Over the past nine months, I have been working on a new generative series celebrating a milestone in my crypto art practice: five years of creating generative clouds. Conceptually, the series connects to my generative “Seed Phrase Visualization” series (July 2018) and the subsequent “Cloud Seed Phrase Words Visualization” (September 2018). This pivotal series led me to focus on clouds as both subject matter and material.
The series also pays homage to the Scotch tape cloud paintings of Spencer Finch, who utilized overlapping tape stripes to create cloud formations. Since discovering his pieces, I’ve been captivated by the generative creation of clouds. “Noctilucent Mementi” results from numerous iterations in approaching this project with Python.
The Artwork’s Title: Noctilucent Mementi
The title’s first part, “noctilucent”, from the Latin roots meaning “luminous in the dark,” refers to the highest and mostly invisible clouds on Earth. These clouds become visible only when the sun is 6-16 degrees below the horizon. For me, it is symbolic of memories floating in the subconscious. Noctilucent Clouds are invisible memories, glowing when revisited.
The title also includes “mementi,” synonymous with keepsakes or souvenirs. I carefully curated photos of clouds from the past five years’ events, trips, and exhibitions as a foundation for these generative visual memories. Each artwork represents and specifies the location and year the photo was taken, forming a visual timeline of my artistic and personal development over the past five years.
The Numerology within the Collection
As with most of my artworks, I enjoy using numerology as a building block within the series. The edition size of 210 artworks references Bitcoin’s fixed supply of 21 million and the 210th day each year, which happens to be my birthday during non-leap years.
2 + 1 + 0 equals 3, a number that has been a constant in my artwork for many years. For me, 3 represents the past, present, and future, as well as the three countries I have lived in.
In particular, my layered physical paintings, like the examples above, explore my identity as a nomad: a hardly visible background layer representing Poland, a place I’m connected to by birth, but a culture with which I have little association; the primary layer depicting my formative years in Germany where I attended school and university, and new woven layers representing my new decade in Canada, gradually covering the other layers.
Returning to numerology, my birth month (July) equals my lucky number 7, which, when multiplied by three, is, of course, 21 as well.
Lastly, each artwork consists of 21 layers: three background layers and three gradient layers, six cloud shape layers with “tapes” and contours, three filled accent shapes, three contoured accent shapes, and three highlight shapes.
I chose the drop date of the series as 10/20 (October 20th) at noon (12:00 p.m. ET). The edition size, inverted, equals the artwork’s mint price: 210 editions at 0.12 ETH.
Drop Details Noctilucent Mementi
I am excited to partner with Sovrn.art for the release of the series. Sovrn is an artist-led, indie drop studio with a deep understanding, focus, and care for its artists. Working with a team whose values align with mine was essential to me.
Following the announcement on Twitter a few days ago, the Allow List is already over-allocated at the time of writing. Please try to mint on time. The Allow List mint window is Friday, October 20th, 2023, from 12:00 p.m. ET (noon) to 12:34 p.m. ET.
UPDATE: Sold Out
I am deeply honoured to share that the Noctilucent Mementi series, consisting of all 210 artworks, completely sold out within a mere 24 hours. The artworks are now available on the secondary market on the Sansa or Opensea.
You are on the Allow List if you hold one of my artworks. The snapshot was taken on October 11th, 2023. If you have delegated a mint wallet via Delegate, the delegated wallet will be the one on the AL. You don’t need to delegate specifically for this mint; the Sovrn team pulled the addresses from the Delegate’s registry. You can check to confirm your allow-listed delegate wallet here.
The mint site will be was announced on sovrn.art one hour prior to mint time, as well as on my own and Sovrn’s Twitter.
