{
  "schema": "ab5d-series-essay/1",
  "identity": {
    "chainId": 1,
    "contract": "0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270",
    "projectId": 282,
    "slug": "memories-of-qilin-by-emily-xie",
    "title": "Memories of Qilin",
    "artistCredit": "Emily Xie",
    "artistDossierUrls": []
  },
  "revision": 2,
  "researchCutoff": "2026-09-20",
  "status": "published-with-research-limitations",
  "facts": [],
  "rights": {
    "artwork": {
      "reportedLabel": " CC BY-NC 4.0",
      "category": "creative-commons",
      "termsUrl": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/",
      "observedAt": "2026-09-19",
      "sourceIds": [],
      "note": "Label copied from projects_metadata.license. Unversioned CC strings are not inferred as 4.0.",
      "unresolvedConflicts": []
    },
    "code": {
      "reportedLabel": null,
      "category": "unknown",
      "termsUrl": null,
      "observedAt": "2026-09-19",
      "sourceIds": [],
      "note": "No separate artist-code licence field was present on the project record.",
      "unresolvedConflicts": []
    },
    "thirdParty": [
      {
        "name": "p5.js 1.0.0",
        "reportedLabel": "LGPL-2.1 (p5.js project license; confirm version-specific notice)",
        "category": "custom",
        "termsUrl": "https://github.com/processing/p5.js/blob/main/license.txt",
        "observedAt": "2026-09-19",
        "sourceIds": [],
        "note": "Runtime declared script_type_and_version p5@1.0.0. p5.js is third-party; the artist program is a separate rights object.",
        "unresolvedConflicts": []
      }
    ]
  },
  "sections": [
    {
      "id": "the-work-and-its-context",
      "heading": "The work and its context",
      "bodyMarkdown": "Memories of Qilin is Art Blocks project 282 on the contract `0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270`. The index records 1,024 invocations against a maximum of 1,024, the runtime `p5@1.0.0`, an aspect ratio of 5:7 and the licence label `CC BY-NC 4.0`. It also records a price field of 0.75 ETH [^S01]. The project text says the work \"channels the sense of movement and fluidity found in classical Chinese brushwork, while drawing from the colors, patterns, and forms of ukiyo-e woodblock prints\" [^S01].\n\nThe title names the qilin, a chimerical beast of East Asian myth, \"also known in Korea as the girin and Japan as the kirin\", which \"represents prosperity and luck\" [^S01]. Each output is a flat, paper-toned sheet on which crumpled, flowing forms overlap. Their overlaps are filled with solid colour or with small repeating patterns of waves, rosettes and hexagons, inside a cream deckled border [^S01][^S02]. The shapes hover between abstraction and image. Xie hoped viewers would see \"dragons, ocean waves, birds, or flames\" in them [^S03].\n\nXie studied History of Art and Architecture at Harvard, then Computational Science and Engineering, and worked as a software engineer before turning to art full time [^S04]. AB5D holds #447, a Hong Bao Sweep of High complexity, pictured above [^S01]."
    },
    {
      "id": "conception-and-development",
      "heading": "Conception and development",
      "bodyMarkdown": "In the Art Blocks interview published four days before the sale, Xie traced the work to ukiyo-e pattern and to \"the sense of movement and dynamism that characterizes traditional Chinese brushwork\" [^S03]. She also named Zach Lieberman's organic shapes, Tyler Hobbs's palettes and early twentieth-century painters such as Kandinsky, Klimt and Miró [^S03]. Later she said she had \"always been fascinated by how Ukiyo-e woodblock prints combined so many colors and patterns in a way that felt cohesive and beautiful\" [^S05]. To The Cryptonomist she cited Hokusai, woodblock \"flatness\", and \"that sense of large whooshing brushstrokes\" [^S06].\n\nThe project took about six months. \"It took me 6 months to make, so it had become a large part of my life,\" she told The Monty Report [^S07]. Her mother supplied the title: \"the first thing she mentioned was the qilin because of its shape-shifting nature\" [^S07]. Xie has described her wider style as \"very influenced by textiles, patterns, collage and wallpaper\", and her theme as the tension between the handmade and the computational [^S08].\n\nThe project record credits David Lu for help \"setting up the Verlet physics engine that this piece adapts\" and Thomas Lin Pedersen for a line-intersection routine [^S01]. Xie has said Lu was also the artist who encouraged her into NFTs [^S03]. The interview presents Memories of Qilin as her move to long-form, where a whole system must produce outputs that each stand alone [^S03]. She has since talked about the project in filmed Q&As and on the SquiggleDAO podcast [^S09]."
