Radarboy3000 - Music for Blockchains

Music for Blockchains is a dynamic NFT and constantly evolving generative artwork and soundscape, visualising and playing data from each new Bitcoin block mined.

One of the first fully on-chain generative audio ordinals, Music for Blockchains is a dynamic and generative audio crypto artwork that reacts to, and grows, along with the blockchain. Just as with Bitcoin, there is no final or fixed form for the artwork. As the chain evolves, so does the work.

The collection consists of 64 infinite long-form generative artworks - one for each of the 64 characters of the bitcoin hash. The inscription, including all the audio generators, is fully on-chain, meaning no external libraries are used, and the code is embedded into the Bitcoin chain itself.

Blockchain Data Art

I am a generative and data artist, who loves to use data as the fuel to my artworks and animation. I do not use data in the traditional sense, as in my work is not data visualisation, but rather I prefer to use the data to give off emotions that help the viewer "feel" the data. Music for Blockchains is a perpetual ambient music and generative art machine that visualizes and turns the latest Bitcoin hash and price into audio.

Each new data point mixes into the artwork's unique DNA. the DNA is used to drive visual output, sound and animation

A Constantly evolving DNA

Each piece is seeded from the ordinal’s hash ID, and mixed in with the DNA of every BTC block that is mined after it. A binary representation of the DNA determines block placement and colour. The overall mood, visual output and soundscape of the artwork are determined by BTC price fluctuations.

An Ambient Soundscape

Inspired by the groundbreaking, genre-defining work of Brian Eno's Music for Airports, which in turn was inspired by Steve Reich's seminal work, the artwork uses the same chord structure, D-flat major seventh chord with an added ninth, which gives it a beautiful, reflective, yet hopeful mood.

D-flat major 7th chord with an added 9th: F, A-flat, and from the next octave C, D-flat, E-flat, F, and A-flat

Each note moves at a slightly different speed and has a slightly different note length, generated by the artwork's DNA. As with the visual output, a simple set of rules leads to something that's sonically very complex - an infinite composition where the notes are not likely to come back into sync again.

The artwork's DNA drives the speed and note length, creating a complex soundscape, from simple rules

The Bitcoin price also plays a part in the mood - when the price is increasing the music tends to be brighter, when the price falls, the music is darker. Hand-coded web audio is hard, especially when you're trying to squeeze everything into a tiny file size, to keep everything on-chain and keep the mint prices reasonable. Custom filters, reverb (a 1k convolution filter!) and detuning, all driven by the DNA, adds further subtle colour to the sound.

Release

64 inscriptions at 0.025 BTC dropping Tuesday, May 18, 2023. If you are a collector of any of my previous work, you will be granted early access to a maximum of two inscriptions at a special rate of 0.015 BTC. Please contact me before Wednesday, to get on the allowlist.

Credit to Tero Parviainen and to Mathieu Henri aka P01 for helping point me in the right direction.

#Generative #Music #Javascript #DataArt #CodeArt #NFT #Ordinal