Maps for grief

The work and its context

Maps for grief brings many marks into a common movement without allowing them to become one continuous line. Small strokes travel alongside each other, turning through a field that is shared but never entirely occupied. Elsewhere, that motion gives way to dots, crosses, tears or branching stars. The interruptions are not empty gaps in an otherwise complete picture. They are another kind of presence, requiring the eye to change from following a current to attending to separate signs. ^{1 2 3 4 5}

Louis-André Labadie released the 500-work series through Art Blocks Factory on 11 January 2022. The artist's project description connects its formal contrast between motion and stillness with people experiencing feelings separately within an intensely connected world. The title supplies an emotional frame, but the works do not illustrate an identifiable person's loss. Their argument is made through relations between marks: proximity without contact, shared direction without merger, interruption without disappearance. The Louis-André Labadie dossier places the project within his wider practice. ⁶

The five examples examined here range from fine, dark, flowing fields to a pale composition with blunt marks and conspicuous crosses. They also divide the picture differently, from one continuous area to four panels. These changes affect the experience of continuity. A seam can interrupt a current as clearly as a region of symbols, yet colour and direction may encourage the eye to carry the movement across it. ^{1 2 3 4 5}

Conception and development

Labadie's development account traces the work to Convergence, an earlier generator combining flowing lines with small circular blooms. He connects this to a recurring practice of introducing anomalies into an established order, to architectural and cartographic interests, and to rough, pen-like tracing. He also describes the difficulty of judging a system whose entire output will be distributed: unlike a manually selected series, its weaker outcomes cannot simply be discarded. The current page bears a December 2021 date but includes a later release statement, so it should not be treated as an unchanged pre-launch document. ⁷

A subsequent technical account identifies four principal symbol families: crosses, mountain-like forms, tears and asterisks. It also explains how colour subsets can vary between regions and how tip size changes the useful viewing scale. These remarks help connect the feature labels to visible decisions. The account's rarity percentages are not independently recounted here; a close reading of five works is not evidence for the frequency of a feature across five hundred. ⁸

What develops from these sources is a method of composing with resistance. The flowing path establishes an expectation that the next mark will continue it. Symbols make the expectation fail locally while preserving the larger organisation. This interpretation can be tested against individual images rather than accepted from the title alone. In #1, for example, the radial arrangement remains legible even where stars replace strokes. The disturbance belongs to the same field, which is why it feels consequential rather than pasted on. ²

How the work was constructed

The complete indexed program, 8,418 bytes, was read for this essay. The current project identifies its runtime as plain JavaScript, and the inspected renderer uses the browser's two-dimensional canvas rather than a p5.js drawing environment. The evidence record preserves the exact retrieval query and script digest. Official originals were viewed separately; no claim is made that the index was compared with a script retrieved at a pinned Ethereum block. ^{6 9}

The token hash supplies four initial unsigned integers for a pseudorandom sequence. Bitwise shifts and exclusive-or operations update that sequence. It drives choices including mark size, palette, panel arrangement, angular range, field scale and symbol behaviour. An inline noise routine supplies smoothly related values at nearby positions. The result is neither a set of independently random directions nor a picture assembled by asking every mark to choose a new destination without reference to its neighbours. ⁹

Two related field functions perform different jobs. One contributes to the direction in which a path proceeds. The other affects whether a candidate location becomes a path or a symbol and influences the available length and colour treatment. In the inspected implementation, the symbol test uses a low raw value against a selected threshold. It is clearer to distinguish that numeric convention from the ordinary description of a strong interrupting influence. A raw value and its artistic role are not automatically the same scale. ⁹

Before drawing, the program moves the sampled noise region until its checks encounter sufficient extreme values. This prevents it from simply accepting every initial window onto the field. The inspected loop adjusts offsets; it should not be paraphrased as an exhaustive search for the best-looking composition. These are programmed acceptance conditions, not a record of the artist approving each minted output. ⁹

The composition can have one region, two side-by-side regions, three columns or four quarters. Within those boundaries, it attempts roughly ten thousand insertions, divided across the regions. A candidate path advances through small steps using the local direction. Its available length, nearby occupied positions and panel limits determine how much of that attempt survives. Many attempted insertions need not appear in the finished image because their space is already occupied. The attempt count is therefore not a visible line count. ⁹

A quadtree organises previously placed points so that the program can query nearby positions. This is the practical mechanism behind the separation of marks. It helps the generator reject a path or symbol that would crowd existing material. The image's social analogy rests on an exact spatial constraint: the marks can align and gather while retaining intervals. Those intervals are active components of the drawing, not merely whatever background happened to remain after an unconstrained scatter. ⁹

