Surprise is a new generative art series of one hundred pieces, a study about subdivision, colors and movement. Surprise Land is an immersive exhibition to experience Surprises in an unique way.

This series is born from my passion for colors and minimalism and from the inspiring works of Sol LeWitt. I love his use of colors and perspective which creates optical illusions at some point.

The name Surprise comes from the emotion you can feel when you discover something unexpected. This feeling has stuck with me ever since I started writing code that produce visuals based on randomness, and I love it!

For this project, I challenged myself to be fully independent. That means, I wrote the code, made the art, built the website, built the exhibition, deployed the contract and made the communication. However, none of this would have been possible without the amazing and magical work that the Oncyber and Manifold teams are doing!

The 100 Surprises have been carefully curated by myself among 5000+ seeds. It was a long and difficult task but an essential one. I wanted to keep the size of the series small and representative of the range of possibilities that the program offers.

Program

Surprises were generated by a Python program in Blender that takes an input hash (256-bit integer) and emits the associated 120-frames structure output. Surprises were then rendered with Cycles as a two-dimensional animation (mp4) and exported as a three-dimensional file (glb).

The algorithm builds on some of the techniques and code I’ve been developing over the last four years, including Interactive Quadtree Series, Hexagonal and Surprise Genesis.

Starting from a simple shape - a cube - the algorithm generate a more complex structure following 4 simple rules:

• 4 levels of subdivision (figure 1)

• 2 subdivision patterns (figure 2)

• 3 axis movement with sine functions (figure 3)

• 11-color palette (figure 4)

• and some magic 🪄

Marketplace

Surprise had to be a fully immersive experience, from the artworks and the exhibition but also the marketplace. The website is built from scratch with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, the auction mechanics are built with the amazing Manifold Dev Tools and everything is hosted thanks to Netlify. I have been inspired by the amazing work of Michael Kozlowski on Tectonics website.

It is available on desktop and mobile at surpriseland.xyz.

The collection has been released under a custom smart contract, made with Manifold Studio, on the Ethereum blockchain.

Each Surprise is auctioned except for one (see below). The auctions have a starting price of 0.1 ETH and a 24-hour countdown will be started on the first auction. Bids in the last 10 minutes will reset the auction to 10 minutes.

Follow the auctions on surpriseland.xyz.

Exhibition

Surprise Land is an immersive experience designed to immerse yourself in this new generative art series and discover it as it is in my mind.

I wanted to create an universe where people can meet, chat, explore and experience something new together. Turns out Oncyber platform was the perfect match. Thank you Rayan!

During the conception of the universe, Surprise series was the starting point, limiting myself to the use of cubes and a small range of colors including the 11-color palette. I’ve also took my inspiration from old video games, amusement parks, artists and mathematicians (Maurits Cornelis Escher, Leonardo Fibonacci, Karl Menger) and from The Open Metaverse by 6529.

Surprise Land includes one main world giving access to seven experiences (Fibonacci, Hive, Labyrinth, Mirrors, Sponge, Tree and Upside Down) to discover the Surprises as three-dimensional sculptures and the Museum to discover them as two-dimensional animations. Each space as been designed to experience the pieces in an unique way and plays with different concepts:

• Fibonacci (8 Surprises) - plays with your perception of your height through several rooms following the famous Fibonacci numbers.

• Hive (16) - invites you to jump in a seventy-two cubes room.

• Labyrinth (17) - asks you for orientation. Through this endless maze, you should drop pebbles along the way.

• Mirrors (10) - requires vigilance. In this infinite room in appearance, things can be less real than you think.

• Sponge (12) - allows you to explore the famous Menger Sponge fractal.

• Tree (12) - takes root in the mountain. Climb from branch to branch, being careful not to fall.

• Upside Down (24) - plays on the illusion of walking on the walls, on the celling, being upside down and traveling through an infinite zero-gravity cube.

• Museum (100) - gathers the one hundred Surprises in one colorful place and highlights the 11-color palette of Surprise.

FYI, I couldn’t resist to hide some easter eggs… Will you find them all?

Surprise Hunt

If you are hoping for a Surprise but don’t have the liquidity for the auctions, this may be your chance!

One lonely Surprise as been hidden. Will you be able to decode all the secrets of Surprise Land and crack open the wallet?

Why Surprise #44? For Error 404 Not Found 🤷‍♂️

Wallet → 0x124770db923f3adae4edfa28f42ef571b43bbebb

Surprise → surpriseland.xyz/pieces/44

[Update] 🔓 Surprise #44 has been found, details here :

Future

I’m working on a new Surprise-like algorithm based on 20 subdivision patterns in JavaScript. In parallel, I want to focus more on physicals and this study about grids is my first-ever print test. Seeing my works on paper has a different feeling that I want to explore in my future projects.

Keep an eye on my Twitter for my next stuff.

See you in Surprise Land 🌐

Official links

• Website: surpriseland.xyz

• Exhibition: oncyber.io/surpriseland

• Contract: etherscan.io/token/0xc5f9b9845a7b04bdbc66d3f52128c4634054b23c

• Opensea: opensea.io/collection/surprise-nicolasdnl

• Twitter: twitter.com/nicolasdnl