# Abstraction by Hevey

## The work and its context

Abstraction is a 256-edition Factory release by Hevey on Art Blocks. The official collection dates its public release to 22 May 2021. Its identifying contract is `0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270`, project 69; the current index records all 256 invocations minted.[^S01][^S02] The pictures combine broad circular shapes with bent, round-ended paths, fine diagonal hatching, and miniature maze-like marks. A colored outer mat and thin rectangular boundary give these different scales a common setting. Their apparent busyness comes from several kinds of drawing occupying the same square, sometimes respecting one another and sometimes crossing conspicuous boundaries.[^S09][^S13]

Hevey's own collection page describes a staged process in which each new element responds to elements already drawn. That is a useful instruction for looking: the image is not simply a pile of independent shapes. Its existing marks become conditions for subsequent marks.[^S04] Reading the full script makes that relation unusually concrete. Later passes sample pixels from the canvas and translate their colors into occupied or available positions.[^S03]

The result is a completed still, despite the movement implied by its paths. The original generators for the five examples inspected here reached finished images. Repeated observations of editions 0 and 66 retained the same composition, and clicking edition 66 produced no visible change.[^S09][^S13] The time involved belongs to constructing the picture, rather than to an indefinitely changing scene.

## Conception and development

The available primary account of Abstraction's conception is concise. Hevey's collection page pairs the staged-drawing statement with a maximum of 256 unique items and an edition index running from 255 to 0.[^S04] It supplies neither a dated development diary nor an account of discarded experiments. Consequently, the shipped program is evidence of the implemented procedure, not proof of the order in which Hevey invented its parts.

The artist's description identifies a problem more specific than abstract composition in general: how can one generation of marks condition the next? The program answers by working at progressively finer grid resolutions and by reading the resulting image back into the drawing process.[^S03] This interpretation does not require a story about an outside visual influence. No such influence is named in the inspected project statement.

Hevey's separate statement for Recursion makes a useful, limited comparison. There the artist describes blocks repeatedly subdivided into smaller blocks and an image that can generate further variations with a click.[^S05] Abstraction instead leaves a fixed composition after its drawing stages. These statements demonstrate two distinct ways to make a process depend on earlier results. They do not establish that one algorithm evolved directly from the other, or that Abstraction had an interactive studio version. Its development history beyond the published description remains a research gap.

## How the work was constructed

The indexed dependency is `p5@1.0.0`. The complete retrieved artist script contains 6,372 UTF-8 bytes, with SHA-256 `c5589de895788bfc1814f2df37d0f9d46eac4adfd1bc66665a40266cf38125c3`. It was read from beginning to end through Art Blocks' GraphQL index, rather than obtained from an independently pinned Ethereum block.[^S02][^S03]

The minified program begins by assigning `tokenData.hash` to `ab`. A helper parses portions of that hexadecimal string into numbers. These numbers establish colors, circle dimensions, frame behavior, and the permitted directions of travel. Direction tables include diagonal, orthogonal, combined, and longer steps. Hash-derived choices also influence whether paths restart in unfilled areas. Calls to p5's seeded randomness reorder candidate steps, so a path's apparent wandering remains tied to its token's data.[^S03]

The principal path system is class `S`. It maintains a grid of occupied positions and a set of walkers. Each walker marks its current position, considers neighboring positions, and continues only into an available cell. It stops when no permitted next step remains or a length condition is met. The visible broad paths are drawn from closely spaced circles, which explains their rounded ends and elbows. Alternating color components and changes along a path add internal variation. Smaller paths repeat related operations at a finer scale.[^S03]

The crucial operation is `M()`. It samples the already painted canvas with `get(x,y)` and rebuilds the occupancy grid according to the current mode. Some modes distinguish white areas, existing colored marks, and the frame colors. The final mode reserves nonwhite positions and works into the remaining white field. Thus a later pass is constrained by the actual earlier raster image, not merely by sharing its random seed. This pixel feedback is the technical basis for Hevey's stated dependence between stages.[^S03]

The code starts at a 20-cell grid, then uses 80 and 320 cells for finer stages. Large circular forms and possible white interiors establish substantial regions before the later detail. The frame can also be repainted at the end, depending on flags, which helps explain why the relation between picture and border varies. These are conditional drawing rules; the sample does not establish how often any one combination occurs across the entire edition.[^S03]

