Bakhoor Assandal

The work and its context

Bakhoor Assandal is project 479 on the Art Blocks V2 core contract 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, published under the canonical slug bakhoor-assandal-by-melissa-wiederrecht and credited to Melissa Wiederrecht. The indexed project record reports a completed edition of 200 of 200 invocations, runtime js@na, and the official description: Bakhoor Assandal is released as part of reGEN, a special charitable auction of generative art to raise funds for Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, curated by Alex Estorick and Foteini Valeonti in collaboration with The Giving Block. I said I won’t forget Sudan. I had no idea what that would mean. That, for now, all we have left of our home in Sudan is our memories. The broken system officially broke, And the people took the broken roads right out of town. Were the ladies dressed in bright colors and patterns as they escaped to the sound of bombing? When a Sudanese home goes up in smoke does it smell like sandalwood incense? Do the walls covered in hopeful graffiti still stand? Does the mango tree still bear fruit, and does it remember our family? Has the war reached the school we built? Do the walls still stand? How many years will it be before the school system reopens? Will the idea that a school would be used for ... school … be a mere memory of a good intention? When the rebel army broke into our abandoned home, Ransacked everything the Sudanese part of our family owns, Then went upstairs, and found the beginnings of a learning center, Intended to giving young bright Sudanese people a window into the world of blockchain and AI, Any chance they didn’t steal everything? Or is our learning center ... a mere memory ... of a good intention? When the rebel army chose to live in our abandoned home for a term, Did they feel and sense our memory echoing off the walls? If we are ever able to return, will we feel and sense the memory of them? If my niece-in-law (who is two , , or maybe three now) has already forgotten the anthem, and refers to the family home as the “house of shooting,” what does that mean for the future of Sudan? If all the displaced Sudanese people are able to hold onto their memories, treasure them, and someday bring them back to Omdurman, Can Sudan be regenerated ... like a forest after a wildfire ... perhaps stronger and less broken than it was before? ~ Bakhoor Assandal is an animated generative series made in JavaScript and GLSL. The name refers to the incense made from sandalwood that is common in Sudan. While sandaliya is the oil of sandalwood used as perfume, Bakhoor Assandal is the incense, burned on coals, made from the same wood. One could say it is the same substance gone up in smoke. This project is a continuation of Sandaliya, a series that interweaves personal memories and familial connections in Sudan against the growing conflict. In April 2023, a civil war ignited, and many were forced to evacuate. Bakhoor Assandal uses JavaScript and GLSL to create outputs in constant disarray. With a particular focus on movement, the algorithm builds layer by layer, with each pixel in perpetual shift, never replicating its past form , , a testament to life’s relentless change. Like the ephemeral smoke of burning incense, we must embrace the flow, knowing we will remember the scent. Notes Experience it in real time: click or press the spacebar to toggle the animation. In live mode, the visual dynamically adjusts to your window. To modulate speed in live mode, append “?speed=X” at the end of the URL, where “X” is your desired multiple. For example: “?speed=0.5” for half speed. 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 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069. Aspect ratio indexed as 1.0. Website https://curealz.org/news-and-events/digital-art-auction-to-benefit-our-research/.

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. Bakhoor Assandal is released as part of reGEN, a special charitable auction of generative art to raise funds for Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, curated by Alex Estorick and Foteini Valeonti in collaboration with The Giving Block. I said I won’t forget Sudan. I had no idea what that would mean. That,

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 Bakhoor Assandal 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 bakhoor-assandal-by-melissa-wiederrecht was retrieved from projects_metadata.script filtered by that exact slug. The UTF-8 payload is 12162 bytes with SHA-256 419a59795d89522d58fb3f48f1273cf3156faca95816f2ad6d6d4c7d7751fd7e. Runtime on the project record is js@na. The script was read in full; it was not executed in this research session. ⁶

The stored generator is 12162 bytes, SHA-256 419a59795d89522d58fb3f48f1273cf3156faca95816f2ad6d6d4c7d7751fd7e, runtime js@na. Detected source markers: draw, requestAnimationFrame, tokenData, hash. Named functions include a, c, e, t. 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 99,98,89). File size 14509032 bytes. Indexed features: Noise Type Fractal; Color Palette 12

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: Source contains a continuing-draw or audio/WebGL constructor. The inspected PNG is one frame. Live timing and soundtrack were not captured this session. 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 479 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069 is as follows. First token minted_at is 2023-10-11T19:43:23+00:00. activated_at is 2023-10-12T22:52:47+00:00. start_datetime is 2023-10-23T17:00:00+00:00. completed_at is 2023-10-23T17:28:59+00:00. Invocations stand at 200 of a maximum 200, with complete=true on the retrieved row. ²³

Calculated intervals from those timestamps: first mint to activation is 27.16 hours; activation to start_datetime is 10.76 days; start_datetime to completion is 29.0 minutes; first mint to completion is 11.91 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 2023-10-11T19:43:23+00:00, activated 2023-10-12T22:52:47+00:00, start 2023-10-23T17:00:00+00:00, completed 2023-10-23T17:28:59+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-ND 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-ND 4.0'.

Third-party runtime js@na 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

Bakhoor Assandal #0 is token 479000000 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-10-11T19:43:23+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 99,98,89). File size 14509032 bytes. Indexed features: Noise Type Fractal; Color Palette 12 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Noise Type Fractal; Color Palette 12. ³⁹⁴

Bakhoor Assandal #1 is token 479000001 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-10-11T19:47:59+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 strongly coloured (mean RGB 181,110,91). File size 12907423 bytes. Indexed features: Noise Type Smooth; Color Palette 5 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Noise Type Smooth; Color Palette 5. ³⁹⁴

Bakhoor Assandal #10 is token 479000010 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-10-23T17:19:23+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 141,161,156). File size 12475503 bytes. Indexed features: Noise Type Fractal; Color Palette 15 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Noise Type Fractal; Color Palette 15. ³⁹⁴

Bakhoor Assandal #20 is token 479000020 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-10-23T17:24:11+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 197,205,185). File size 11689469 bytes. Indexed features: Noise Type Fractal; Color Palette 13 Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Noise Type Fractal; Color Palette 13. ³⁹⁴

The AB5D header candidate is token 479000122 (edition 122), 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, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 204,176,177). File size 13428113 bytes. Indexed features: Noise Type Smooth; Color Palette 6 ¹⁰³⁴

Motion, interaction, and audio: Source contains a continuing-draw or audio/WebGL constructor. The inspected PNG is one frame. Live timing and soundtrack were not captured this session. 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

Bakhoor Assandal is project 479 by Melissa Wiederrecht on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069. 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.