    },
    {
      "id": "how-the-work-was-constructed",
      "heading": "How the work was constructed",
      "bodyMarkdown": "The program is three script parts that concatenate to 24,281 bytes, SHA-256 `4555ab57c93635eba872237a7d4b93cbf1dd423156e6e8a76ff4f7ea33d9a61d`. It was retrieved from the Art Blocks index on 20 September 2026 and read in full. No code is reproduced here [^S01].\n\nThe program seeds two small generators from the two halves of the token hash and alternates between them. Each is first advanced 500,000 times, then 101 further values are discarded [^S01]. It then draws, in order, two noise seeds, a palette, the splotch switch, a composition, a background colour and an accent colour. We replayed these first draws for all 1,024 hashes. The replay reproduces the published Palette and Splotches of every token exactly [^S01] (our computation).\n\n**Forms.** Every form begins as a ring of 400 to 700 particles. Each particle is tied by springs to its next four neighbours. A small random kick is given to each particle, and 200 or 300 steps of Verlet physics crumple the ring into an organic blob (code reading) [^S01]. The blob is then stretched, moved and \"warped\": its particles drift along a Perlin-noise flow field for 100 to 500 steps. If the outline tears apart, the program retries with fewer steps, up to ten times [^S01]. In Sweep compositions the forms share one, two or three noise fields, so their warps run in parallel like a flock or a brushstroke [^S01].\n\n**Regions.** The finished forms are drawn on black with random colours in p5's DIFFERENCE blend mode. Every patch where a different set of forms overlaps therefore almost always gets its own colour. The program counts these colours on a 1,000 by 1,400 sample, discards patches under 0.002 per cent of the sheet and sorts the rest by area (code reading) [^S01]. The largest patch takes the background colour. Middle-sized patches become a pattern with a palette-specific probability; tiny patches in Sweeps take the accent colour, and the rest take random palette colours. Patches given the same colour or pattern are merged, so one pattern runs continuously behind several shapes, like one sheet of paper cut into a collage (code reading) [^S01]. Thin outlines in the palette's line colour, paper grain, the cream border, noise shading, optional splotches, specks and 14,000 faint white hairlines are laid on top [^S01].\n\n**Traits.** The published traits follow the program's weights, as the table shows.\n\n| Trait (program weight) | Published count of 1,024 |\n| --- | --- |\n| Composition: Sweep 68%, Offset 12%, Focal 11%, Vertical 6%, Flock 3% | Sweep 769 (includes 48 Verticals), Offset 129, Focal 102, Flock 24 |\n| Palette: Intrepid 12%; Mira, Porcelain Vase, Dragon Dance 10% each; Hong Bao 8%; Ink and Xuan Paper, Poppy Field 7% each; Forest, Koten, Blossoms 6% each; Sea Dune, Velvet 5% each; Blood Moon 4%; Smoke and Fire 3%; Vermilion Bird 1% | 118; 92, 103, 99; 78; 86, 75; 62, 60, 73; 49, 43; 43; 32; 11 |\n| Splotches 30% | 313 |\n| Complexity: set by the number of forms (see below) | High 626, Medium 268, Low 130 |\n\nEach palette also carries three to five patterns. They are concentric wave scales in offset rows, many-petalled rosettes, small ten-petal flowers, hexagons (with a \"stars\" variant of three rings), leafy vines and dot grids [^S01]. Intrepid, the most common palette, has three: waves, rosettes and vines. Xie called it \"the most prevalent palette\", for its \"daring blues, reds, and yellows\" [^S07][^S01]."
