first, listen to the song (video in tweet):

You wake up, agitated, unsure of what’s going on. You don’t know where you are, you realize you don’t even know who you are. You are here, and you are breathing, but not much other than that is known. Confusion is beating at 105 BPM. You hear three distant deep sounds, echoing deeply in this liminal space. You try to scream, to see if anyone can hear you - is anybody else here? It’s not working. As you try to calm down, you begin to look around and see long black parallel lines, you count 8, each with 8 symmetrically positioned geometric shapes of varying sizes, all much bigger than you, across the lines. They all have 10 sides, some of them with giant decagonal halos around them, and you begin to wonder whether you’re in a dream or some subconscious state and whether the number 8, 10 or 64 mean anything to you. The deep echoing sounds are getting closer, distorted, almost as if the walls of sound are closing in on you, and you feel fear bubbling up inside. Run.

is listening to music a passive experience? should music be free to use? does copyright matter in a world of abundance and verifiable digital property? what are the roles of humans and machines in the evolution of music making?

These are some of the questions that 'Particles' prompts us to contemplate. A collection of 30,000 unique generative interactive open onchain audio-visual pieces, Particles is the latest experiment from dav, a serial music innovator playing at the intersection of music, software and digital ownership. “generative interactive open onchain audio-visual pieces” sounds cool - but what does it actually mean and why should you care? Let’s break it down.

generative: each time someone mints a Particle, an algorithm (created by dav on the Prohibition platform, which is powered by the ArtBlocks engine) takes in inputs provided by dav and produces a completely new and unique visual art with a corresponding looped sound as a result of mixing these inputs. In the case of Particles, some of these inputs are the 64 notes, bass note length and frequency, white, dark or red background which changes the sound pattern, sound wave shape, and others. The algorithm also creates rarity through dav providing it with how often a specific feature should appear (e.g. hypers or red should only appear on 1% of the collection). So not only are pieces unique from an astronomical number of possible combinations, they are also uniquely rare in varying degrees. Although generally treated as fine art, with a Fidenza selling for 1,000 ETH in 2021, generative art is undergoing a makeover as platforms like Prohibition and the Art Blocks Engine make the medium more accessible. Ok, we understand generative now.

interactive: if you haven’t yet, go play with a Particle. Using 12 control keys on your keyboard, combined with moving your mouse position on the canvas, you are able to modify the piece’s basic audio loop in real time to create incredibly unique textures, all from the same original output. From changing the speed, reverb, pitch or delay to more obscure controls like distortion and filters, there are infinite sounds that can be achieved with each edition. Near-infinite sounds in a single piece made from near-infinite input combinations. Is it starting to click yet? There are different levels of engaging with music as a listener, from most passive to most active, and Particles assures we are fully engaged in the moment:

1. Background listening: we encounter music in the background of a TikTok or an in an elevator. We are barely pay attention to it, but it’s there.

2. Passthrough listening: we listen to music as it plays on a playlist we found to fit a mood. It is making up our environment, yet we are not actively engaged.

3. Focused listening: listening to the song is our main priority, we are actively engaged in the act of listening.

4. Comprehensive listening: we attempt to break down the music and understand how it is structure or composed while listening. Mostly something musicians do to study songs, which requires our entire focus.

5. Interactive listening: like Particles, our actions modify the outcome of the music. We are active participants in its creation, blurring the lines between listener and creator.

open: open, in Particles case, means that every artwork produced, and the code that produced them, are public domain (CC0 for the art, open-source for the code). Anyone can use the outputs as samples for their music, and anyone can use the algorithm to create their own version of Particles, without having to pay or obtain permission from dav. This means dav does not retain exclusivity to use, monetize, or control neither the outputs nor the code. But how does this make sense for an artist? This is where our relatively newfound ability to verify digital property comes in. Because we can now check to see who created a piece of content and we can verifiably know that to be true, everyone can freely use and remix the work now (as opposed to waiting for copyright to expire) and the ownership of the original asset has a path to value, allowing artists to earn from their art in the process. Abundance of public goods, sustainable artists, and excited collectors. This might be a good time to read 6529’s writings on CCO.

