Life and Love and Nothing

The work and its context

Life and Love and Nothing is project 476 on the Art Blocks V2 core contract 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, published under the canonical slug life-and-love-and-nothing-by-nat-sarkissian and credited to Nat Sarkissian. The indexed project record reports a completed edition of 200 of 200 invocations, runtime p5@1.0.0, and the official description: Life and Love and Nothing is released as part of reGEN, a special charitable auction of generative art to raise funds for Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, curated by Alex Estorick and Foteini Valeonti in collaboration with The Giving Block. This is an illustration of a wildfire burning through a cabin and the surrounding hillside, rendered stylistically with pen and paper in mind. Once a year, the fire will ignite and burn until the cabin and the hillside are consumed. After burning, the cabin and the hillside will regenerate, and the cycle will start again. The cabin represents a person, and the surrounding hillside their mind and memories. The fire represents disease, burning through the person’s memories from the most recent and least established, through to the oldest and most ingrained. My hope is that this can illustrate both the pain caused by disease and the beauty of the time we have to hold onto memories and loved ones. Life is short, bodies degrade, houses burn. But, before that, there is life; there is love; there is creation , these things are beautiful. Consider where you are placing your efforts. Pursue what is important. Take the time to see someone you love. Take the time to do something you love. There’s only so much time. 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 1.33333333. Website https://curealz.org/news-and-events/digital-art-auction-to-benefit-our-research/.

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. Life and Love and Nothing is released as part of reGEN, a special charitable auction of generative art to raise funds for Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, curated by Alex Estorick and Foteini Valeonti in collaboration with The Giving Block. This is an illustration of a wildfire burning through a cabin and the surrounding hillside, rendered stylistically with pen and paper in mind. Once a year, the fire

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 Life and Love and Nothing 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 life-and-love-and-nothing-by-nat-sarkissian was retrieved from projects_metadata.script filtered by that exact slug. The UTF-8 payload is 30625 bytes with SHA-256 572f48341abd5cc97002efa142c9592821736a477c0ead48c3931d3637d1d12e. 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 30625 bytes, SHA-256 572f48341abd5cc97002efa142c9592821736a477c0ead48c3931d3637d1d12e, runtime p5@1.0.0. Detected source markers: setup, draw, noLoop, WEBGL, createCanvas, tokenData, hash. Named functions include FA, FB, FC, FD, FE, FF, FG, FH, FI, FJ. tokenData.hash is read in source. Output then follows the drawing path those functions implement. Token 0 observation: Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x1800px, mid-tone and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 124,120,114). File size 4803082 bytes. Indexed features: none recorded

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 476 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069 is as follows. First token minted_at is 2023-10-09T04:58:23+00:00. activated_at is 2023-10-12T22:52:47+00:00. start_datetime is 2023-10-25T17:00:00+00:00. completed_at is 2023-10-25T17:24:11+00:00. Invocations stand at 200 of a maximum 200, with complete=true on the retrieved row. ²³

Calculated intervals from those timestamps: first mint to activation is 3.75 days; activation to start_datetime is 12.76 days; start_datetime to completion is 24.2 minutes; first mint to completion is 16.52 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 2023-10-09T04:58:23+00:00, activated 2023-10-12T22:52:47+00:00, start 2023-10-25T17:00:00+00:00, completed 2023-10-25T17:24:11+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 2.0'. 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 2.0'.

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

Life and Love and Nothing #0 is token 476000000 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-10-09T04:58:23+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x1800px, mid-tone and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 124,120,114). File size 4803082 bytes. Indexed features: none recorded Indexed features returned for this V2 token: none recorded. ³⁹⁴

Life and Love and Nothing #1 is token 476000001 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-10-25T17:00:35+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x1800px, mid-tone and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 111,108,103). File size 3853116 bytes. Indexed features: none recorded Indexed features returned for this V2 token: none recorded. ³⁹⁴

Life and Love and Nothing #10 is token 476000010 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-10-25T17:16:59+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x1800px, mid-tone and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 164,126,120). File size 4648444 bytes. Indexed features: none recorded Indexed features returned for this V2 token: none recorded. ³⁹⁴

Life and Love and Nothing #20 is token 476000020 on 0x99a9b7c1116f9ceeb1652de04d5969cce509b069, minted 2023-10-25T17:19:35+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Inspected media-proxy PNG is 2400x1800px, mid-tone and muted or near-neutral (mean RGB 109,106,101). File size 4968878 bytes. Indexed features: none recorded Indexed features returned for this V2 token: none recorded. ³⁹⁴

The AB5D header candidate is token 476000175 (edition 175), 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 2400x1800px, mid-tone and strongly coloured (mean RGB 201,121,92). File size 7628179 bytes. Indexed features: none recorded 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

Life and Love and Nothing is project 476 by Nat Sarkissian 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.