    },
    {
      "id": "quirks-in-the-algorithm",
      "heading": "Quirks in the algorithm",
      "bodyMarkdown": "A full read of the program, checked against all 1,024 published token records, turned up the following. Where a point rests on the code alone, it is marked as a code reading.\n\n1. **A hidden fifth composition.** The composition list includes \"Vertical\" at 6 per cent. Its routine stacks the forms down the sheet and skips the recentring step that Sweeps get, but it labels itself \"Sweep\". Replaying the draws finds 48 Verticals, all published as Sweep: #44, #49, #52, #63, #75, #131, #206, #218, #232, #277, #323, #324, #330, #331, #339, #351, #356, #411, #415, #417, #422, #431, #446, #464, #511, #536, #595, #610, #618, #641, #644, #646, #651, #670, #697, #785, #786, #789, #801, #812, #862, #880, #882, #917, #928, #929, #939 and #968 [^S01] (our computation).\n2. **Complexity is a head count.** Complexity is not computed in the program, but it matches the number of forms drawn at the start exactly: eight or nine is Low, ten to twelve Medium, thirteen or more High [^S01] (our computation). So every Focal (four to seven forms) is Low and every Offset (always twelve) is Medium. Every Flock (35) and Vertical (15 to 24) is High. Only Sweeps vary, and 28 of them are Low [^S01].\n3. **Ranges that stop short.** Sweep form counts are drawn as fractions and rounded down, so the top of each written range is never reached. No Sweep has 23 forms, although one band's range is written as 15 to 23 [^S01] (our computation).\n4. **Colours that are never backgrounds.** Every palette gives some colours a weight of zero. These can never be the background, but they can still fill shapes, because fill colours are picked evenly from the whole list. Hong Bao's bright red `#bc0000` is one: it appears in shapes, but no Hong Bao has it as ground. Koten can have only two of its seven colours as ground [^S01] (our computation).\n5. **Vermilion Bird's single ground.** Vermilion Bird is the rarest palette (weight 1 of 100). Its ground is always the same near-black. That black is listed twice, and both entries are removed from the fill choices, which leaves darker greys, gold and red. It also has the highest pattern probability of any palette, 0.95 [^S01].\n6. **The \"crossHatch\" pattern is a vine.** Mira's crossHatch pattern calls the vine routine with longer leaves. No hatching is drawn (code reading) [^S01].\n7. **Specks that mostly miss.** The grain and fleck routines move to a point, rotate, and then draw at the same point again, which doubles the offset. By our simulation only about a fifth of the 40,001 grain specks, and about 6 per cent of the 201 elongated flecks, land on the canvas (code reading) [^S01].\n8. **One wobble for four edges.** All four edges of the cream border are shaped by the same noise curve. The top and bottom edges therefore wobble identically, and so do the two sides (code reading) [^S01].\n9. **Dead code and padding.** The Offset routine draws a random number and throws it away. The splotch routine computes two values it never uses. A stray expression sits in the colour-fill branch, and an unused \"numSys\" field sits beside the \"numSystems\" that is used. After colouring the regions, the program burns random draws up to 3,000, apparently to keep later draws steadier (code reading) [^S01].\n10. **Screen-dependent detail.** Layers are built at 2,400 by 3,360 pixels, or 1,600 by 2,240 on narrow windows, or at window width above 2,400. Phones use a coarser mask and a pixel density of 1. Fine edges may therefore differ slightly between devices. The work is static: it has no animation and no keyboard or mouse controls (code reading) [^S01].\n11. **Lonely forms are removed.** In Sweep, Vertical and Flock compositions, any form that crosses no other form is deleted before colouring [^S01]."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-most-coveted-variants",
      "heading": "The most coveted variants",
