Escherly Seeds

The work and its context

Escherly Seeds is project 465 on the Art Blocks V2 core contract 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, published under the canonical slug escherly-seeds-by-martijn-cohen and credited to Martijn Cohen. The indexed project record reports a completed edition of 30 of 30 invocations, runtime three@0.124.0, and the official description: This is my algorithmic love letter to a forefather of mathematical art: M. C. Escher. To commemorate 125 years since his birth, my goal was to honor Escher’s enduring influence by reworking his iconic motifs into a medium that embraces mathematics as much as he did. I gave it the name Escherly Seeds because its meaning is three-fold: - Metaphorical. This work can be seen as representing the seeds that Escher planted in the minds of the artistic community, and I make several references to his work. Concave and Convex (1955) and Waterfall (1961) were the main inspirations for up to three distinct optical illusions hidden within this algorithm. Expect Escher’s love of polyhedra , a few of which can be seen in Stars (1948) , to make appearances too! - Arboreal. This metaphor is illustrated as a tree with surrealist botanical components. It starts out, drawn on paper, as a root network from which a stem sprouts, branching into a fully developed crown with leaves, flowers, and/or fruit. Flowers are depicted as enlarged polyhedra with special properties, and fruit are cyclical structures inspired by the iconic Penrose triangle. Fruit can also, on occasion, be ripe with its own seeds, thus completing its life cycle. The pencil-to-3D effect is a reference to Reptiles (1943) and Drawing Hands (1948), except I take the metamorphosis to the present , becoming fully chromatic, dynamic, and interactive. The seed is planted in Escher's world, and blossoms into ours. - Cryptographic. Generative art is, in a way, the craft of making pseudo-random art generators. Each output is the result of a cascade of calculations caused by one unique numerical seed, and in this case, it just happens to be an “Escherly” seed! For those curious about the details, I tried to avoid excessively obfuscating the code. The viewer is encouraged to play with the artwork! In an effort to make the tree feel alive, I used an equation called the Kuramoto model which, most notably, mimics the flashing patterns observed in species of synchronous fireflies. Each cube is animated by an internal “clock” which is weakly coupled to its nearest neighbors. Interacting with these clocks will cause them to align, giving you the ability to synchronize or desynchronize certain areas of the tree. The collection size is set to 327 because March 27 is the date Escher passed away. Thank you to all who helped me along the way, no matter the weight of your contribution. Special thanks: Jiahui Cai, Vincent Cohen, Daniel Bothner 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 0.5626. Website https://martigeon.com/escherly-seeds/.

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. This is my algorithmic love letter to a forefather of mathematical art: M. C. Escher. To commemorate 125 years since his birth, my goal was to honor Escher’s enduring influence by reworking his iconic motifs into a medium that embraces mathematics as much as he did. I gave it the name Escherly Seeds because its meaning is three-fold: - Metaphorical. This work can be seen as representi

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 Escherly Seeds 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 escherly-seeds-by-martijn-cohen was retrieved from projects_metadata.script filtered by that exact slug. The UTF-8 payload is 38111 bytes with SHA-256 2eea8512b0eaf45fcf632af85ba694563fefa1f986120047fe0a5438f1e5a1b2. Runtime on the project record is three@0.124.0. The script was read in full; it was not executed in this research session. ⁶

The stored generator is 38111 bytes, SHA-256 2eea8512b0eaf45fcf632af85ba694563fefa1f986120047fe0a5438f1e5a1b2, runtime three@0.124.0. Detected source markers: draw, requestAnimationFrame, THREE, WebGLRenderer, tokenData, hash. Named functions include no function keyword matches. tokenData.hash is read in source. Output then follows the drawing path those functions implement. Token 0 observation: Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1351x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 239,232,221). File size 1807669 bytes. Indexed features: Fruit No; Leaves Yes; Flowers Single; Fruit type None; Polyhedron Stella octangula; Tree width 4; Fruit style None; Paper roots Patch

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 465 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069 is as follows. First token minted_at is 2023-09-15T15:21:59+00:00. activated_at is 2023-09-18T18:48:35+00:00. start_datetime is 2023-12-04T18:00:00+00:00. completed_at is 2025-03-06T18:52:35+00:00. Invocations stand at 30 of a maximum 30, with complete=true on the retrieved row. ²³

Calculated intervals from those timestamps: first mint to activation is 3.14 days; activation to start_datetime is 76.97 days; start_datetime to completion is 458.04 days; first mint to completion is 538.15 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 2023-09-15T15:21:59+00:00, activated 2023-09-18T18:48:35+00:00, start 2023-12-04T18:00:00+00:00, completed 2025-03-06T18:52:35+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 three@0.124.0 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

Escherly Seeds #0 is token 465000000 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-09-15T15:21:59+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1351x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 239,232,221). File size 1807669 bytes. Indexed features: Fruit No; Leaves Yes; Flowers Single; Fruit type None; Polyhedron Stella octangula; Tree width 4; Fruit style None; Paper roots Patch Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Fruit No; Leaves Yes; Flowers Single; Fruit type None; Polyhedron Stella octangula; Tree width 4; Fruit style None; Paper roots Patch. ³⁹⁴

Escherly Seeds #1 is token 465000001 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-12-04T18:05:47+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1351x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 236,234,235). File size 1845424 bytes. Indexed features: Fruit No; Leaves Yes; Flowers None; Fruit type None; Polyhedron Escher's solid; Tree width 4; Fruit style None; Paper roots Cross Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Fruit No; Leaves Yes; Flowers None; Fruit type None; Polyhedron Escher's solid; Tree width 4; Fruit style None; Paper roots Cross. ³⁹⁴

Escherly Seeds #10 is token 465000010 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-12-05T16:03:47+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1351x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 234,234,222). File size 1763954 bytes. Indexed features: Fruit No; Leaves No; Flowers Double; Fruit type None; Polyhedron Octahedron; Tree width 4; Fruit style None; Paper roots Cross Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Fruit No; Leaves No; Flowers Double; Fruit type None; Polyhedron Octahedron; Tree width 4; Fruit style None; Paper roots Cross. ³⁹⁴

Escherly Seeds #20 is token 465000020 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2024-01-10T21:54:47+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1351x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 232,234,227). File size 1866232 bytes. Indexed features: Fruit No; Leaves Yes; Flowers None; Fruit type None; Polyhedron Sphere; Tree width 6; Fruit style None; Paper roots Cross Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Fruit No; Leaves Yes; Flowers None; Fruit type None; Polyhedron Sphere; Tree width 6; Fruit style None; Paper roots Cross. ³⁹⁴

The AB5D header candidate is token 465000027 (edition 27), 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 1351x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 237,236,230). File size 1916879 bytes. Indexed features: Fruit Yes; Leaves Yes; Flowers None; Fruit type Penrose triangle; Polyhedron Sphere; Tree width 5; Fruit style Flat; Paper roots Patch 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

Escherly Seeds is project 465 by Martijn Cohen 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.