RECALL

RECALL is a dynamic cryptoart series inscribed as 77 ordinals on Bitcoin. The artworks react to live mempool data, altering composition in response. They change constantly and evolve over long periods of block time.

The mempool is a waiting room for Bitcoin transactions, an in-between state where every send, buy or sell is held temporarily in memory. The pool grows as activity increases on the blockchain, it shrinks as relative demand decreases.

Although RECALL reacts to mempool data as it happens, to see more changes, the artwork must be left open. Some changes happen after one block, others take hundreds or thousands of blocks to emerge. RECALL must be kept running to see them.

As much as decentralised blockchains such as Bitcoin offer freedom, they also come with conditions and structures of control. RECALL also has conditionality built in.

Every change in RECALL is subjective. Changes are measured relative to blockchain conditions at the time the viewer opened the piece. Restarting the artwork means restarting the process.

All the imagery is derived from a single directional arrow. The shape of the arrow is warped and distorted many times, until the original is unrecognisable.

Adapting visual cues from the utopian forms of modernism and futurism, this series connects them directly to the blockchain. The images of data in motion sometimes also resemble space battle scenes from science fiction films.

RECALL sustains a constant in-between state, like the mempool. There is no final or fixed form for the artworks. As long as there are waiting transactions on Bitcoin, the artwork will continue to develop.

The artworks are 100% on-chain and the Bitcoin node used as a data source can be changed by the viewer, by pressing ‘R’.

‘Speed now illuminates reality whereas light once gave objects of the world their shape.’ -Paul Virilio