Inside the computer there’s a digital hand. The hand selects a metal implement, cuts off a slab of clay, and carves into its surface. It wanders like your hand wanders; it carves imaginary contours, sinuous and exploratory. It doesn’t know the end result so it carves lines until it feels content, and then it numbers the piece and stamps its maker’s mark. It fires the slab in a digital kiln (it calls this “minting”) and through this act its art is preserved for millennia. The hand runs its fingers over the textured surface, feeling satisfaction at having spontaneously produced a piece of art so beautiful, expressive, and unique.

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Ceramics is a generative sculpture that mimics the physical expression of carving into clay. Through uncanny naturalistic rendering it challenges our notion of “handmade”. It asserts that the value of handmade isn’t the time it takes to make the work nor the physical materials consumed, but the endless small decisions and serendipitous details that appear along the way, as can be felt in each Ceramics mint.

Despite the handmade nature of Ceramics the outputs cannot be touched. Highly tactile images enchant the viewer to imagine their tangible representations, and leave them to dwell on their perception of materiality — both in the experiential physical world and conceptually-infinite digital space.

Ceramics

*The mind moves at the speed of dreams.
Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!
I like to think of my brain as a hand,
palm of my soul, fragile nerve bundle.
I think about my brain as I hold my heart
in both hands — a private thing, a pulsing secret.
It fills my palms and bones with heat.
The world is full of heartbeat.
I am trying to hold it all together...*
    &nbsp; -- &nbsp;Excerpt from *STILL MOVING*, by Technelegy

**NOTE: To fully experience *STILL MOVING*, please open in LIVE VIEW and enable your webcam for motion tracking.**

The first project of its kind, *STILL MOVING* is an interactive poem about humanity’s visceral engagement with the virtual – written and published via the blockchain as a token word performance, and embodied by each collector as a uniquely intimate, personalized interpretation. In this epic on-chain ode to the relationship of bodies and machines, literal and figurative wordplay activates the liminal space between text and reader, extending the two-dimensional screen/page into a somatic, material realm where language moves us in every sense of that phrase – up, down, sideways, forwards, backwards, and in otherwise inexpressible directions – urging us to reclaim our dynamism and intuitive physicality in an age of technological acceleration, bodily inertia, and rote gestures.

A collaboration between Nathaniel Stern and Sasha Stiles – rooted in Stiles’ AI-powered verse and Stern’s career in digital, interactive, and networked art – *STILL MOVING* is an ars poetica about what it means to be a human body facing a machine: a showdown, a form of worship, a distraction, a mirror gaze, an other, an alter, an alter. After we bend to our technologies, do we spring back into shape, or assume new forms? Where does input end, and output begin? As we continue to think, work, and play faster than ever while rooted in place, it is still possible to be moved – *really* moved?

*STILL MOVING* also embodies the future of web3 literature, in which the book – read-only – evolves into a read-write-interact experience, and authors begin to adopt such tools as webcams and NFTs in their writerly arsenal. In each unique edition of *STILL MOVING*, camera-based motion tracking (data confined to your local machine only) facilitates a play-full and meaning-full interface between the reader’s physical self and language on screen. Human forms and gestures shape machine expression, and vice versa, cybernetic serendipity inspires poetic association. Make a move, and be moved… Stand still, and instill meaning…

Palettes pair paper, charcoal, and pencil colorings – emblematic of the stationery/stationary – with neon and electric highlights that nod to computational restlessness. Preview images feature lines from the core poem, potent standalone phrases, or rare, gestural graphics and images, caught somewhere between language and illustration, expression and wordless apprehension. 


**FUNCTIONS**

*Click inside the interaction area if any of the function keys below are not working.*

*Space Bar* to toggle Play/Pause the interaction and animation

*'d'* Downloads the current image at the screen/browser resolution

*Up/Down arrows* increase/decrease camera sensitivity by 5
(for use in high and low light situations;
0-150, default is 90; higher numbers = more text)

*Top two keyboard rows (numbers 1 thru 0 and letters q thru p)* also birth semi-mapped text

*'c'* toggles Camera use (if present and on) between keyboard only or both

*'v'* Views/hides the Verse (your poetry / your iteration’s text)

*'f'* toggles Full screen (Live View only)

*'s'* downloads / Saves the entire AI poem to the hard drive

Still Moving

Sudfah (Arabic for "happy accident") is a generative collection celebrating the beauty that can emerge from chaos, mistakes, and accidents.

A single calligraphic line intends to tell one story (sometimes wandering and confused in its own right, but always meandering from one side to the other).

Digital liquid is spilled upon it and takes the ink in directions that are unexpected, uncontrolled, and tell a much more interesting story than the one the line intended.... and often more beautiful.

Sudfah

AlgoRhythms is a collection of generative audio-visual data sculptures. Each unique hash drives the combination of colors, patterns and musical scales into a music box.

AlgoRhythms

Simple and easily identifiable, each squiggle embodies the soul of the Art Blocks platform. Consider each my personal signature as an artist, developer, and tinkerer. Public minting of the Chromie Squiggle is permanently paused. They are now reserved for manual distribution to collectors and community members over a longer period of time. Please visit OpenSea to explore Squiggles available on the secondary market. 

Art Blocks Curated

Ceramics #132

Charlotte Dann

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Sudfah

Melissa Wiederrecht

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