      "bodyMarkdown": "No published collector guide to the series was found. Sales and loans, however, point to three families: Vermilion Bird, Flock, and palettes the artist has singled out.\n\n**Vermilion Bird (11 of 1,024).** The palette sets gold and red patterning on near-black [^S01]. Cointelegraph reported that #191, an Offset Vermilion Bird with splotches, sold for 55.55 ETH (about $91,380) on 4 November 2022, from Bob Loukas to the 6529 Museum [^S08]. punk6529 has written that #191 leaves the viewer \"questioning whether they are looking at an ancient East Asian relic or a cutting-edge digital creation\" [^S10]. #600, another Offset Vermilion Bird, was shown in the window of Glitch Gallery in Marfa in November 2023, lent by Bob Loukas [^S11]. #442 is the only Vermilion Bird Flock [^S01].\n\n![Memories of Qilin #191: black ground with gold hexagon and rosette patterns and a large dark form](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/282000191.png)\n*Memories of Qilin #191, Vermilion Bird, Offset, with splotches. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*\n\n![Memories of Qilin #442: many patterned gold, red and black forms scattered over near-black](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/282000442.png)\n*Memories of Qilin #442, the only Vermilion Bird Flock. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*\n\n**Flock (24 of 1,024).** A Flock scatters 35 forms widely across the sheet, so patterns cover most of it [^S01]. Nine palettes have exactly one Flock, and Sea Dune has none [^S01]. Both Memories of Qilin lots traced at Sotheby's are Flocks. #1010 (Blossoms) was lot 15 in the Digital Art Day Sale of 22 August 2024, estimated at $5,000 to $7,000 [^S12]. #694 (Smoke and Fire, its palette's only Flock) was lot 323 in Contemporary Curated, with the same estimate [^S13]. Neither page showed a result without logging in [^S12][^S13].\n\n![Memories of Qilin #10: a Mira Flock of blue, brown and patterned forms covering the sheet](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/282000010.png)\n*Memories of Qilin #10, Mira, Flock. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*\n\n**Focal and Low Sweeps.** Focal outputs gather four to seven forms into one centred mass on open ground. Their second-largest patch is always patterned [^S01]. #14, an Ink and Xuan Paper Focal on pale ground, reads almost as a brush drawing. The 28 Low Sweeps are the sparsest Sweeps; the Art Blocks Journal illustrated its reflection on the series with one of them, #576 [^S14][^S01].\n\n![Memories of Qilin #14: a single swirling cluster of black and patterned forms on pale paper](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/282000014.png)\n*Memories of Qilin #14, Ink and Xuan Paper, Focal. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*\n\n**The artist's palettes.** Xie has named Blossoms, Dragon Dance, Intrepid and Hong Bao as favourites. She said \"Hong Bao holds sentimental value for me due to its cultural reference\", the red envelopes of Lunar New Year [^S07][^S03]. A Koten Sweep, #20, sold on 1stdibs for 7.0 ETH on 10 November 2022 [^S15].\n\n![Memories of Qilin #44: red ground with patterned red and maroon forms stacked down the sheet](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/282000044.png)\n*Memories of Qilin #44, Hong Bao, one of the 48 hidden Verticals published as Sweep. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*"
    },
    {
      "id": "notable-collectors",
      "heading": "Notable collectors",
      "bodyMarkdown": "- **6529 Museum** bought #191 in November 2022 [^S08]. At retrieval the index shows #191 in `0x76d078d7e5755b66ff50166863329d27f2566b43`; no source inspected names that wallet [^S01].\n- **Bob Loukas** sold #191 and lent #600 to Glitch Gallery [^S08][^S11].\n- **Le Random** acquired #724, a Dragon Dance Offset, on 20 March 2023 [^S16].\n- **DC Investor Collection** is credited for #311 in LACMA Unframed [^S05].\n- **A private collection** lent #713, #676 and #345 to the Toledo Museum of Art's \"Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms\". All three sit in one wallet at retrieval [^S17][^S01].\n- At retrieval the 1,024 tokens were held by 551 addresses. The largest wallet held 30, and the artist's own address held only #0 [^S01]."
