Paolo Tonon

When does a work stop being the representation of our world and become art?
Can we appreciate a work of art without measuring it with our space-time parameters?
In Time Atlas 🌐 the link with our Earth shaped over millennia through the urbanization process is explicit.
Time Atlas 🌐 uses geo-referenced city data intensively and displays it randomly in geographic areas, showing the current time of each city, whether it is currently exposed to the sun, at night or at dusk by changing the reference color palette . There are over 200 cities collected in its monumental internal archive, each with its own latitude and longitude values, UTC and DST time, number of inhabitants.
Each instance shows a square of our land, the cities arrange you in a grid that respects the distances in proportion. The background rotates to the current value of seconds which is the same all over the world. It is potentially composed of 8 geometric elements that can be present with different probabilities.
City clocks can be of 4 different shapes; the length of the pendulum that rotates with the time of the seconds is composed of 5 elements that combine randomly but the length of the pendulum corresponds to the number of inhabitants of that city.
The elements of the composition can be turned off and on again thanks to these keys:
[c] toggle cities
[w] toggle watches
[b] toggle background
Finally, there is the Written Circles variation. It takes up a past work of mine with the same title and in my initial idea it had to be the only aspect of Time Atlas 🌐. The salient feature of the Written Circles display is that it does not have a rotating background but, for each city, the crown of minutes is proportional to the number of inhabitants, therefore interesting moiré effects are obtained in superimposition. 

Time Atlas 🌐

Imagine a multidimensional and multitemporal space outside of reality, perhaps at the end of a black hole. Try to represent it with a code that transforms it into the changing variability of life, which encompasses all the nuances of human experience. This is Panelscape 🅰🅱, a composition that changes in the alpha values of the panels. Try to find your space, the representation of reality that best suits you.

Panelscape 🅰🅱

3:19

Eccentrics

Avalon

**Avalon is a series of generative maps to imaginary places.** 

Visually inspired by vintage textbooks and map collections, Avalon takes a purely aesthetical perspective on the land drop hype and the mythical realm that is the metaverse. 

The practice of mapping the imaginary reaches back to the middle ages and has been particularly popular in the renaissance era. It has always been used as tool to visualize allegories and manifest a sense of longing. In that sense, Avalon can be interpreted as a visualization of a machines wanderlust.

The series is named after the place where, according to legend, King Arthur is buried. Avalon is referred to in literary sources as an island, valley or field.

**Avalon is a dynamic collection.** Each map is positioned on a virtual globe and will go through 12.5 hour tidal cycles based on a virtual moon orbit. Maps will update every two minutes and to reflect the changing tides. 

Map labels show some basic information about each map. They include the map coordinates, maximum elevation and maximum sea depth, a topographic profile of the map and an indication of the current tidal level.

**Avalon is interactive.** Collectors can interact with and customize their maps by using a series of commands that will change some of the basic visual traits of their maps. Maps can be downloaded both as high and low resolution images directly from the art blocks preview.

**Basic commands:**
‘s’ - save image
‘i’ - toggle label on or off
‘m’ - switch between colored and monochrome versions
‘h’ - render high resolution image
'r' - refresh image in its original state

**Please make sure the map is active by clicking it before you interact.**

Avalon is limited to 208 mints, one for every sovereign state (based on [this list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states))

Latent Spirits

Eight a symbol of luck, fate, a cosmic slot machine. The I Ching gives a glimpse of the future & some traits allow you to draw your own art. Luck of the mint, art of the flip to explain the randomness of one’s unique traits. The fruit of the slots to the binary I Ching of 8 sides & planetary gender. These traits are in the art & in us. They might seem imperfect but their unique lucky combination give each a power no one else has. 
**At least 12% of the profit is donated to CasaBrumar Foundation & Safe Space and other LGBTQ+ charities**
Space: stop/start, C: color, F: Faster, E: Slower, X: Stop/Reset/Start, ASWD: move symbol, 2 finger touch: stop, 1 finger drag: move

The Curated Collection includes projects that have been selected by Art Blocks’ Curation Board for their world-class innovation, technical rigor, and aesthetic beauty.

curated

This collection comprises projects screened and selected by Art Blocks and embodies our standards for artistic creativity, conceptual rigor, and technical achievement.

presents

This is the place where we tinker. What lives here is free of theme or architecture but the one common strand is that these projects all grant us delight.

explorations

The Art Blocks × Pace collection includes boundary-pushing generative projects by select Pace artists developed in partnership with Pace Verso.

artblocksxpace

Through an exhibition program that extends across galleries globally, Art Blocks × Bright Moments showcases and launches the work of acclaimed natively generative artists.

Paolo Tonon

@paolo_tonon

Time Atlas 🌐

Panelscape 🅰🅱

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