Libra

The work and its context

Libra is project 398 on the Art Blocks V2 core contract 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, published under the canonical slug libra-by-cooper-jamieson and credited to Cooper Jamieson. The indexed project record reports a completed edition of 50 of 50 invocations, runtime p5@1.0.0, and the official description: Libra functions as a manifesto that rejects digital art made from mimetic processes , the emulation of traditional analogue mediums and techniques. Such techniques are ubiquitous in digital art and arguably hamper the development of genuinely new aesthetics and new discourse for such a budding medium. Artists use digital mediums to mimic physical characteristics like brush strokes or textures of clay. It is not to say that these effects are not successful. Emulation of analogue artworks grants the digital work a natural, relatable and seemingly physical character. This use of the medium simultaneously distances the work from typical connotations of digital artworks being lifeless, flat, precise, and rigid. Perhaps this mimicry makes the work feel ‘finished.’ Digital techniques infiltrated painting in the 90s and early 2000s. At that time artists like Albert Oehlen and Jeff Elrod merged digital and analogue techniques to create a sort of ‘screen space’ on the canvas , something somewhere between a painterly space and a digital space. The Skarstedt Gallery, who originally presented Oehlen’s exhibition titled Computer Paintings, proclaimed that limitations in computers pushed Oehlen to ‘finish’ the paintings by hand , the paintings “required a human hand to enhance the final product.” That is to say that Oehlen augmented the digital works with an analogue technique. This is quite related to the current movement in digital art. Digital artists augment their works with emulations of analogue techniques. This observation raises the question: what does digital art look like when it does not emulate analogue art? Can such a work exist and feel ‘finished’? To investigate such questions, Libra generates imagery from first principles and default settings , two conflicting concepts that when brought together bring balance to the artwork. Each invocation of the algorithm directly uses the hash as the paintbrush: Libra creates color-fields and blurs by placing the hash characters onto the canvas until it is sufficiently covered. Each character is initially recognizable as a letter or number , something we may all be familiar with. As the screen fills with more and more characters, some become unrecognizable and part of a larger system. Through these actions the hash is transformed into minute and carefully placed strokes that create illusions of light, space, and form that is unique to the screen space in which digital art lives. The remaining, recognizable characters ground our eye and act as a ‘staffage figure’ in a landscape painting. Libra rejects traditional standards of aesthetics and beauty; Instead, Libra embraces self-reflexivity and a contemporary definition of kitsch , often a pejorative used to describe ‘low-brow’ or naïve artwork that is appreciated ironically or in a cult-like manner. In this series, a colored dot is dragged around the canvas both irrationally and without control. Drawing our attention in, this dot transfixes the viewer in an effort to shift the viewers’ attention from glancing at the work to a sustained look. These strokes are naïve and highly stylized , they embody the kitsch , and are mockingly-emulative of painterly marks and linework and grants the work a tone of self-reflexivity. Kitsch is obtained with drop shadows that create simple but satisfying trompe l’oeil effects and fabricate a false sense of depth. Such an effect can be interpreted as humorous: this is an obvious and ironic representation of depth , it is totally fake and recognizable as fake on the flat digital display in which Libra lives. Libra is a careful balancing act that creates form and color only to erase it. 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://www.cooperjamieson.com/libra/.

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. Libra functions as a manifesto that rejects digital art made from mimetic processes , the emulation of traditional analogue mediums and techniques. Such techniques are ubiquitous in digital art and arguably hamper the development of genuinely new aesthetics and new discourse for such a budding medium. Artists use digital mediums to mimic physical characteristics like brush strokes or textures

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 Libra 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 libra-by-cooper-jamieson was retrieved from projects_metadata.script filtered by that exact slug. The UTF-8 payload is 11316 bytes with SHA-256 a4ee3aa9d17da885e57f9ef24b76b8c8c0bda55eec90ed258c88a0b6551d0b97. 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 11316 bytes, SHA-256 a4ee3aa9d17da885e57f9ef24b76b8c8c0bda55eec90ed258c88a0b6551d0b97, runtime p5@1.0.0. Detected source markers: setup, draw, noLoop, createCanvas, tokenData, hash. Named functions include automatic_all_drawing_styles, draw, pj, pk, pu, setup. 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 197,219,210). File size 1145179 bytes. Indexed features: Hash Bits Text Can Match Stroke Color; Essay Styling Massive; Film Location Overcast Day; Running Style Jog; Favorite Color It's Just Bright; Emotional State Joyous; Surface or Substrate Grey

