Divergence

The work and its context

Divergence is project 432 on the Art Blocks V2 core contract 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, published under the canonical slug divergence-by-loren-bednar and credited to Loren Bednar. The indexed project record reports a completed edition of 100 of 100 invocations, runtime tone@14.8.15, and the official description: DIVERGENCE Divergence, a never-ending abstract motion work, reacts to audio and touch inputs. Dive into stacks of deterministic layers to explore emerging patterns, and fine-tune the audio reactivity to your preferences. You may wish to use the controls to wander within Divergence until the aesthetic feels right to you, or complements your audio input. Navigating the art in this way gives a tangible window into my artistic process. My aesthetic is influenced by the music I listen to as I code. I enjoy experimenting and looking for the art in the algorithm. This can mean playing with overarching ideas, but also making many small changes until I find consistent visual appeal over a range of outputs. Divergence exhibits animations changing over time in expanding, textural layers. It elaborates on concepts I’ve developed in previous works: my approach to color in phase; linear motion in Parade; interlacing lines and expansion/contraction in Kaleidoscope; and the noise textures of Sift. Newly explored is continuous animation with touch and audio inputs, which affect the viewing position in time and space. A common quip in the Art Blocks community is that motion art has a penalty. Many enjoy a final product that is printable to frame at home. As technology advances, I believe it is equally important to create work that can only exist on a screen, and is unique to digital art. Larger displays are catching up to the artistic space and becoming more accessible, but I also want my work to be approachable immediately. Keeping the code lean and performant allows it to run well on a range of screen sizes and processor powers, from mobile devices to multi-story displays. There has been discussion that a body of motion work takes a long time to sift through, as it needs to be viewed live. In consideration of this, I made Divergence immersive, rather than a static experience. I want the extra time spent with it to be fun and entertaining. Usage: Navigate left/right to traverse the timeline; navigate up/down to travel through the layers and expand/contract the patterns. Please see “Display Notes” for further instructions (user input, audio reactivity, url parameters). Accessibility is important to me, so Divergence accepts inputs from touch, keyboard, mouse, and gaming controllers with an analog stick. *Photosensitive seizure warning: These artworks contain flashing colors and moving patterns. 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://twitter.com/LorenBednar.

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. DIVERGENCE Divergence, a never-ending abstract motion work, reacts to audio and touch inputs. Dive into stacks of deterministic layers to explore emerging patterns, and fine-tune the audio reactivity to your preferences. You may wish to use the controls to wander within Divergence until the aesthetic feels right to you, or complements your audio input. Navigating the art in this way gives a t

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 Divergence 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 divergence-by-loren-bednar was retrieved from projects_metadata.script filtered by that exact slug. The UTF-8 payload is 31055 bytes with SHA-256 87cf875e663686ee05cca9a7b6f4f6fb0f5bd3b6a059eff143191d087eb373a7. Runtime on the project record is tone@14.8.15. The script was read in full; it was not executed in this research session. ⁶

The stored generator is 31055 bytes, SHA-256 87cf875e663686ee05cca9a7b6f4f6fb0f5bd3b6a059eff143191d087eb373a7, runtime tone@14.8.15. Detected source markers: draw, keydown, requestAnimationFrame, Tone, tokenData, hash. Named functions include aDlt, abs, afr, average, blendArt, blurArt, cae, clamp, compileShader, compositeArt. tokenData.hash is read in source. Output then follows the drawing path those functions implement. Token 0 observation: Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, dark and strongly coloured (mean RGB 54,63,2). File size 2779508 bytes. Indexed features: Palette Adventure

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 432 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069 is as follows. First token minted_at is 2023-02-24T00:04:23+00:00. activated_at is 2023-03-04T01:11:59+00:00. start_datetime is 2023-03-20T17:00:00+00:00. completed_at is 2023-03-20T17:29:23+00:00. Invocations stand at 100 of a maximum 100, with complete=true on the retrieved row. ²³

Calculated intervals from those timestamps: first mint to activation is 8.05 days; activation to start_datetime is 16.66 days; start_datetime to completion is 29.4 minutes; first mint to completion is 24.73 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 2023-02-24T00:04:23+00:00, activated 2023-03-04T01:11:59+00:00, start 2023-03-20T17:00:00+00:00, completed 2023-03-20T17:29:23+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 tone@14.8.15 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

Divergence #0 is token 432000000 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-02-24T00:04:23+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, dark and strongly coloured (mean RGB 54,63,2). File size 2779508 bytes. Indexed features: Palette Adventure Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Palette Adventure. ³⁹⁴

Divergence #1 is token 432000001 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-03-18T17:01:23+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, dark and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 86,48,41). File size 5173563 bytes. Indexed features: Palette Moment Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Palette Moment. ³⁹⁴

Divergence #10 is token 432000010 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-03-18T17:17:59+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, dark and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 67,40,22). File size 2379738 bytes. Indexed features: Palette Adventure Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Palette Adventure. ³⁹⁴

Divergence #20 is token 432000020 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-03-18T21:22:47+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x2400px, dark and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 35,67,56). File size 4883348 bytes. Indexed features: Palette Spring Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Palette Spring. ³⁹⁴

The AB5D header candidate is token 432000053 (edition 53), 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 muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 153,146,137). File size 7915607 bytes. Indexed features: Palette Frost 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

Divergence is project 432 by Loren Bednar 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.