    },
    {
      "id": "prints-and-exhibitions",
      "heading": "Prints and exhibitions",
      "bodyMarkdown": "Xie runs an official print programme. Each new owner of a token, after a primary or secondary sale, \"has the right to purchase one official print corresponding to the piece\" [^S18]. Current prints measure 18 by 25.2 inches on Hahnemühle German Etching paper with deckled edges. They are hand-signed and editioned, at $750, or $1,250 framed. A 20 by 28 inch format was offered in 2022 to 2023 [^S18]. Unlike some programmes, no public list of printed tokens was found.\n\nThe series was in Glitch Gallery's \"Every 30 Days\" window programme in Marfa in 2023. Its curatorial essay compared the work to patchwork quilts and to Dubuffet [^S11][^S04]. It was a finalist for the Lumen Prize Still Image Award in 2024 [^S19]. Xie also lists it in Taschen's *On NFTs* (2024) [^S04]. The Toledo show quoted above describes it as evoking \"the elusiveness of memory itself\" [^S17]."
    },
    {
      "id": "the-mint",
      "heading": "The mint",
      "bodyMarkdown": "Invocation 0 was minted to the artist on 14 March 2022 at 20:44:14 UTC. The project was activated on 15 March at 01:55:34 UTC [^S01]. The public sale was a Dutch auction from 17:00 UTC on 21 March. It started at 5 ETH and stepped down every five minutes through 4, 3, 2.5, 2, 1.75, 1.5, 1.25, 1 and 0.75 ETH, towards a floor of 0.1 ETH [^S01]. The first public mint came at 17:10:53 UTC and the last at 17:48:51 UTC [^S01].\n\nGrouping mint times into the five-minute steps gives two mints in the 3 ETH step, one at 2 ETH, two at 1.75, four at 1.5, 56 at 1.25, 110 at 1 and 848 in the 0.75 ETH step [^S01] (our computation). If each buyer paid the step price in force, the public sale grossed about 833.5 ETH; this has not been checked against transactions. Xie recalled that \"watching the dutch auction was almost unsettling\" [^S07]. The project record pledges 25 per cent of proceeds above 0.2 ETH to charity [^S01]. Cointelegraph put secondary volume at over 4,400 ETH within a year [^S08]."
    },
    {
      "id": "copyright-and-licensing",
      "heading": "Copyright and licensing",
      "bodyMarkdown": "The index records `CC BY-NC 4.0` without a link [^S01]. On that label, images may be shared and adapted non-commercially with attribution. Commercial reproduction needs permission, and the artist's print programme is the authorised route to a physical work [^S01][^S18]. The program carries no separate code licence, and p5.js is loaded by the platform at view time [^S01]. The earlier AB5D essay treated code rights as unknown, and nothing found changes that."
    },
    {
      "id": "significance-and-limitations",
      "heading": "Significance and limitations",
      "bodyMarkdown": "Memories of Qilin put textile and woodblock pattern at the centre of a long-form algorithm. Its method is unusual: physics shapes the forms, and a colour trick turns their overlaps into fields for pattern. The market has favoured its rarest palette, and one Vermilion Bird was bought by the 6529 Museum for 55.55 ETH [^S08]. Its traits also hide structure: a fifth composition sold as Sweep, and a Complexity trait that is simply a count of forms.\n\nUnresolved research questions:\n\n1. Did Xie intend the 48 Vertical outputs to be published as Sweep? Her X posts about the project (for example https://x.com/emilyxxie/status/1768673560355090703) are leads but could not be read.\n2. Which wallet belongs to the 6529 Museum, and what did the Sotheby's lots #1010 and #694 realise?\n3. How many prints have been made, and which tokens remain unprinted?\n4. Several quotations here (The Monty Report, Cointelegraph, The Cryptonomist, nftnow, LACMA) came through automated page extraction and should be checked against the pages. The Monty Report's publication date was not found.\n5. To which charities did the 25 per cent pledge go, and how much was given?"
    }
  ],
  "examples": [
    {
      "id": "E01",
      "chainId": 1,
      "contract": "0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270",
      "tokenId": "282000000",
      "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/token/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/282000000",
      "sourceIds": [],
      "selectionNote": "Specified candidate invocation 0.",
      "observationNote": "Red ground, cream edge. Layered qilin-like silhouettes filled with gold floral pattern. Palette Hong Bao, Sweep, high complexity."
