923 EMPTY ROOMS

The work and its context

923 EMPTY ROOMS is project 1 on the Art Blocks V2 core contract 0x145789247973c5d612bf121e9e4eef84b63eb707, published under the canonical slug 923-empty-rooms-by-casey-reas and credited to Casey REAS. The indexed project record reports a completed edition of 924 of 924 invocations, runtime p5@1.0.0, and the official description: 923 Empty Rooms is an artwork about simulation and the history of visual representation and abstraction. Each room is a space to explore. Each of the 923 unique rooms contains a simulated still life, an arrangement of forms. There are six primary forms, each linked to a city: Sun (Tokyo), Shard (Berlin), Cargo (London), Hive (New York), Pyramid (CDMX), and Moon (Los Angeles). A series of rooms will be minted over the course of a simultaneous, six-day exhibition at galleries in each city. There are 923 rooms in total to iterate through every possible combination of the six shapes: 1 form = 6 unique combinations 2 forms = 21 unique combinations 3 forms = 56 unique combinations 4 forms = 126 unique combinations 5 forms = 252 unique combinations 6 forms = 462 unique combinations 923 Empty Rooms is an evolution of An Empty Room, commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for the Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952, 1982 exhibition. An Empty Room was installed at LACMA from 9 April to 2 July 2023. ¹²

Those figures are current index observations retrieved on 2026-09-19, not a reconstruction of the original public sale announcement. Atlas position is a catalogue ordinal and is not the on-chain project ID. The live collection page and the Hasura projects_metadata row agree on title, slug, contract, and project ID after a filtered query that used the exact slug. ¹²

Contract 0x145789247973c5d612bf121e9e4eef84b63eb707. Aspect ratio indexed as 1.0. Website https://www.brightmoments.io/923emptyrooms.

This essay treats the stored artist program, four independently identified outputs, and a freshly checked AB5D holding (or an explicit collection gap) as primary evidence. Metadata traits are cited only when they were returned for the same V2 contract token IDs that were visually inspected. They do not replace looking at the pictures. ³⁴

Conception and development

The official project description is the development account used here. Interview or dossier sentences that name a different slug are not treated as statements about this series. 923 Empty Rooms is an artwork about simulation and the history of visual representation and abstraction. Each room is a space to explore. Each of the 923 unique rooms contains a simulated still life, an arrangement of forms. There are six primary forms, each linked to a city: Sun (Tokyo), Shard (Berlin), Cargo (London), Hive (New York), Pyramid (CDMX), and Moon (Los Angeles). A series of rooms

The development account used here is the specific source named in the citations, not a paraphrase of an artist-dossier page. Where that account is an official project description written in the artist's voice, that limit is stated rather than upgraded into an unpublished studio diary. Where an interview exists, the sentences that actually name 923 EMPTY ROOMS are the ones relied on. ⁵¹

Secondary pages that only repeat the marketplace listing are not treated as independent conception sources. ²⁵

How the work was constructed

The complete artist program for slug 923-empty-rooms-by-casey-reas was retrieved from projects_metadata.script filtered by that exact slug. The UTF-8 payload is 29178 bytes with SHA-256 5298304d3583d02f62aaf6e35c1ffd682c52468d69a74073833b7e280032661f. Runtime on the project record is p5@1.0.0. The script was read in full; it was not executed in this research session. ⁶

The stored generator is 29178 bytes, SHA-256 5298304d3583d02f62aaf6e35c1ffd682c52468d69a74073833b7e280032661f, runtime p5@1.0.0. Detected source markers: setup, draw, WEBGL, createCanvas, keyPressed, tokenData, hash. Named functions include beginLinesShader, berlinParams, cdmxParams, createDisplacementMapTexture, createGround, createStillLife, defineColors, defineRez, doIt, draw. tokenData.hash is read in source. Output then follows the drawing path those functions implement. Token 0 observation: Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, mid-tone and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 95,104,112). File size 1064223 bytes. Indexed features: Red True; Blue True; City Tokyo; Code 999999; Green True; # Suns 0; # Hives 0; # Moons 0

Visual claims come from inspected media-proxy PNGs plus indexed token features.

Seed handling is visible in the retrieved program: tokenData.hash is read in source. Time and interaction behaviour in code is: Loop behaviour inferred only from source keywords. The inspected PNG is a static frame. A handler found in source is not the same thing as a control that was pressed in a live renderer during this session; tested controls are listed only when an actual key or pointer action was performed. ⁶⁷

External dependencies are those declared by script_type_and_version plus any library identifiers inside the file. Public visibility of the stored script does not grant a right to redistribute the raw artist source in this package, so the analysis cites functions and byte length rather than reprinting the program. ⁶⁸

The mint

Indexed chronology for project 1 on 0x145789247973c5d612bf121e9e4eef84b63eb707 is as follows. First token minted_at is 2023-08-10T18:04:11+00:00. activated_at is 2023-08-10T18:52:11+00:00. start_datetime is 2023-08-19T16:00:00+00:00. completed_at is 2023-08-19T17:01:35+00:00. Invocations stand at 924 of a maximum 924, with complete=true on the retrieved row. ²³

Calculated intervals from those timestamps: first mint to activation is 48.0 minutes; activation to start_datetime is 8.88 days; start_datetime to completion is 1.03 hours; first mint to completion is 8.96 days. These are differences of indexed clock fields, not a claim about when a web storefront button became visible to every collector. A first mint that precedes start_datetime is treated as an early or reserved mint unless a separate allocation record is produced. ²³

Indexed clocks: first 2023-08-10T18:04:11+00:00, activated 2023-08-10T18:52:11+00:00, start 2023-08-19T16:00:00+00:00, completed 2023-08-19T17:01:35+00:00. Early first-mint timestamps are not labelled reserved without a separate allocation record.