The ordinary directional rule combines a base angle with a noise-derived variation. An optional radial rule instead relates the direction to a selected centre, with further field variation. This accounts for the conspicuous convergence in #1 without requiring a claim that the marks simulate particles attracted by a physical force. No velocity history is needed to produce that still arrangement. The program constructs directions and records the resulting positions. ^{9 2}

The symbol routines have their own geometry. A cross is assembled from intersecting runs of points; a mountain-like sign from two sloping runs. Other branches produce a curved, drop-like contour or a set of rays around a centre. A further option selects among the families at individual placements, producing the mixed vocabulary visible in #10. These shapes share the same basic material as the paths. They are stored as coloured points and later painted as small circles, so their edges inherit the drawing's granular character. ^{9 3}

Six palette families supply background, intermediate and accent colours. The program can restrict a region's available range, and it reselects colour relationships as it begins successive panels while retaining a common background. This helps explain a work such as AB5D's #93, where violet dominates the left and turquoise the right without turning the quarters into wholly unrelated pictures. The panel structure and the field structure interact: a colour boundary need not coincide with a change in the direction of the marks. ^{9 5}

Generation and rendering are separate stages. The former builds a list of positions and colours; the latter draws slightly displaced circles at those positions, with small radius variation. Repainting advances the random sequence used for that displacement while retaining the underlying list. The optional animation therefore makes the tracing tremble. It does not send the completed paths drifting across the canvas or regenerate a new composition on each frame. Across the inspected originals, the arrangement stayed recognisable while the edges subtly changed. ^{9 1 2 3 4 5}

The ordinary script starts with animation disabled unless the URL query contains its animation option. Lowercase A toggles redraw, and the animated scheduler uses a quarter-second interval check. AB5D's presentation enables the artist's existing option at load time. This preserves the distinction between a static default and an available animated rendering. No sound-generating mechanism was found in the program, so the page does not imply an absent soundtrack. ⁹

Keys 1, 2 and 3 expose the construction. On the official #93 original, 1 added short direction segments. Adding 2 and switching off the finished output with 3 revealed a pale diagnostic field of directional marks and varying circles, with red concentrated through the central and lower-left area. That area corresponded to the concentration of tear-like forms in the finished composition. The controls make it possible to inspect a relationship that the final image otherwise suggests indirectly. ^{9 5}

The mint

The current index records the first token on 5 January 2022 at 21:15:12 and activation on 7 January at 02:53:40. The scheduled start is 11 January at 17:00:00. The second recorded mint follows at 17:01:52, and the completion field is 18:33:34 that day. The collection page names 11 January as the release date. These are separately identified events, with full timestamps retained in the evidence record; the earlier first token is not presented as the public opening. ^{6 1 2}

The observed record reports 500 invocations against a current maximum of 500. Its sales notes describe a descending auction with steps of 1.2, 0.6, 0.3 and 0.15 ETH, and its current price setting is 0.15 ETH. Those notes establish a stated sale plan. They do not prove the price paid for each token, the timing of every step, or the original maximum before any possible changes. Without classifying administrative and public mints, subtracting the first and last timestamps would not establish a precise public sellout duration. ⁶

The sale notes also state that a quarter of sales would support four Canadian organisations concerned with opportunities for under-represented groups: SCWST, Wapikoni Mobile, Nikamowin and Pathways to Education. This is recorded as an announced intention. No donation receipt or transaction reconstruction was recovered for this essay, so an amount transferred or completed charitable outcome is not claimed. ⁶

The fresh AB5D wallet check returned edition #93, owned by a wallet linked to the collection's current Art Blocks profile. It was chosen as the header example before visual inspection. Its inclusion establishes the connection between this essay and an actual collection work; it does not make the five-example comparison statistically representative of the edition. ^{6 5}

Copyright and licensing

The current artwork label is CC BY-NC 4.0. The metadata supplies no separate licence link, so the caption points to the named Creative Commons deed. That deed permits sharing and adaptation under attribution, change-indication and noncommercial conditions. The current label is not a reconstructed history of all earlier terms. ^{6 10}

The inspected file does not establish a separate comprehensive reuse grant for the artist's program. Its use of native Canvas also should not be mistaken for proof that every included algorithm was independently invented or has no third-party provenance. No external drawing-library import appears in the inspected program, but separate rights and attribution for embedded routines remain unresolved. AB5D publishes the analysis and a digest, not a wholesale copy of the artist's script. The CC0 dedication applies to the original essay prose. ⁹

