Glass

The work and its context

Glass is project 344 on the Art Blocks V2 core contract 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, published under the canonical slug glass-by-eric-de-giuli and credited to Eric De Giuli. The indexed project record reports a completed edition of 300 of 300 invocations, runtime p5@1.0.0, and the official description: There are no artifacts. There are only interpretations. Glass is about the illusion of simplicity that cocoons us in our everyday existence. A glance at Glass may suggest a foam of bubbles or pebbles under clear water. But on inspection, these simple pictures dissolve. Instead of disks one finds stacked panes of translucent glass, intersecting and overlapping. There is dissonance between fine-scale chaos and the harmony of the aggregate. In Glass, two levels of reality -- panes of glass and the foam of bubbles -- are brought close together in scale, so that our oversimplified impression yields a palpable disquiet. What appears simple is often anything but. Consider a standard wooden desk. To our eyes, it looks solid and continuous, but we know that it is made of atoms, tiny electrons orbiting nuclei. And these subatomic particles are themselves not like miniature solar systems, but creatures of quantum mechanics, stranger than we can imagine. The vast difference in scale between the atomic and the macroscopic hides this complex reality, but fundamentally it is the same phenomenon shown here. Glass continues my exploration of emergence. While in previous work I explored how simple systems can create complex, emergent forms, here the interest is in the converse: how coherence is often deceptive, masking a complex underlying reality. Glass draws on the aesthetic of Shin Hanga artists Hiroshi Yoshida and Kawase Hasui, and abstract expressionist Sonja Sekula. In live view, Glass has ambient motion: the shadows evolve, imperceptibly slowly. The following variations & controls are possible. You may need to click on the canvas before they are active. For a high-resolution output, use the pixel density controls. For example, on a standard laptop, an image saved at pixel density 5 will be approximately 3200 x 4000 pixels, and therefore suitable for printing at ~ 11" x 13" at 300 dpi. Variations (require redrawing): f -- fit-to-screen on/off o -- outline on/off Controls: s -- save as png spacebar -- pause/unpause ( useful to reduce CPU load in Live mode ) b -- border on/off ( useful for printing ) 1-9 -- set pixel density (default=2 on retina displays) +/- -- increase/decrease pixel density 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 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270. Aspect ratio indexed as 0.8. Website https://eeedg.ca/.

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. There are no artifacts. There are only interpretations. Glass is about the illusion of simplicity that cocoons us in our everyday existence. A glance at Glass may suggest a foam of bubbles or pebbles under clear water. But on inspection, these simple pictures dissolve. Instead of disks one finds stacked panes of translucent glass, intersecting and overlapping. There is dissonance between fine-s

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 Glass 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 glass-by-eric-de-giuli was retrieved from projects_metadata.script filtered by that exact slug. The UTF-8 payload is 19811 bytes with SHA-256 e3a932c47bc2e9e3e0ddab309358a27a11eff0eb9b83c5a786cf7ded63b46082. Runtime on the project record is p5@1.0.0. The script was read in full; it was not executed in this research session. ⁶

The stored generator is 19811 bytes, SHA-256 e3a932c47bc2e9e3e0ddab309358a27a11eff0eb9b83c5a786cf7ded63b46082, runtime p5@1.0.0. Detected source markers: setup, draw, noLoop, createCanvas, keyPressed, tokenData, hash, colorMode. Named functions include PD, begin, bg, ccircle, clamp, cross, dot, draw, drawbord, drawk. tokenData.hash is read in source. Output then follows the drawing path those functions implement. Token 0 observation: Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1920x2400px, light and strongly coloured (mean RGB 144,201,204). File size 7695436 bytes. Indexed features: Flow On; Focus Off; Style Packing; Waves None; Shadow Soft; Palette Banff; Ziggurat On

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 noLoop. The inspected PNG is a finished still. Live motion was not stopwatched. 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 344 on 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270 is as follows. First token minted_at is 2022-08-03T20:46:05+00:00. activated_at is 2022-08-10T22:41:50+00:00. start_datetime is 2022-08-22T17:00:00+00:00. completed_at is 2022-08-22T17:38:12+00:00. Invocations stand at 300 of a maximum 300, with complete=true on the retrieved row. ²³

Calculated intervals from those timestamps: first mint to activation is 7.08 days; activation to start_datetime is 11.76 days; start_datetime to completion is 38.2 minutes; first mint to completion is 18.87 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 2022-08-03T20:46:05+00:00, activated 2022-08-10T22:41:50+00:00, start 2022-08-22T17:00:00+00:00, completed 2022-08-22T17:38:12+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 p5@1.0.0 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

Glass #0 is token 344000000 on 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, minted 2022-08-03T20:46:05+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1920x2400px, light and strongly coloured (mean RGB 144,201,204). File size 7695436 bytes. Indexed features: Flow On; Focus Off; Style Packing; Waves None; Shadow Soft; Palette Banff; Ziggurat On Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Flow On; Focus Off; Style Packing; Waves None; Shadow Soft; Palette Banff; Ziggurat On. ³⁹⁴

Glass #1 is token 344000001 on 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, minted 2022-08-03T20:50:08+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1920x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 212,227,230). File size 5623447 bytes. Indexed features: Flow On; Focus Off; Style Lattice; Waves None; Shadow Off; Palette Abalone; Ziggurat Off Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Flow On; Focus Off; Style Lattice; Waves None; Shadow Off; Palette Abalone; Ziggurat Off. ³⁹⁴

Glass #10 is token 344000010 on 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, minted 2022-08-22T17:02:54+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1920x2400px, light and strongly coloured (mean RGB 158,207,222). File size 6455392 bytes. Indexed features: Flow On; Focus Off; Style Packing; Waves None; Shadow Soft; Palette Banff; Ziggurat Off Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Flow On; Focus Off; Style Packing; Waves None; Shadow Soft; Palette Banff; Ziggurat Off. ³⁹⁴

Glass #20 is token 344000020 on 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, minted 2022-08-22T17:22:48+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 1920x2400px, light and strongly coloured (mean RGB 149,214,242). File size 5683118 bytes. Indexed features: Flow Off; Focus Off; Style Lattice; Waves Shear; Shadow Soft; Palette Banff; Ziggurat Off Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Flow Off; Focus Off; Style Lattice; Waves Shear; Shadow Soft; Palette Banff; Ziggurat Off. ³⁹⁴

The AB5D header candidate is token 344000173 (edition 173), 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 1920x2400px, light and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 216,230,232). File size 6577273 bytes. Indexed features: Flow On; Focus Off; Style Packing; Waves None; Shadow Soft; Palette Kluane; Ziggurat On ¹⁰³⁴

Motion, interaction, and audio: Source contains noLoop. The inspected PNG is a finished still. Live motion was not stopwatched. 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

Glass is project 344 by Eric De Giuli on 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270. 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.