Time may be a currency, but for 0xDEAFBEEF it is a commodity. The generative artist, during his short but rich career, has worked with time-based media, from sound to animation, while exploring ways to string these multimedia concepts together. His latest collection continues in the same vein, but also goes back through the ages to revisit a pioneering work that bottles time in the same way.
0xDEAFBEEF is the sixth artist to participate in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s ongoing blockchain series, Remembrance of future things. Produced in partnership with the consulting firm Web3 Cactoid Laboratories, the initiative asks digital creators to produce new works that reinterpret art and objects from the museum’s collection. It is first iteration star artists such as Ix Shells, Emily Xie and Sarah Zucker.
In turn, 0xDEAFBEEF chose Eadweard Muybridge’s studies of human and animal movement in the 19th century as a touchstone. Through the ages, these groundbreaking sequential images have advanced scientific understanding and photographic techniques, and for 0xDEAFBEEF offered “a wealth of themes and historical context”.
Eadweard Muybridge, animal locomotion (1886). Photo courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
“I was previously aware of horse images since I was studying computer animation,” 0xDEAFBEEF told Artnet News. “But seeing his work now more deeply and broadly, I felt there was an enigmatic quality to these images that felt familiar and yet mysterious and engaging.”
After delving into the life and legacy of Muybridge (“the eccentric nonconformist”), 0xDEAFBEEF devised a two-part project titled Noumene And Chronophotography, released on May 1 and May 4, respectively. Both are products of the artist’s attempts to “establish connections between photography and blockchain as time-based mediums.”
The first one, Noumene, is a 16-part generative series of audiovisual works, in which abstract origami-style figures twirl around what looks like a distressed film cell. A chorus of code-designed synth firecrackers accompanies the black-and-white animation, emphasizing 0xDEAFBEEF’s signature synthesis of sound and moving image.
“Noumenon is meant to represent the unknowable reality beyond the capacity of our senses – how do we communicate this in a sensual way?” he explained. “Sound in combination with movement is a powerful medium to convey feeling.”
0xDEAFBEEF, always from Noumene (2023). Photo courtesy of the artist
Chronophotography serves as a companion piece that collects “metaphorical observations» of a Noumene. In other words, one could consider the Noumenon as an object and the Chronophotograph as the eye of a camera.
Using a special blockchain transaction called “releaseShutter”, collectors can capture a sequential chronophotographic record of a Noumenon – much like how Muybridge photographed a horse in motion – which will be minted as a token on the blockchain. Each Chronophotograph taken from a Noumenon also increases in resolution, reflecting the development of camera technology.
0xDEAFBEEF, 3T Chronophotography, Epoch 4 (2023). Photo courtesy of the artist
Another participatory element is integrated into this part of the project. An owner of a Noumenon token can delegate an individual to activate the “releaseShutter” function, which will then list the delegate’s address on the blockchain as the “photographer” of the Chronophotograph.
Such interactivity, 0xDEAFBEEF said, extends the use of NFTs beyond that of a “property tracking mechanism”.
“It’s a nice use, but only one use of the rich potential of programmable blockchains, which I see more generally as a way to structure social interactions around a common point of reference,” he added. “I think the participatory/interactive dimension is a unique offering of this medium and deserves to be explored, as it has been by many artists.”
0xDEAFBEEF, 2T Chronophotography, Epoch 12 (2023). Photo courtesy of the artist
Not that you or your delegate can press “releaseShutter” an infinite number of times: a “time lock” ensures that collectors must wait a block of time – 12 seconds – before they can create another Chronophotograph. This block of time then doubles between Chronophotographs, so “eventually you’re going to wait a day, then two days, then months, years, and millennia before you can do the next one,” 0xDEAFBEEF said.
In theory, the increasing resolution of chronographs and the wait between them could extend into infinity. But, as 0xDEAFBEEF acknowledges, reality imposes limits. There is the meager human lifespan, if not the ceiling of computer technology. Even though machines may be developed in the future to handle an image with several million pixels, the fact is that “it’s probably going to break,” he said.
“In reality, you’re going to hit a limit,” he continued. “There is heat death of the universe, the sun will burn out – you have practical limits that you will eventually encounter.”
Time, however, observed or not, continues to flow.
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