HISTORIC EVENT by 0xDEAFBEEF

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Historic Event

Introduction

HISTORIC EVENT are a series of stop motion animations of junk and debris, performed in real time in synchronization with Ethereum. With every newly mined block (approx every 12 seconds) an animation frame is photographically captured and its SHA256 hash recorded in a transaction. The performance progresses by smoothly animating materials to form the first 8 digits of the starting frames blockhash.

The idea is to anchor these events in time. Spelling a recent blockhash shows that images could not have been prepared in advance. SHA256 image hashes recorded in consecutive blocks prove it could not have been any later. Piles of physical junk are full of entropy. They are optically complex, especially in motion. The detail and temporal coherence is beyond the current capabilities of generative AI models, offering proof of their physical existance.

Although they may appear to be "slop", optical and cryptographic proof make these verifiable HISTORIC EVENTS, a rare status in a media landscape that is becoming increasingly untethered from time and space.

Process

These stop motion animations are made through a unique process that I'll share in several installments. Animation is performed in block time, in sync with Ethereum.

The system is connected to an ETH node. When I capture a photograph, its SHA256 hash is automatically computed and recorded in an ETH transaction. I then have approx 12 seconds to change the scene and repeat. Like a time lapse or very slow film camera at 5 frames per minute: tick..tick..tick in block time.

Animation frame hashes are stored in consecutive ETH blocks. I can't take breaks, come back to it later, or undo, or make edits. It's documentation of a slow but real time performance in its raw state, with onchain proof of each frame being captured no later than each block's timestamp.

But could the photos have been prepared much earlier in advance, or faked? More in next installment.

Resulting animation to follow.

Running out of rope. Result from yesterday's process video. 395 frames of a real time stop motion performance, images captured at 12 second intervals and their SHA256 hashes recorded in consecutive ETH blocks. Cryptographic proof the images could have been made no later than the blocks' timestamps.

But could they have been prepared much earlier in advance? How do you know I'm not just "pushing play" on prerecorded material? The proof that these events occurred no earlier lies in the the alphanumeric code being spelled in the very content of the animation, using optically complex materials(i.e. junk/debris) moving coherently through time.

The code being spelled is the blockhash of the starting point (first frame's block) of the performance. In Ethereum, a blockhash is 64 alphanumeric hex digits that serve as a unique identifier of that block, like a fingerprint. Its value depends on the previous block, this blocks transactions, the timestamp and more, and for these reasons, to normal users it cannot be known in advance. Spelling the digits of the starting blockhash in the content of the animation prove that they could have been prepared no earlier than that block's timestamp.

Together, cryptographic and optical proof anchors the performance in time between these bounds, making it a verifiable HISTORIC EVENT. Albeit, one of junk and debris in a self-referential loop.

Why bother using junk to spell the letters? why not just overlay the blockhash code in the corner of the image? More in next installment. Link to ETH smart contract below.

Why animate junk to spell a blockhash? Ironically, waste, debris, detritus i.e. "slop" (the authentic kind) is difficult to fake; the detail and temporal coherence is beyond the current capabilities of generative AI models. Spelling an ETH blockhash with entropic debris anchors the performance in time as a historic event, a rare status in a media landscape that is becoming increasingly untethered from time and space.

Themes

ETH synced stop motion performances spelling a blockhash with junk is a nifty trick. but the intention is to go beyond just a technical curiosity. Many speak to themes of waste, consumption and invisible labor. Braindump of headspace at the time of making:
  • Walter Benjamin on Paul Klee's painting "Angelus Novus" (Angel of History)
  • Generative AI media and breakdown/fragmentation of consensus reality - Lacan, Baudrillard postmodernism. What any longer has the status of a historic event?
  • Blockchain as proposed solution: as source of truth, anchoring in fragmented reality
  • Blockchain and time - Bergson, Heideger
  • Relation to structualist film, stop motion animation (Jan Svankmejer on tactility, Bruce Bickford 70's claymations resembling generative AI surrealism)
  • Time anchoring: through cryptographic proof, and optical complexity and time coherence
  • 1. themes of wreckage, consumption, (invisible) labor. Waste, excrement, "slop"
  • 2. Optical complexity of waste; can't (at this time) be simulated. (note: how can AI simulate conciousness if it can't simulate shit?)
  • 3. Evokes tactile imagination. See Jan Svankmejer animations and his writings on tactility. Tactility as a bastion of human experience. Not understood by AI or virtuality. (can't be simulated in VR)
  • 4. Absurdity of documenting junk as "historic events". Satire of crypto art collectors propensity for declarations of historic.
Thinking about the vast archive of proof-of-delivery photos snapped by delivery drivers; millions of small private proofs that the machine is working.
Making stop motion animations of piles of junk, thinking about time, blockchains and accelerationism.