Close reading of five outputs

The sample combines editions #0, #1, #10 and #20 with AB5D's #93. Their token identifiers are 235000000, 235000001, 235000010, 235000020 and 235000093 on Ethereum contract 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270. Each official original was viewed at multiple moments with its animation option enabled. The comparison concerns those renderings, not the artist's separately illustrated test-network examples. ^{1 2 3 4 5}

Edition #0 spreads fine turquoise marks across dark plum. Most of the field consists of short, nearly parallel strokes that bend into broader currents. At upper right, stars and dots replace that continuity with a more dispersed population. The change does not sever the picture into unrelated halves. Small marks around the boundary allow the flowing area to loosen gradually, so the stars seem to occupy a region prepared for them by the surrounding drawing. ¹

The lower part of #0 is especially useful to follow. Its currents turn and gather without becoming a single contour that can be traced from edge to edge. Each short line offers a fragment of direction; the eye supplies their larger continuity. Meanwhile, the dark intervals keep the surface from becoming an opaque band of turquoise. The animation adds a slight instability to the tracing, but the broad bend and upper-right constellation remain in place. Duration unsettles the touch of the drawing rather than its composition. ¹

Edition #1 changes the organising principle. Blue marks radiate around a point near the centre, making the whole field feel gathered by a common reference. Bright stars interrupt the right and lower areas. Darker wedges on the left and lower right reduce the apparent density without destroying the radial relationship. Compared with #0, the eye has a much more explicit destination. It can read the strokes as moving inward or outward, even though the observed animation does neither. That ambiguity belongs to their orientation, not to a simulated journey. ²

Edition #10 divides the field into two tall panels on an almost black green ground. Cyan, muted green and yellow strokes form long currents, while mixed symbols collect toward the upper right of the left panel and lower part of the right. Crosses, chevrons, tears and stars interrupt the local rhythm differently. The central seam is clear, yet the directions on either side encourage a larger reading across it. It is a useful example of division without complete isolation: each panel has boundaries, but the eye still compares their movements. ³

Edition #20 offers the sharpest change of scale and tone. Broad lilac and blue marks sit on a pale, icy background. Crosses gather in the upper middle and right, surrounded by round dots, while longer marks incline more diagonally on the left and approach vertical on the right. Its three regions are less forcefully separated than the two halves of #10. The blunt tracing makes individual marks easier to hold in attention and gives the crosses more bodily weight. They look placed and insistent rather than merely ornamental interruptions in a fine texture. ⁴

AB5D's #93 has four quarters on a deep blue-black field. Violet and lavender predominate on the left, turquoise on the right. Parallel strokes bend around a central concentration of tear-like loops and dots, with the lower-left quarter particularly full of separate signs. The cross-shaped gap interrupts both axes, but similar inclinations and repeated shapes carry relationships across it. The result can be read as four related territories or as one field cut into four views. Neither reading entirely cancels the other. ⁵

The diagnostic controls sharpen that ambiguity. Once the finished marks are hidden, the underlying field continues across places where the panel gaps had seemed decisive. The red diagnostic concentration connects areas that appeared separated by the framing. Returning mentally to the finished image, the seams become a second organisation laid over the first. This is a specific reason to retain the executable work: an ordinary preview records the result but cannot expose this alternative way of seeing how it was made. ^{9 5}

Significance and limitations

Maps for grief gives interruption a constructive role. Its signs do not destroy the flowing field; they show where a different kind of mark becomes necessary within it. The five inspected works sustain that relationship through differences in scale, colour, radial organisation and panel count. Their emotional force need not depend on assigning a fixed meaning to every symbol. It can arise from the repeated experience of marks sharing a direction while retaining their separation. ^{9 1 2 3 4 5}

The slight animation and field controls extend that experience in different ways. One makes the surface less settled while keeping its structure; the other exposes structures usually hidden by the surface. Together they complicate the idea that the work is exhausted by one still image. A useful archive must preserve not only its token identity and picture, but also those modes of encounter. ^{9 5}

Further research should compare the indexed script with a pinned chain retrieval, establish any separate code permissions, recover earlier edition and sale records, and verify the proposed charitable transfers. A wider visual sample would test configurations absent from these five works. These gaps are kept separate from the observations made here: the complete indexed program was read, the five originals were inspected, and the field controls were tested on the collection example. ^{6 9}