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 398 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069 is as follows. First token minted_at is 2022-12-19T19:18:23+00:00. activated_at is 2022-12-20T23:37:47+00:00. start_datetime is 2023-01-30T18:00:00+00:00. completed_at is 2023-01-30T18:30:23+00:00. Invocations stand at 50 of a maximum 50, with complete=true on the retrieved row. ²³

Calculated intervals from those timestamps: first mint to activation is 28.32 hours; activation to start_datetime is 40.77 days; start_datetime to completion is 30.4 minutes; first mint to completion is 41.97 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 2022-12-19T19:18:23+00:00, activated 2022-12-20T23:37:47+00:00, start 2023-01-30T18:00:00+00:00, completed 2023-01-30T18:30:23+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-ND'. That string does not include an explicit version number, so this essay does not upgrade it to a 4.0 deed. 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'.

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

Libra #0 is token 398000000 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2022-12-19T19:18:23+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 197,219,210). File size 1145179 bytes. Indexed features: Hash Bits Text Can Match Stroke Color; Essay Styling Massive; Film Location Overcast Day; Running Style Jog; Favorite Color It's Just Bright; Emotional State Joyous; Surface or Substrate Grey Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Hash Bits Text Can Match Stroke Color; Essay Styling Massive; Film Location Overcast Day; Running Style Jog; Favorite Color It's Just Bright; Emotional State Joyous; Surface or Substrate Grey. ³⁹⁴

Libra #1 is token 398000001 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-01-30T18:14:59+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 218,200,218). File size 3587821 bytes. Indexed features: Hash Bits Text Can Match Stroke Color; Essay Styling Teeny Tiny; Film Location Overcast Day; Running Style Jog; Favorite Color Hot Pink; Emotional State Joyous; Surface or Substrate Grey Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Hash Bits Text Can Match Stroke Color; Essay Styling Teeny Tiny; Film Location Overcast Day; Running Style Jog; Favorite Color Hot Pink; Emotional State Joyous; Surface or Substrate Grey. ³⁹⁴

Libra #10 is token 398000010 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-01-30T18:29:35+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 194,210,203). File size 1526576 bytes. Indexed features: Hash Bits Text Can Be Any Color; Essay Styling Pick Your Own; Film Location Overcast Day; Running Style Jog; Favorite Color It's Just Bright; Emotional State An Improperly Loaded Brush Can Still Look Good; Surface or Substrate Grey Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Hash Bits Text Can Be Any Color; Essay Styling Pick Your Own; Film Location Overcast Day; Running Style Jog; Favorite Color It's Just Bright; Emotional State An Improperly Loaded Brush Can Still Look Good; Surface or Substrate Grey. ³⁹⁴

Libra #20 is token 398000020 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-01-30T18:29:59+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 204,197,202). File size 1588304 bytes. Indexed features: Hash Bits Text Can Match Stroke Color; Essay Styling 12 pt Font; Film Location Overcast Day; Running Style Marathon; Favorite Color Maybe Mauve; Emotional State Joyous; Surface or Substrate Grey Indexed features returned for this V2 token: Hash Bits Text Can Match Stroke Color; Essay Styling 12 pt Font; Film Location Overcast Day; Running Style Marathon; Favorite Color Maybe Mauve; Emotional State Joyous; Surface or Substrate Grey. ³⁹⁴

The AB5D header candidate is token 398000031 (edition 31), 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 185,197,183). File size 2881308 bytes. Indexed features: Hash Bits Text Can Be Any Color; Essay Styling 12 pt Font; Film Location Confetti; Running Style Jog; Favorite Color It's Just Bright; Emotional State An Improperly Loaded Brush Can Still Look Good; Surface or Substrate Grey 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

Libra is project 398 by Cooper Jamieson 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.