True audio-visual art, uncompromisingly stored on the blockchain

For the short span of time that the NFT has existed, a compromise has been made — a token serves simply as a certificate confirming the right to own a work of art. NFT tokens usually contain links to external centralized services or third-party libraries to store the artwork itself. In a few more advanced cases, a piece of code or parameters for generating digital art also gets stored on the blockchain. Rarely, the full code needed to generate an artwork is stored, but even then this often requires additional manipulation, standard libraries, or an external resource to run. Those contracts may still contain external references or even mutable parameters — parameters (in many cases even the link to the artwork itself) that the NFT creator can modify later in the future (comparing this to traditional art, imagine going to check on your favorite Picasso in the living room and suddenly Pablo has decided to edit or burn a little or a lot of the work, just for personal reasons).

We understand that many of the trade-offs mentioned above are for the benefit of the market and the convenience of delivering content to the user. However, we believe that INWT will light a path to eternity. It will shift the paradigm of consumption, opening the eyes of both developers and artists to a new way forward.

INWT is the first true on-chain real-time generative audio-visual digital art project with instant, ready-to-use code output directly from the blockchain.

When we began this project, we set a goal for ourselves to develop a way of storing artwork completely and forever on the blockchain. Moreover, we sought to bypass the technical limitations of the blockchain in order to store the complex code that is necessary to generate non-trivial, significant audio-visual content. Anyone should be able to run this easily in real-time, and the result of the code execution should be worthy of being called digital art.

Owning an INWT is not just about owning a particular certificate for an artwork and then needing to travel to online marketplaces or centralized services to consume it. No — in the case of INWT, we have brought the ownership of a piece much closer to the ownership of a piece of traditional art, yet with all the advantages of blockchain technology. Like buying a painting: it is bought — it is in your hands — you are looking at it — it is yours. So in the case of INWT: it is a token in your wallet — its code is in the blockchain explorer — then, in a couple of mouse clicks, it is immediately on the screen of your device, right here and now without compression, without centralized services, exactly as it must be.

For us, as audio-visual artists with years of digital art experience, a lack of real-time media output is like a relic of the past. It’s an obsolete time when computers were too slow and it was simply not possible to run complex code fast enough to directly observe the result of its execution. For us, real-time is as natural as looking at the actual sea/fire/sunset, not just viewing a recorded video of the sea/fire/sunset. In some ways, the whole world around us is real-time code execution.

The gap between reality and a video of reality is huge. In the case of INWT, this gap is absent and will always be absent, thanks to the blockchain.

To achieve this, we had to adapt our code for storage on the blockchain. This process posed a challenge that gave way to the creation of a specific vision of art. This is the essence of digital art, when technical limitations give rise to artistic ideas - new technical solutions and creations emerge, and so on endlessly.

Each token is generated by a unique algorithm that yields both audio and visuals. Each algorithm is created randomly during a mint. The generator of these algorithms was specifically created by 404.zero in such a way that the audio-visual content of each token would be generated uniquely, and moreover, by running any of this code, the visuals will never be repeated with pixel accuracy.

Sound generators use the visuals as input, which ultimately creates a synesthetic effect and ensures that the sound will never repeat itself.

Simply — each INWT is like a live performance of the code and not a video recording of the performance. Owning an INWT token is owning this entity itself. Completely, uncompromisingly and forever.

Mint details

Mint will be exclusive to Hidden in Noise holders.
1 HiN will grant the opportunity to mint 1 INWT, 2 HiN grant 2 INWT etc.

• Date: 04/04/2022

• Time: 4:04 PM UTC

• Mint Period: 404 blocks (~90 minutes)

• Supply: 320

• Mint Price: 0.404 ETH

Source code

All of the source code for INWT is written directly onto the Ethereum blockchain. The source code output can be displayed within any browser and generates visual outputs with responsive audio. These outputs are real-time generative with infinite possibilities, so everything you see and hear in the present moment will never exist again.

From a technical perspective, the source code is all derived from WebGL + JS, compiled into pure HTML code.

True to the on-chain movement

• Entirely stored at Ethereum blockchain

• No samples and no textures

• No third-party libraries

• No links outside the blockchain

• No IFPS or AWS

• No properties

• No hard work to run the art

OpenSea

INWT will feature no properties, meaning each piece is equally unique. INWT will be scoped at OpenSea but the media content will not be visible at the marketplace unless the OpenSea tech team tweaks some stuff on their side. We provide the INWT collection explorer for easy access to the art of INWT.

UPD: Opensea made a custom integration to make INWT viewable on the platform.

NIN > INWT

The token’s basic algorithm will be determined by a hash function using the minter’s HiN ID, INWT ID and the block number in which it was minted to synthesize the INWT’s DNA, i.e. audiovisual algorithm and input parameters. The algorithm can also incorporate outputs as new inputs, meaning INWT will be ever-evolving and unpredictable. Much like HiN, you can expect each token to have its own ‘mood’, while still being forever changing, infinite, and without loop.

Utility

Being 100% code-based also brings the benefit of being infinitely scalable in resolution. The resolution will only be limited by the computational performance of your hardware. This means it can be displayed on any surface in any resolution, or be printed in any size. This also means the possibility of using INWT code as a source for future NFT collections.

Time-locked contract

The contract was opened to mint for 404 blocks (~90 mins) on April 4th. After that time, the contract has automatically lock forever; meaning, minting has been closed forever, and the art can never be altered or deleted.

The future of HiN and INWT

HiN will continue to be the core token in the 404.zero universe, and act as a pass for all future drops and projects we will produce. At least.

For INWT, the possibilities are endless and truly open the door for immutability on the Ethereum blockchain. Because it is pure code, there could be extra functionality for using the code. We have ideas for that.