"A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."
- Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” 1940

Animator Jan Švankmajer on tactility: "Our sight is being corrupted on an unimaginable scale. Daily it is drowned and blunted by a flood of the most banal consumerist culture which, aided by television, commercial film and advertising, degrades our visual sensibilities. [...] To revive the general impoverishment of sensibilities in our civilization, the sense of touch can play an important part. The current dilemma facing our tactile sense is either to let it atrophy.. or to cultivate and apply it to functions other than manual labour." Shown below:

Jan Švankmajer "Dimensions of Dialogue", 1983

The slop that can be named is not the true slop: talking junk, debris,waste, shit that are high entropy, optically complex; challenging for simulation and AI video generation. If you can't realistically simulate shit, how can you simulate consciousness?

"Shit is the supreme emblem of organic entropy. The radical contingency of each shit, from bolus to turd, evokes an organic secretion so complex in composition that it implicitly mocks and possibility that the ego, as another bodily secretion, might be reduced to a manageable information profile.. most likely shit will continue to complicate this antiseptic fantasy of clean data and disembodied being." - Jeffrey Sconce, "The Technical Delusion" 2019

Technical Explanation of Process and Time Anchoring.

Animations performed in real time at the rate of ETH blockchain: new blocks are mined every 12 seconds. An animation frame is captured every 12 seconds

and that image's sha256 hash recorded in an ETH transaction mined in that block.


frame0001.jpg with image hash a39bb3a2c3ec1479b396df9d3283f4dcb4ec9343575b030c703b566310da961b

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x1581483936fa029e8548682d93f8bb96dd389c940d0cd420ea4dcb3e47bfec6b

Each animation frame has its hash recorded in a tx in consecutive Ethereum blocks, as they are made. https://etherscan.io/address/0x9b0234203Da7893cA592ADb43f1F1528830523D9

Result:

SHA256 image hashes stored in ETH transactions are cryptographic proof that photographs were captured NO LATER than the timestamps of those blocks. But what if the frames were prepared earlier in advance? To prove this is not the case, the animation spells the blockhash of the starting block, using the physical materials themselves embedded in the optically complex environment. Because the blockhash can't be predicted in advance, this is optical proof that photographs were captured NO EARLIER than when that block occured.

This animation was recorded starting at block 23484598, with blockhash 3df3fcaf62ad9811c7882871512b0c1d78e69b1b30e7ada751991ca543af1754. The first 8 digits are sufficient, as any specific 8 hex digit pattern (3df3fcaf in this case) will only occur on average once every 1634 years. Selected frames of animation spelling 3df3fcaf: Together with these proofs, the time coherence of the consecutive images anchors the performance in time within these bounds, making it a verifiable "historic event". Animation frame images are stored on webserver, Arweave and IPFS. Additionally, the raw transaction data is also stored on IPFS and arweave. The reason this is stored is so that we can construct a Merkle proof that the sha256 hash transacted and recorded in the block (time) we claim. (additional note about how if in the future raw transaction data is pruned from Ethereum nodes, although we can be confident of STATE (the image hash is correct), we could not cannot prove at what time that state was last changed - was it yesterday or 15 years ago?)

Storage

Image files and archive of raw ETH transactions are stored in multiple places:
Twitter Contract: 0x5147fbb77fe9627bc10f6df60e930af1f02ff533