The path to value for the original asset is not obvious though. Because, as 6592 says, “Artistic importance follows “power laws” - where the most important work becomes extremely valuable and there is a long-tail of work that is only appreciated by a small group”, it is only the most important work (we could spend days arguing about the definition of important) that retains value. In this new world of open art, where value is assigned to cultural and memetic relevance, the way to become the most important work is to seize the memes of production. dav is betting that, as Particles get minted and are owned by a varied distribution of collectors, some of its collectors or musicians that notice the piece will use it to the point that it becomes a meme (widely distributed cultural object), which in turn creates demand and value for the original assets. Or maybe dav and his collectors have an implicit agreement that it doesn’t matter whether Particles achieves memetic value at all, collectors want to pay now for this art to exist in the public good for all to use in the hopes of accelerating a move towards an open music universe.

onchain: we can verify that the original digital pieces (in this case, 30,000 unique editions of one algorithm as they get minted) were made by the artist, and live immutably under the owners / collectors’ control. The code for Particles also exists immutably onchain, thanks to the Art Blocks engine. Provable ownership of the asset is what enables us to be able to assign value to digital content.

You start frantically running through the parallel lines, unsure if you’re talking to yourself or to the decagons. Your voice gains power, almost as if you were speaking through a megaphone. You keep going, seeing the end of the lines approach, increasingly desperate and louder in your search for answers. You get to the end of the line and look up and down, but you can’t see what’s coming. There’s no going back now, as you take a leap outside the lines into the unknown. You are still in the liminal space, now floating through a void where your voice echoes and the decagons emit pulsating decagonal waves. Time feels like it speeds up, or does it slow down? you’re not really sure if time is the same here. Shapes and voices intertwine as your mind gets blurrier, and, just when it’s almost too much to process, everything falls away and clarity surfaces. You are in the void, except now you are calm as you realize that you are a wave inside dav’s particle. You are unique and alive. And, although you may not be in control of your movements, it doesn’t matter because you are at peace in both movement and stillness.

So, the ultimate question we are left with with Particles is - can a unique generative interactive open onchain audio-visual artwork become important? In the short term, we know this is unlikely to happen. Nouns, ones of the largest and most important CC0 projects, has been unable to increase value of Noun ownership despite having a treasury of thousands of ETH pointed at the single mission of propagating the Nouns meme, and there are only 876 Nouns so far. So, thinking that there will be enough collector demand and cultural relevance for a 30,000 piece collection without a dedicated treasury to aid its search for importance is definitely a stretch. But that is exactly what makes Particles and dav so special. When most people are thinking about the latest ponzinomic-of-the-week, dav is thinking in decades, living and breathing in the open music ecosystem he is helping create. He acts as an ego-less reflection of his own work - open, transparent, and establishing the foundation for others to build on; with enough humility and confidence to go against the grain and avoid hype to let the work speak for itself.

Particles sits in its own field, and no one is coming close. There are examples of generative music (e.g. EulerBeats), of interactive music (e.g. Talk Time, Heno), of open music (e.g. Songcamp), but none that can thread all of these together into a cohesive beautiful work of art. This is why we cannot rate Particles in the same scale as other music we have reviewed, and why we are awarding it the first “-” rating. A numerical score is only helpful in relative, when comparing objects of the same kind. Particles is not like any other music project out there, and it deserves to be recognized for it. If you’d like to find out the musicollectors rating for Particles, from some of the most informed collectors in the space, collect this review and DM musicurator on Twitter or Telegram.

Particles acts as a guiding light, a beacon of optimism and hope that one day we could get to live in a post copyright world, where music is free to listen and use and yet valuable to own. A world where imagination runs wild and is not impeded or taken down by fear-based IP protections. A world of abundance, where a 30,000 piece collection seems small and people understand the value of infinitely usable generative art. A world where we are all particles becoming playable waves, infinitely remixed in quantum harmony.

More on the song:

Date of mint: October 2nd, 2023

Mint details: 457 / 30,000 minted at time of review

Current price: still minting, 0.001 ETH

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