196 nations and regions realised as gasoline spills on the world ocean.

Centering on a generative thin film refraction algorithm each country and region in Petro National reflects its per capita annual consumption of petroleum, with low-consumption countries and regions manifesting a very thin spill leaning towards the blue green spectrum to high-consumption countries and regions being thick, lustrous and highly iridescent forms. Society consumes 100 million barrels of oil every day with radically differing patterns between global north and south. 

Each broad consumption category in the works encompasses different atmospheric, wave and sea colour traits which are further affected by the minting seed address.

Petro National is a first webgl piece both online and onchain which extends my sustained work over two decades in game engines. These respond to historic intersections of energy and power. See Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas) 2017 as an example or visit johngerrard.net

Each of the 196 generated worlds runs on local time as dictated by the time zone of its capital city. Night, day and seasonality will be experienced across the year in the work with long days in summer and short in winter. Countries and regions are openly allocated to collectors upon mint. 

These are spatial worlds - click and drag on the scene to look around. Press R on a keyboard to slowly rotate the camera, O / P to zoom. G for full screen in generator mode.  

 For more information see :  https://www.pacegallery.com/journal/john-gerrard-petro-national/ 

Production credits. Producer : Werner Poetzelberger, Programmer : Helmut Bressler.

Artwork Renderer

Petro National #79

Settings