, or drawing a model, or glitching a video to explore illusions of desire, or building a concrete sculpture, or cultivating roses, or inventing recipes for my treasured Carolina Reaper tree, or, or, or…then that’s what I’m going to do.

Wow, I kinda went off the deep end there. I hope I got some coherent message across, but in any case, it was nice to write. 🙂

It was made 100 years before I was born. It’s been held by people I’ve never met, who are long dead. It’s been passed from father to son (possibly), it’s been treasured and protected, and eventually it found its way onto ebay and into my mailbox.

I do have another Morgan Silver Dollar from 1881. I used to collect coins, when I was a kid, and when I sold the collection when I was in my twenties, it was worth almost one thousand dollars. I kept only a few items from that collection: a silver certificate bill, a supposedly ancient coin (might be middle-ages–it’s pretty rough, actually), and the 1881 Morgan.

Thinking about the one I’ve had for thirty-odd years, vs the one I bought for thirty-odd dollars on ebay has yielded some interested and unexpected realizations.

First, the coins were fungible–one was just as good as another. But now, they’re not. The one from my old collection is far more valuable to me, sentimentally, than the one I bought online. The two coins are non-fungible outside of sentiment too; one has more scratches, and one has a tiny ding in the rim.

But they started out just as good as the other.

I feel like when we’re alive, we’re non-fungible. We’re each different. But after 100 years, how different are we to anybody? We’re someone’s dead relative, and unless we did something extraordinary, we’re likely to be lumped together as a couple of ‘dead Xennials / Gen Xers / Millennials’ (if we’re of similar age).

But those two fucking coins will be even more unique, and they’ll be passed to new owners. Sure, people and stamped metal are orders of magnitudes different in orders of magnitudes ways. But what if your week last month or the same one x years ago was considered? At the time, you might have thought that you were doing something very special…and maybe you were! But the point is that most likely, it was just a week among many.

A person among many, a coin among many. Some things last better than others, and some things don’t last at all.

…So why am I obsessed and so stressed about maximizing this moment? It’s not going to become more unique as time passes, the opposite is more true. But the whole of me, made up of all my weeks–that gets more unique. The scars and injuries, like scratches and nicks on the rim of a coin, help to physically illustrate the path taken through the world, but the accomplishments and joys shared are important too. They add the sentimentality to life, and really they’re what truly matters.

Otherwise, we’re just one thing or another. A trinket off ebay or the one from a box. This dead guy or that one. That’s not the life I want to live, and it’s definitely not the one I want to leave.

During this investigation it occurred to me that I didn’t feel the guy had been successful. That’s bullshit! I was raised literally in a barn in the hills of upstate New York, in a family that barely had enough money to put food on the table, by parents who didn’t complete college, in a town whose most hopping downtown was a corner store/gas station across from an auto body shop and the fire department. I went to college, graduated and went back for a Masters, made films that went to dozens and dozens of festivals, moved to Washington DC where I made cutting edge video products, taught the next generation of video artists, paid off my school debt, published seven novels, bought a house, and enjoy two wonderful relationships with two different partners.

If I can’t feel successful at what I’ve achieved than there something wrong with me. So I decided that wasn’t actually success that I felt like I was lacking, and the next question was to figure out what it was that I felt I was lacking. The best answer I have so far is public validation, which I admit I don’t need. My family loves me, my partners are proud of me, my dogs think I can do no wrong, and my house – try as it might – knows it won’t get very far into disrepair.

I need to remind myself that I am successful. That I have done amazing things. I need to continually reflect on my own satisfaction, and recognize that the only person I truly need to impress is myself. If I work hard, give myself a chance to relax, allow myself to mess up and learn, and push myself in a healthy way, then I should feel satisfied with the life I’m living.

So far I’ve only talked about accomplishments in regards to satisfaction. I think it’s important to remember that living truthfully and courageously can also impact my personal satisfaction. 10 years ago, I was single but living as a monogamous person. Five years ago I was partnered and living as a non-monogamous person. A couple years ago, I started to identify as pansexual, and now I identify simply as queer. Queer, can mean many things, both in sexual orientation and in preferred relationship dynamics, and I’m queer in both those ways.

To me it’s not just enough to have that identity in mind, because I create media, artwork, and literature. A few months ago I discreetly changed my bio on twitter to mention that I was queer, and nobody really noticed. Being open isn’t the easiest, and I recognize I’m very lucky to be in a position to be open. I figure the least I can do is be satisfied while striving for more.

So, rambly as this might’ve been, I feel like I have a new perspective on success and satisfaction. I define both, they don’t define me.

The series is four novels and one prequel novella, but I have much more planned it I’ve started outlining a new novella that will take place about halfway through the series, between books two and three, and I’ve also written an origin-story graphic novel. I’ve actually detailed about five different graphic novels, but in any case, I’ve written the first one. Oh, I’m also planning a sequel set of novels that take place a few years after the first series closes.

At the very least, it was a lot of fun to write, even if it was pain in the ass. I learned tons through the process, made plenty of mistakes, and honed my skill and work ethic. I don’t feel like I’m giving up on the series when I don’t work on it, because I know that I someday will release new material in the world. Most the time though, I just wish that I had the time or energy to be working on it, so that I could release new material sooner.

As it stands, it’s a wonderful first series from a newbie author, and I’m very proud of the work and craftsmanship that I put into it.

The website and the project has continued. It is seen me through happy times and sad, easy times and difficult, and it is helped me document and crystallize my emotions. I think it actually helped me understand my emotions more clearly, because I had to try to find simple words to express them. I’ve identified different stages or theme that I felt fit with my life at certain times, and I collect the poems that I write in those times into chapters.

In the past 10 years, I’ve written over 1200 poems, in about a dozen chapters. I must admit, that sometimes what I lack the energy, I don’t write poems as much as I would like. In 2020, for example, with the pandemic, I wrote far fewer poems than I would’ve expected. The challenges of daily life, the emotional challenges I face with my partners, and the ethical and social questions that the pandemic highlighted seems to have drained a lot of my writing energy.

That’s okay though, because the only person that I have to answer to in regards to this project, is myself. I have no deadline I have no requirements and it doesn’t matter if I write a poem or 10 tomorrow. It’s very freeing, but at the same time, I do want to write more. I want to write my poems regularly.

Perhaps as this pandemic ends, when I’m once again going out and doing things, hanging out at coffee shops, and meeting new people, I’ll find it difficult not to write poetry in every waking minute. I do have plans for the project and the poems, but it requires a lot of work, and right now I just don’t have the energy nor do I have the time to put into it.

The important thing is that I keep the project close to my heart, and I keep working on it. Someday in the distant future a millennia or two from now when I pass on to the next great adventure, how do you so happy that I started this project, and I doubt I’ll care much if I hit a million poems, hundred million poems, or only 10,000 poems.