Dipolar

The work and its context

Dipolar is project 385 on the Art Blocks V2 core contract 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, published under the canonical slug dipolar-by-junia-farquhar and credited to Junia Farquhar. The indexed project record reports a completed edition of 256 of 256 invocations, runtime paper@0.12.15, and the official description: Sales note: The first 16 mints will be eligible for an 8''x8'' signed plot, posted anywhere in the world. The vein running through my work, linking each piece to the next and to me as an artist, is the opposition between physical rationalism (the idea that physics seeks to reveal the true nature of reality) and empiricism (the idea that physics seeks to identify the behaviour of the world through experiment). Empiricism describes the world, while rationalism explains it. This conflict has been at the core of me throughout my studies, and I explore the idea further in this project. Dipolar tries to answer the question "What would electromagnetism look like in two dimensions?", itself rich in the ideas of rationalism. To an empiricist, it is a question which can not be answered, but the answer has impacts throughout physics, from 3D electromagnetism to condensed matter. These questions and those like them have been grappled with for thousands of years, and we will die without knowing if our attempts at answers will be seen any differently from Plato's theory of Forms. Our three-dimensional universe constrains by its symmetry the behaviour of point charges to the radial fields that we are used to. In two dimensions the fields can curl around the charge, leading to two kinds of fields able to be produced by a charge. When paired with another particle of the same type and equal but opposite charge they create a 'dipole moment', which look alike when composed of either type of charge. Dipolar shows the field profiles produced by these combinations for each type, and as an idealised 'point dipole'. The style was inspired by the sketches of Euler and da Vinci. Both were revolutionary minds, they sought to understand and explain the world in diagram, a tradition that has been preserved in art and science to this day. More broadly, I've felt inspired by Sol Lewitt and Vera Molnar, in particular their use of dense detail, seeing how it can provide tension in their work and draw the viewer in closer. An SVG for plotting can be downloaded by pressing DOWN A 4096x4096 image can be downloaded by pressing UP Plotting speed can be adjusted with LEFT/RIGHT The animation can be restarted with SPACE 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://art.orbital.me.uk/dipolar.

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. Sales note: The first 16 mints will be eligible for an 8''x8'' signed plot, posted anywhere in the world. The vein running through my work, linking each piece to the next and to me as an artist, is the opposition between physical rationalism (the idea that physics seeks to reveal the true nature of reality) and empiricism (the idea that physics seeks to identify the behaviour of the world thr

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 Dipolar 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 dipolar-by-junia-farquhar was retrieved from projects_metadata.script filtered by that exact slug. The UTF-8 payload is 18776 bytes with SHA-256 c7f02fd293950be6b2228d164b4e87b554d5e161e43a3526dbf7750e9aefc50c. Runtime on the project record is paper@0.12.15. The script was read in full; it was not executed in this research session. ⁶

The stored generator is 18776 bytes, SHA-256 c7f02fd293950be6b2228d164b4e87b554d5e161e43a3526dbf7750e9aefc50c, runtime paper@0.12.15. Detected source markers: setup, draw, keydown, requestAnimationFrame, tokenData, hash. Named functions include A, D, G, I, Q, S, V, b, c, g. tokenData.hash is read in source. Output then follows the drawing path those functions implement. Token 0 observation: Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 234,225,221). File size 4945598 bytes. Indexed features: Charge Electric; Layout Square; DoubleVision None; Optimisation Preserve Direction; PrimaryColour India Ink; SecondaryColour Strawberry

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 385 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069 is as follows. First token minted_at is 2022-12-02T16:46:35+00:00. activated_at is 2022-12-08T19:12:23+00:00. start_datetime is 2022-12-14T18:00:00+00:00. completed_at is 2022-12-14T18:31:47+00:00. Invocations stand at 256 of a maximum 256, with complete=true on the retrieved row. ²³

Calculated intervals from those timestamps: first mint to activation is 6.10 days; activation to start_datetime is 5.95 days; start_datetime to completion is 31.8 minutes; first mint to completion is 12.07 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 2022-12-02T16:46:35+00:00, activated 2022-12-08T19:12:23+00:00, start 2022-12-14T18:00:00+00:00, completed 2022-12-14T18:31:47+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 paper@0.12.15 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

Dipolar #0 is token 385000000 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2022-12-02T16:46:35+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 234,225,221). File size 4945598 bytes. Indexed features: Charge Electric; Layout Square; DoubleVision None; Optimisation Preserve Direction; PrimaryColour India Ink; SecondaryColour Strawberry Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Charge Electric; Layout Square; DoubleVision None; Optimisation Preserve Direction; PrimaryColour India Ink; SecondaryColour Strawberry. ³⁹⁴

Dipolar #1 is token 385000001 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2022-12-14T18:26:59+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 233,230,225). File size 4461293 bytes. Indexed features: Charge Magnetic; Layout Grid; DoubleVision Monochromatic; Optimisation Preserve Direction; PrimaryColour India Ink; SecondaryColour Strawberry Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Charge Magnetic; Layout Grid; DoubleVision Monochromatic; Optimisation Preserve Direction; PrimaryColour India Ink; SecondaryColour Strawberry. ³⁹⁴

Dipolar #10 is token 385000010 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2022-12-14T18:31:23+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 233,230,225). File size 4393950 bytes. Indexed features: Charge Electric; Layout Square; DoubleVision Monochromatic; Optimisation Preserve Direction; PrimaryColour India Ink; SecondaryColour Strawberry Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Charge Electric; Layout Square; DoubleVision Monochromatic; Optimisation Preserve Direction; PrimaryColour India Ink; SecondaryColour Strawberry. ³⁹⁴

Dipolar #20 is token 385000020 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2022-12-14T18:31:23+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 214,207,204). File size 6491278 bytes. Indexed features: Charge Electric; Layout Square; DoubleVision None; Optimisation Preserve Direction; PrimaryColour India Ink; SecondaryColour Amaranth Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Charge Electric; Layout Square; DoubleVision None; Optimisation Preserve Direction; PrimaryColour India Ink; SecondaryColour Amaranth. ³⁹⁴

The AB5D header candidate is token 385000054 (edition 54), 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 233,230,225). File size 4411595 bytes. Indexed features: Charge Point Dipolar; Layout Square; DoubleVision None; Optimisation Preserve Direction; PrimaryColour India Ink; SecondaryColour Strawberry 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

Dipolar is project 385 by Junia Farquhar 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.