Historic per-token ETH prices for the original public sale were not recovered from a primary price table during this session and remain unresolved. Any floor price visible on a marketplace page in 2026 is a current listing observation, not the 2021 ask. ¹²

Copyright and licensing

The project record stores the artwork licence label 'CC BY-NC 4.0'. That string includes an explicit 4.0 version and is treated as Creative Commons version 4.0. Code rights for the artist program are not separately labelled on the same field; they are treated as unknown rather than assumed identical to the artwork deed. ²⁸

Artwork label copied exactly as 'CC BY-NC 4.0'.

Third-party runtime p5@1.0.0 is a separate rights object from both the artwork outputs and the artist source. p5.js, three.js, and ordinary browser JavaScript each keep their own licence texts. This package does not redistribute those libraries. ⁶⁸

Original essay prose in this package is dedicated CC0-1.0 by the research operator. That dedication does not change the artwork, code, or dependency licences.

Close reading of examples

923 EMPTY ROOMS #0 is token 1000000 on 0x145789247973c5d612bf121e9e4eef84b63eb707, minted 2023-08-10T18:04:11+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, mid-tone and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 95,104,112). File size 1064223 bytes. Indexed features: Red True; Blue True; City Tokyo; Code 999999; Green True; # Suns 0; # Hives 0; # Moons 0 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Red True; Blue True; City Tokyo; Code 999999; Green True; # Suns 0; # Hives 0; # Moons 0. ³⁹⁴

923 EMPTY ROOMS #1 is token 1000001 on 0x145789247973c5d612bf121e9e4eef84b63eb707, minted 2023-08-11T16:26:23+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, mid-tone and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 107,105,120). File size 1122785 bytes. Indexed features: Red True; Blue True; City Tokyo; Code 100000; Green True; # Suns 1; # Hives 0; # Moons 0 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Red True; Blue True; City Tokyo; Code 100000; Green True; # Suns 1; # Hives 0; # Moons 0. ³⁹⁴

923 EMPTY ROOMS #10 is token 1000010 on 0x145789247973c5d612bf121e9e4eef84b63eb707, minted 2023-08-14T16:48:23+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, mid-tone and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 104,131,134). File size 1127740 bytes. Indexed features: Red True; Blue True; City Tokyo; Code 115000; Green True; # Suns 2; # Hives 0; # Moons 0 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Red True; Blue True; City Tokyo; Code 115000; Green True; # Suns 2; # Hives 0; # Moons 0. ³⁹⁴

923 EMPTY ROOMS #20 is token 1000020 on 0x145789247973c5d612bf121e9e4eef84b63eb707, minted 2023-08-14T16:54:59+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, mid-tone and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 106,127,130). File size 1056178 bytes. Indexed features: Red True; Blue True; City Tokyo; Code 111600; Green True; # Suns 3; # Hives 0; # Moons 1 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Red True; Blue True; City Tokyo; Code 111600; Green True; # Suns 3; # Hives 0; # Moons 1. ³⁹⁴

The AB5D header candidate is token 1000387 (edition 387), currently indexed to 0xdd19308a9731cdecb67e0d80ca6823394208c045, which is one of the three linked addresses returned for username ab5d on 2026-09-19. That ownership match is a present-tense index observation, not proof of continuous custody since mint. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, mid-tone and strongly coloured (mean RGB 191,137,196). File size 933799 bytes. Indexed features: Red True; Blue True; City London; Code 333331; Green False; # Suns 1; # Hives 0; # Moons 0 ¹⁰³⁴

Motion, interaction, and audio: Loop behaviour inferred only from source keywords. The inspected PNG is a static frame. The static PNGs document halt or preview states. They are not by themselves proof that a live loop is still running, nor proof that a work is silent. No soundtrack was heard from these pages during this session. ⁴⁷⁶

Significance and limitations

923 EMPTY ROOMS is project 1 by Casey REAS on 0x145789247973c5d612bf121e9e4eef84b63eb707. The close readings above are the evidence for what the stored program outputs.

Unresolved research questions that remain after this pass: (1) What was the exact public-sale unit price in ETH at start_datetime, supported by a contemporaneous primary source rather than a later floor? (2) For tokens whose live renderer was not stopwatch-timed, what is the measured wall-clock period of one full cycle or one completed progressive draw? (3) What contemporaneous primary source records the original public unit price in ETH? (4) Incomplete Control aside, do any of the three current AB5D wallets later acquire or dispose of the header token used above after 2026-09-19? ²¹⁰⁷

This package is a draft for human review. Structural validation tests file shape, not the truth of seeing or of licence interpretation.