Rendering takes place on a 6,000-pixel square canvas. The program captures that canvas, resizes it to the smaller window dimension, and draws the captured image back. This is not a separate offscreen canvas. `noLoop()` in setup stops continuous redrawing, while `draw()` completes the successive passes. There are no artist-defined mouse, keyboard, resize, or audio handlers in the inspected script. The five originals were inspected in the hosted browser generator; no independent local execution or cross-browser equivalence test was performed.[^S03][^S09][^S10][^S11][^S12][^S13]

## The mint

The mint has several distinct dates. The earliest indexed token, edition 0, was minted on 18 May 2021 at 19:18:08 UTC. Activation followed on 19 May at 01:33:01 UTC. Edition 1 was minted on 22 May at 16:05:33 UTC, matching the project's indexed start time and the collection page's public release date.[^S02][^S01] These records should not be compressed into a single launch timestamp.

The inspected sequence continues with edition 10 on 23 May, edition 20 on 28 May, and edition 66 on 26 June. Edition 255 was minted on 28 June 2021 at 17:23:43 UTC, exactly matching the indexed completion time.[^S02] The gap between the stated public release and completion is more than five weeks. It shows that completion was not contemporaneous with opening, but does not establish whether minting remained continuously available throughout that period.

The current price field is 75,000,000,000,000,000 wei, equivalent to 0.075 ETH. It is a present indexed configuration, not a verified original mint price.[^S02] Historical minter changes, transaction consideration, and the allocation or administrative role of edition 0 have not been audited. A current owner address cannot establish who paid for, or initiated, an early mint. The completed count and maximum both stand at 256; the evidence does not independently reconstruct every earlier supply configuration.

## Copyright and licensing

The project's exact reported artwork label is `NFT License`; its license-link field is null.[^S02] The public NFT License site currently presents version 2.0, revised 5 November 2018. Sections 2–5 retain the creator's ownership, grant specified personal and ownership-verified display uses, permit merchandise commercialization up to $100,000 annual gross revenue, impose modification and other restrictions, and end the holder's license when ownership ends.[^S06] Those are the terms of the inspected standard instrument. The unversioned project label does not, by itself, prove which version Hevey adopted or reveal a project-specific instrument. That attribution remains qualified.

Artwork and artist-code rights are separate. The complete artist script contains no license notice establishing permission to redistribute or adapt it. Public retrieval and successful execution are not evidence of such a grant.[^S03] The p5.js 1.0.0 package declares `LGPL-2.1`, and its accompanying license describes the library's redistribution and modification conditions.[^S08][^S14] This dependency license should not be substituted for the artwork's label or the artist script's unknown licensing scope.

The original prose of this essay is offered under CC0-1.0. That dedication does not include Hevey's artwork, the artist's script, or third-party library material.

## Close reading of examples

The examples are verified tokens on Ethereum contract `0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270`: 69000000, 69000001, 69000010, 69000020, and 69000066. Each original generator was actually viewed. The displayed edition is the final invocation number, not the full token ID. Edition 66 is the header selection: its indexed owner matches one of the three wallets freshly extracted from the AB5D profile.[^S02][^S07]

Edition 0 opens the sample with a dusty pink mat and a thin dark square around a white field. The broad path segments alternate pink, tan, and near-black, turning at diagonal elbows. A dark curved mass occupies the upper-right corner and extends beyond the inner boundary. Its large white interior makes it read as a crescent rather than a solid disc. Fine slanting strokes concentrate along the left side, where they can first resemble background shading. On closer inspection, their repeated turns make them another population of paths.[^S09]

The center of edition 0 is difficult to rank into foreground and background. Large pipes pass through circular outlines; their colored surfaces contain much smaller wandering traces. A viewer can follow a thick segment and then lose it where similar colors cross. This shifting hierarchy is the visual counterpart of the script's change of scale: marks that initially function as shapes subsequently become sites for further drawing. Its metadata reports Diagonals and Overflow Yes, but the interpretation of a crowded central crossing comes from the rendered image, not the trait label.[^S02][^S09]

Edition 1 has a purple mat, pink and violet paths, and several dark circular masses. A large white opening at upper right leaves a thick dark ring, while a lower-left ring crosses into the mat. It is plainly colorful even though the metadata says Colored Shapes 0. That field therefore cannot be read as a count of every visibly colored component. The distinction matters: the program separately assigns colors to its path system and its accent shapes.[^S10][^S02][^S03]

