K21 Collection Artist Collaborates Anonymously with Kanon to Haunt the Blockchain in New NFT Art Project, Daemonica
Kanon today announced the launch of a new NFT art project, Daemonica, a visual and mathematical system of onchain occult operations created in collaboration with a renowned artist from the K21 Collection who wishes to remain anonymous.
Inspired by the recent maturation of onchain NFT art spawning vast and composable ecosystems, Daemonica pursues the esoteric side of this phenomena with a similar ambition. It does so with NFTs that take the form of two types of 8 x 8 matrices of numbers: “entities” and “xe_ntities.” Using novel occult mathematical functions inspired by signal processing, biblical exegesis, and 1990s-era cybergoth philosophy, entities are dynamically generated on chain out of the image and metadata of other NFTs in the owner’s wallet. An entity is constantly in flux; snapshots of it in time can be taken by “casting” a xe_ntity, a frozen copy of its mirror image that can itself then be bound to other NFTs.
Daemonica is thus a meta artwork. It stitches together onchain NFT artworks, creating complex circuits of interaction and mutation. Change one and you change the others. Each NFT in the ecosystem can become a platform or product of another using Daemonica’s three spells: “manifest,” “cast,” and “bind.” Feedback loops can be built between artworks, spawning a new kind of time and a new kind of art.
The curatorial relationship with the artist consisted largely of over 20,000 words exchanged pseudonymously via email. The artist would leave challenges, answer questions, provide visuals, and shape the philosophy of the artwork that emerged in collaboration. “What if a blockchain = a new manifestation of those old and vital mystic traditions? An incorporeal space where everything is saved, nothing is forgotten, and every creation is an act of renewal?,” they asked in an initial exchange. “What might a ‘spiritualized’ entity in this domain look like, feel like, and be made of?”
Kanon’s curators, engineers, and designers were led through the process as much by fealty to the artist’s words as by the many synchronicities that accompanied solutions as they appeared. “Base64 is exactly what it sounds like, a number system that uses 64 unique characters as digits: 0–9, A–Z, a–z, +, /. Well, those 64 characters can be arranged in an 8 x 8 matrix (8 x 8 = 64). See where I’m going…?” wrote Kanon contributor 0xAnimist after a late-night session. “This is real sorcery now,” responded the artist.
Magic is the practice of making maps with such fidelity that manipulating them produces real effects in the territories they chart. Humans and our ancestors have been doing it since we first started scratching snakeskin patterns onto ochre and entoptic phenomena onto cave walls. Daemonica brings this praxis to the blockchain: image magic for the digital age.
Daemonica’s website provides an interactive grimoire — a spell book in the form of a command-line interpreter — for artists, collectors, degens, and other magicians to haunt the blockchain at scale.
Onchain Entities Brought to Life through OccultMath: How Daemonica Work
A Daemonica entity is brought to life with the “animo” function.
Calling “manifest” on an entity reveals its current 8 x 8 numerical matrix. The numbers are derived through a novel formula, “sixtyFourier,” that converts the base64-encoded representations of other NFTs currently held in the entity holder’s wallet into a series of frequencies from 0 to 88 that form the numbers of the matrix. As the entity holder moves onchain NFTs in and out of their wallet, their entity is transformed.
To take a snapshot of their entity, the holder can call “cast.” Cast as in a spell and a mold, this function creates a xe_ntity with a matrix whose values are each the difference between those of the entity at that moment and the maximum frequency, 88. If you visualize an entity as a landscape where each value in the matrix represents height, then a xe_ntity’s matrix fills the space above it. By preserving a potentially significant moment in the life of an entity, a xe_ntity acts like a talisman.
Casting transforms the entity in the process. Each value in an entity’s matrix is updated using a base89 (i.e., numbers from 0 to 88) version of the numogram: a qabbalistic Tree of Life developed two decades ago by the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, Ccru, for the digital age. Every time an entity is cast, its matrix values progress one stage along the tree.
While the matrix of an entity is rendered in common numerals, that of a xe_ntity is encoded in Tic Xenotation, a number system developed alongside the numogram by a potentially fictional NASA scientist exploring prime numbers as a signal for intelligent alien life. As the artist puts it, “It reads like the lost sermon of the great mystic and mathematician Dmitri Egorov.”
Spawned from entities at birth, xe_ntities can then be irreversibly bound to any other NFT through the “bind” function. They will thereafter automatically move with the NFT that they are bound to when that NFT is transferred.
To perform all of these operations on chain, Kanon developed a new Solidity math library, OccultMath.sol, which removes some of the guardrails present in the standard SafeMath library to provide new mathematical primitives without compromising on security and efficiency.
In sum, Daemonica entities and xe_ntities inhabit the universe of onchain art, serving as an ever changing marker of occult time that can be manipulated by the owner to perform magic by making art. As the artist describes it, “The potential of snapshotting the different stages of a changing entity opens up even stranger dimensions of use. It’s almost like each entity then has the potential of building its own ‘blockchain.’ But it would function like an entity’s ‘calendar’ within Daemonica’s parlance (given that the date of creation is called a ‘new day’).”
A Rich Pulse to Animate a New Class of Living NFT Projects
NFTs that provide visual renderings entirely through onchain operations open the door for creators and developers to create complex dynamic NFTs. Defining the operations by which an NFT can go beyond mere gimmickry and actually be brought to life is a significant technical and metaphysical challenge.
Daemonica provides NFT artists and developers with a rich dynamic heartbeat that can be used to animate a wide range of creations. Weaving complex relationships between entities, xe_ntities, and future NFT projects may produce a kind of art we haven’t seen before. Kanon is excited to be currently working with a number of artists, some of whom also produced works for the K21 Collection, to be the first to build on top of this new esoteric primitive.
Daemonica Distribution
A total of only 4,428 Daemonica entities can ever be minted. Initially, 1,107 will be distributed.
The first Daemonica distribution will occur during the inaugural Entoptic × Kanon WAGMIAMI NFT Festival. Minting of the entities will begin at approximately 10pm U.S. Eastern Time on 1 December 2021 and will be facilitated by the Daemonica website. For the first 48 hours, minting will require participants to hold a KLIST NFT, which holders of the K21 token can mint for free (aside from gas cost) on the Daemonica website.
During these first 48 hours, participants will be able to mint a maximum of three Daemonica entities. After 48 hours from the commencement of minting, anyone will be able to mint as many entities as they wish, with a maximum of 21 per mint, while the available supply lasts.
Minting cost for all participants will be 0.088 ETH per Daemonica entity. The revenue generated from the Daemonica project will be shared 50/50 between the anonymous artist and Kanon.
About Kanon
More information on the remaining Daemonica distributions will be made available soon.
Kanon is a collective of art, design, and cryptonative technology professionals dedicated to establishing enduring protocols and products for the art of the next 100 years. Kanon leverages the decentralized finance ecosystem to recast patronage, philanthropy, curation, and custodianship. In doing so, Kanon is creating a new model in which artistic expression, structural experimentation, and financial return are mutually reinforcing.
In March 2021, Kanon launched the K21 Collection, a closed-end art vault of 21 unique and original NFT artworks by a diverse roster of influential and pioneering contemporary, digital, and cryptonative artists. In August 2021, Kanon launched KSPEC, an open-source, permissionless protocol that provides institutional-grade provenance to any NFT and allows creators to make any NFT extensible and updatable.
For further enquiries please contact media@kanon.art.
