Gels

The work and its context

Gels is a 190-edition generative art series by Jason Brown and Shawn Douglas, released on Art Blocks on Ethereum mainnet, contract 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, project ID 322, in the factory category with heritage placement in the AB500 set.¹ Each output simulates a photograph of gel electrophoresis, the molecular-biology bench technique: luminous horizontal bands arranged in lanes against black, blue or white grounds, with ladder lanes of regular marker bands at the edges and occasional smears, streaks and warps.¹²

The description explains the science directly: "Our algorithm simulates gel electrophoresis, a powerful experimental method in molecular biology used daily by thousands of scientists worldwide. In the lab, scientists 'run a gel' to separate and visualize molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins." It discloses the data sources: "The DNA band patterns in this work derive from combinations of a simulated experimental data and real-world data, including DNA sequences that encode several variants of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and the corresponding mRNA vaccines." And it builds in the bench's fallibility: "Our simulations also take into account human error - mistakes are common in the lab, especially for novice researchers, but they can also lead to visually interesting results. For example, uneven salt concentrations or applying excess voltage can cause warping effects." The stated aim is "to leverage proceeds of this project to support future scientific research".¹

The AB5D dossier describes the collaboration: Jason Brown is a software developer and visualization artist; Shawn Douglas is a scientist and software designer whose laboratory works in DNA nanotechnology; their shared practice predates Art Blocks, with both credited for artwork on the Douglas Lab website.³ Gels is their only work in the AB500 set; their collector-metric rank stands at 232 of 308.³ The series runs on regl 2.1.0 at a square aspect ratio with zero external assets, and it is the only series in this batch licensed under the NFT License 2.0 rather than a Creative Commons variant.¹

Conception and development

The conception is laboratory realism as portraiture: the image every molecular biologist knows by heart, rebuilt as a generative system. The dossier calls the result "laboratory images translated into generative color", and notes that the collaboration joins "two related forms of modeling, one directed toward scientific understanding and the other toward aesthetic variation".³ Brown's role is translation, turning research instruments and processes into legible visual systems; Douglas contributes the working knowledge of how laboratory images are produced and read.³

The choice of source data anchors the work in its historical moment: the band patterns encode DNA sequences for SARS-CoV-2 spike protein variants and the mRNA vaccines built against them, so every edition carries, in simulated experimental form, the molecular record of the pandemic years during which it was made.¹ The error model is equally deliberate: salt-concentration warps and overvoltage streaks are the signature mistakes of a novice at the bench, and the artists chose to keep them as generative features.¹

The project's website field in the registry points not to a portfolio but to a YouTube video titled "Gels" on the channel thependulumswing; the watch page rate-limited the automated fetch at inspection time, and its title and author were confirmed through YouTube's oEmbed endpoint instead.¹⁴ No project-specific interview exists; the registry interview field is null.¹

How the work was constructed

The full artist script was retrieved from the official indexed project record at the Art Blocks mainnet GraphQL endpoint, filtered by the exact slug gels-by-jason-brown-shawn-douglas and corroborated against contract 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270 and project ID 322. The retrieved script is 42,300 bytes with SHA-256 digest a13d92d3ec6ee0c06c3fde3e57b6856031aa80c65890cd173f3fffb932320ab4, and it was read in full.¹⁵

The script is a minified WebGL program built on regl 2.1.0, and its seeding scheme is unique in this batch: instead of the dual sfc32 pattern seen elsewhere, the token hash is sliced into byte pairs, parsed as integers, and scrambled by a murmur-style mixing function with the constants 1690382925 and 72970470 into two 32-bit seeds stored through a DataView.⁵ The simulation layer reads like a bench protocol encoded in code: ladder bands at standard base-pair sizes stepped down from 10,000 to 500, sample wells, experiment types including an "amplify" case, fragment size and mass distributions, an A/G/C/T base mapping for sequence-derived bands, and explicit error parameters including salt-related warping.⁵ A palette class defines named gel treatments with gel color, band colors, highlight color (one in magenta, hex e600e6) and vignette strength; "xray" is among the named modes.⁵

The piece is entirely static: there are no animation frames, no event listeners at all, and no audio pathways in the script.⁵ The live probe on token 322000047 confirmed it: the reported hash matched the chain record exactly, frames captured eight seconds apart were identical, and the page holds zero audio or video elements.⁶

The mint

The dated record, observed in the current Art Blocks index on September 20, 2026, shows the longest sale in this batch by far: nineteen months from start to completion.¹⁷ Edition 0 was minted on July 13, 2022 at 17:53:39 UTC, and the project was activated on July 15, 2022 at 20:00:41 UTC.¹ The registry's sale-start timestamp reads July 29, 2022 at 17:00:00 UTC, and the official collection page carries "Released Jul 29, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC".¹⁸

