*Erratic : irregular in performance, behaviour, or attitude; inconsistent and unpredictable*

One’s harmony with the world can become severed while experiencing stress. Feeling lost or confused within a clouded mind, struggling to call upon a creative muse, defending your self-worth against creeping doubts, and projecting flashes of anger towards others. This torrent of bubbling turmoil can sustain by fixating on the moments of chaos, past, and present. Continuing to feed the storm in this way ultimately will lead to burdensome strife and a ravaged mind.

As a nascent artist working to hone my artistic abilities and establish myself within a historical art movement, I have often experienced stress along my journey. This collection captures these internal struggles as fragmented waves of colour arranged across a spectrum of relative calms, chaotic bursts, and winding paths. Each piece reflects a unique sense of uncertainty.

My intent for Erratic was to challenge myself to create a purist’s form of generative art, wherein a set of randomized values are shaped to be used directly as inputs into an instruction path that is consistent in execution and does not use branching conditionals as a means of achieving variety in composition, colour or form. By actively rejecting predetermined features in favour of shaping a domain that is acted upon consistently, I felt I could achieve occurrences of uniquely identifiable emergent design that I otherwise may not have discovered. The work begins with a euclidean coordinate space intended to render a smoothed half-torus which is then randomly mutated through progressive iterations of translations, rotations, polar reflections, slices, twists, and distortions. This pattern of operations produces a nearly infinite set, shaped only by the defined input ranges, from which each piece will be minted. Any knowledge of the instantiated values before viewing could not lead to any reasonable prediction of what will be rendered.

Erratic

Chroma Theory is the infinite animation filled with color, where you can experience slight movement, irregular pulse, and tonal diffusion. It's the abstract study of color coexistence and mutual interference, from pastel hues to vivid compositions. A minimalistic variation on visual media art. Every aspect (colors, sizes, mixing, and movement) is assigned to the process of minting, which makes every piece unique. Sit back, relax and give it time.

Chroma Theory

***Crypt***
Crypt is a labyrinth of sound, image, data, and code. It is an enigma. Once solved, it is also a gateway.

Crypt is a multilayered piece of generative art, one that unfolds into something else, then unfolds again. It contains artworks within artworks, found by puzzles inside other puzzles. One leading to another. At the center is a gateway. The gateway opens another world. That world is an Alternate Reality Game filled with cryptic histories, untold stories, and physical treasures hidden all over the world. 

To begin, some hints. The solution to the first puzzle is a three-part key. It leads to another layer. Here is a room of sorts. An escape room. Viewable from three angles. In the room are eight code-words. They lead to the way out. Collaboration is essential.

At the bottom of Crypt is another key. It unlocks a world. It unlocks Cyclops.

To confirm your solution to crypt and claim your reward please visit: https://cyclopsgroup.art

***Cyclops***

Cyclops is a networked performance, collaborative narrative, and alternate-reality-game designed to be played by groups of people working together across the world. Set in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the game begins with a series of audio tracks. Some tracks are musical compositions, others are filled with odd voices reading letters and counting numbers, others still resemble nothing more than noise and static.
 
Each track is, in fact, a puzzle of increasing complexity. As players work together to solve them, a narrative about early research into psychological operations, mind-control experiments, and an alternative history of the internet age begins to emerge. Over the course of the game, players come across - and are invited to collect - a series of artworks specifically created for Cyclops players. To find these artworks, players must identify and follow up on clues provided within the game. Cyclops is a world within a world.

Crypt

Aquatic Zen gardens. Rediscovering the childhood joy of exploring low tide microcosms. Motion and geometry inspired by the mathematical order inherent in everything that surrounds us.

Low Tide

Dot Matrix Gradient Study takes my approach of splitting the canvas into "patches", which each have their own stipple sizing, density, and layering, and distorts this process to create outputs which blur the lines of recognizable stippling. This piece is an exploration of creating abstract forms with stippling rather than depicting figurative ones. All pieces in this series are composed purely with dots. Some more than others. 50% of sales proceeds from Dot Matrix Gradient Study were donated on-chain at the time of mint to GiveDirectly, where the funds will be directed to helping those in poverty. 

Art Blocks Presents

Dot Matrix Gradient Study #296

Jake Rockland

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Owen Moore

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