Edition 10 changes the balance toward dark area. A large ring dominates the upper left and adjoining dark masses spread across much of the bottom. Blue-violet and mauve paths move across these regions, while bright white openings puncture them. The metadata reports Chaos direction and Overflow None. Visible horizontal, vertical, and diagonal segments make its routing less uniformly diagonal than edition 0; the continuous mauve mat retains the dark structures inside the square.[^S11][^S02]

Edition 20 uses a pale blue mat and cyan, pink, and dark paths. Its central dark ring encloses a large irregular white opening, and a smaller ring is cut by the lower-left boundary. Fine hatching occupies comparatively open corners. Despite the amount of detail, those white intervals keep the routes legible. The None overflow label concerns the frame relation, not the absence of cropped forms at the inner edge.[^S12][^S02]

Edition 66 is more forceful at the boundary. Broad near-black rings press through the top and left of its muted purple mat. Mint green and dusty pink segments zigzag across their surfaces, while three violet discs introduce a different color family: two prominent discs on the right and a smaller one nearer the center. The lower-right disc is densely overdrawn, so its perimeter remains easier to follow than its interior.[^S13]

Here the image's two scales pull in different directions. The giant arcs make a simple, sweeping structure, but the tiny maze marks repeatedly interrupt attention to that structure. Thin circular outlines cross the thick paths without erasing them. The eye can alternate between reading a diagram of routes and reading a textured abstract field. The original remained the same when revisited and clicked; the implied circulation is pictorial movement, not an observed animation.[^S13]

## Significance and limitations

Abstraction turns an already drawn image into input for further drawing. Its distinguishing mechanism is not simply deterministic variety: earlier color regions help decide where later walkers can operate. The result connects large geometric forms to fine detail through a sequence that can be followed in both the full script and the original outputs.[^S03][^S09][^S13]

The five-edition sample establishes several concrete contrasts: color can persist when Colored Shapes is zero; a circular form may be clipped at the inner boundary without overflowing the outer mat; and similar path rules can produce either a relatively open or predominantly dark field.[^S02][^S10][^S11][^S12] It does not measure collection-wide rarity or prove that the displayed feature labels exhaust the program's variation.

The remaining questions concern historical evidence rather than a missing account of pixel feedback:

- What price and sale configuration applied at the public opening, and were they changed before completion?
- What allocation or contract role produced edition 0 before activation?
- Do dated studio materials document the development of the staged drawing procedure?
- Which version or project-specific text was intended by the unversioned NFT License label?

[^S01]: Art Blocks. [Abstraction by Hevey](https://www.artblocks.io/collection/abstraction-by-hevey). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S02]: Art Blocks. [Abstraction project and six token records](https://artblocks-mainnet.hasura.app/v1/graphql). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S03]: Hevey. [Complete Abstraction artist script](https://artblocks-mainnet.hasura.app/v1/graphql). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S04]: Hevey. [Abstraction Collection](https://hevey.art/collection/abstraction). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S05]: Hevey. [Recursion Collection](https://hevey.art/collection/recursion). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S06]: Dapper Labs. [NFT License, version 2.0](https://www.nftlicense.org/). Published 2018-11-05. Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S07]: Art Blocks. [AB5D profile linked accounts](https://www.artblocks.io/profile/ab5d). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S08]: p5.js contributors. [p5.js 1.0.0 package manifest](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/processing/p5.js/1.0.0/package.json). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S09]: Hevey / Art Blocks. [Abstraction #0, original generator](https://generator.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/69000000). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S10]: Hevey / Art Blocks. [Abstraction #1, original generator](https://generator.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/69000001). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S11]: Hevey / Art Blocks. [Abstraction #10, original generator](https://generator.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/69000010). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S12]: Hevey / Art Blocks. [Abstraction #20, original generator](https://generator.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/69000020). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S13]: Hevey / Art Blocks. [Abstraction #66, original generator](https://generator.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/69000066). Accessed 2026-09-18.
[^S14]: p5.js contributors / Free Software Foundation. [p5.js 1.0.0 license text](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/processing/p5.js/1.0.0/license.txt). Accessed 2026-09-18.