The opening window was brisk: edition 1 had already minted a week earlier on July 22, and on launch day edition 10 minted at 17:30:32 UTC, edition 20 at 17:31:00, and the AB5D treasury's edition 47 at 18:03:19 UTC.¹⁷ Then the sale slowed to a crawl: 103 editions moved in July 2022, 37 in August, single digits per month through the autumn, 22 in January 2023, and the final edition 189 minted on February 2, 2024 at 16:38:59 UTC, the recorded completion time.¹⁷ Notably, the wallet that minted edition 0, 0x26a9f6aed2..., also minted the final edition 189 nineteen months later, a pattern consistent with the artists' own wallet bookending the series, though no inspected source confirms that identification.⁷ The minted count equals the maximum of 190, and the project is marked complete, locked and active, with the paused flag false.¹ The registry's current price field reads 0 ETH, a post-sellout administrative value; no dated 2022 source inspected here states the original mint price.¹ The AB5D collection holds exactly one edition, number 47, held by wallet 0xdd19308a9731cdecb67e0d80ca6823394208c045.⁷⁹

Copyright and licensing

The project registry reports the artwork licence label "NFT License 2.0" for Gels, with the terms URL recorded as nftlicense.org; it is the only non-Creative-Commons licence in this batch.¹ This essay therefore categorizes the artwork licence as custom, variant NFT License 2.0.¹ Under that licence, the token owner receives broad rights to use the art for personal, non-commercial purposes, to display it on marketplaces and third-party sites that cryptographically verify ownership, and to commercialize their own merchandise provided annual revenue from doing so stays under $100,000; forbidden uses include modifying the art, using it to market or sell third-party products, using it in connection with images of hatred or violence, and attempting to trademark the art or otherwise acquire intellectual-property rights in it.¹⁰

The script carries no licence header or copyright comment of its own, so no code licence is reported for this package; the absence is recorded rather than resolved.⁵ The registry lists zero external asset dependencies; the sole runtime dependency is the regl 2.1.0 library noted in the script type.¹⁵ Owning a Gels token under this licence does convey a defined bundle of usage rights, unlike a bare copyright position, but it conveys no copyright in the underlying artwork. No conflicting licence statements were found in the inspected sources. Images in this essay are referenced through canonical Art Blocks token pages and media rather than republished.⁷

Close reading of examples

Five outputs were inspected directly through their platform media, and the header was additionally exercised in the live renderer.⁶²

Edition 47 (token 322000047, minted July 29, 2022 at 18:03:19 UTC, about an hour into the sale), the AB5D-held header, is the damaged negative: a near-black field with sparse pale blue-green bands, long vertical smear streaks, and faint dotted traces, the error model made beautiful.⁷⁹² In the live view the renderer reproduced the composition from the chain hash and sat completely still, with no audio and no interaction surface.⁶

Edition 0 (token 322000000, the July 13, 2022 pre-activation mint) is the textbook gel: bright yellow-gold bands on a black field, sample lanes flanked by regular ladder lanes at both edges.⁷² Edition 1 (token 322000001, minted July 22, a week before the announced start) is the fluorescent one: a deep blue field with neon pink, cyan and yellow bands and two broad magenta overload smears running down their lanes.⁷²

Edition 10 (token 322000010) is the inversion: a white ground with pale blue-grey bands, the negative-image mode.⁷² Edition 20 (token 322000020) is the rainbow assay: four horizontal row groups of bands in graduated spectral order, green through violet, like a multi-gel comparison plate.⁷² Across the five, the lane grammar and edge ladders are constant; ground color, band palette, density and error effects vary.²

Significance and limitations

Gels is the batch's most literal translation of scientific practice into generative form: a working simulation, not an illustration, built by a visualization developer and a DNA-nanotechnology scientist, carrying pandemic-era sequence data in its bands.¹⁵³ Its nineteen-month sales curve is the batch's outlier at the slow end, and its NFT License 2.0 makes it the batch's only series whose owners hold a defined merchandise right with a $100,000 annual revenue cap.¹⁷¹⁰

Unresolved research questions, flagged for review:

• The original mint price at the July 2022 sale is not established by any dated 2022 source inspected here; the current registry price reads 0 ETH, a post-sellout value.¹
• No project-specific interview exists; the registry interview field is null, and the registry website field points to a YouTube video whose watch page rate-limited the automated fetch (HTTP 429); title and channel were confirmed via YouTube's oEmbed endpoint instead.¹⁴
• The wallet 0x26a9f6aed2... minted both edition 0 and the final edition 189 nineteen months apart; the inference that this is the artists' wallet is recorded as unconfirmed.⁷
• The registry records script_count 5 for this project; the meaning of the count (likely on-chain script revisions) is not documented in the inspected sources.¹
• The mapping between the simulated band patterns and the cited SARS-CoV-2 spike and vaccine sequences is asserted by the description; no independent verification of the embedded sequence data was performed.¹