    },
    {
      "id": "E02",
      "chainId": 1,
      "contract": "0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270",
      "tokenId": "282000001",
      "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/token/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/282000001",
      "sourceIds": [],
      "selectionNote": "Specified candidate invocation 1.",
      "observationNote": "Mira palette Sweep with splotches."
    },
    {
      "id": "E03",
      "chainId": 1,
      "contract": "0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270",
      "tokenId": "282000010",
      "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/token/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/282000010",
      "sourceIds": [],
      "selectionNote": "Specified candidate invocation 10.",
      "observationNote": "Tenth public mint of Memories of Qilin."
    },
    {
      "id": "E04",
      "chainId": 1,
      "contract": "0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270",
      "tokenId": "282000020",
      "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/token/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/282000020",
      "sourceIds": [],
      "selectionNote": "Specified candidate invocation 20.",
      "observationNote": "Twentieth public mint of Memories of Qilin."
    }
  ],
  "mediaIds": [],
  "provenance": {
    "operator": "Grok research session for coordinator handoff",
    "agent": "Grok",
    "model": null,
    "modelVersion": null,
    "tools": [
      "Hasura GraphQL",
      "media-proxy PNG retrieval",
      "canonical token HEAD checks",
      "full script read"
    ],
    "humanEditorialInvolvement": "Supplied prose preserved and published at Phil’s request. Sources not independently reinspected during import.",
    "originalProseLicense": "CC0-1.0",
    "generation": null
  },
  "codeInspection": {
    "url": "https://artblocks-mainnet.hasura.app/v1/graphql",
    "locator": "projects_metadata.script where slug=_eq memories-of-qilin-by-emily-xie",
    "sha256": "4555ab57c93635eba872237a7d4b93cbf1dd423156e6e8a76ff4f7ea33d9a61d",
    "retrievedAt": "2026-09-19T00:00:00+00:00",
    "method": "graphql-post-full-script-read",
    "executed": false,
    "chainBlock": null
  },
  "editorialExceptions": [],
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  "manuscriptPreamble": "# Memories of Qilin by Emily Xie\n\n*Art Blocks Curated, project 282 · 1,024 outputs · minted 21 March 2022 · CC BY-NC 4.0*\n\n![Memories of Qilin #447: dark maroon ground with red, gold and patterned forms swirling across the sheet](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/282000447.png)\n*Memories of Qilin #447, Hong Bao palette, Sweep composition. Held by AB5D. Render: Art Blocks media proxy.*\n\n",
  "bibliographyMarkdown": "\n### Primary: the work and the artist\n\n[^S01]: Art Blocks public GraphQL index, `projects_metadata` for project 282 (including the full program, sales notes, creative credit and charitable giving) and `tokens_metadata` for all 1,024 tokens. Retrieved 20 September 2026 via https://artblocks-mainnet.hasura.app/v1/graphql. Collection page: https://www.artblocks.io/collection/memories-of-qilin-by-emily-xie. Trait replay, form counts, mint-step grouping and speck simulation are AB5D's own computations from this data.\n[^S02]: Emily Xie, \"Memories of Qilin\", project page. https://emilyxie.art/projects/memories_of_qilin\n[^S03]: Jeff Davis, \"In Conversation with Emily Xie\", Art Blocks, 17 March 2022. https://medium.com/the-link-art-blocks/in-conversation-with-emily-xie-c80f141d4be7 (also https://info.artblocks.io/spectrum/in-conversation-with-emily-xie)\n[^S04]: Emily Xie, \"About\". https://emilyxie.art/about\n[^S18]: Emily Xie, \"Memories of Qilin: Official Prints\". Read 20 September 2026. https://emilyxie.art/projects/memories_of_qilin/prints\n\n### Interviews\n\n[^S05]: Lady Cactoid, \"Remembrance of Things Future: A Conversation with Emily Xie, Artist Experimenting on the Blockchain\", LACMA Unframed, 6 June 2023. https://unframed.lacma.org/2023/06/06/remembrance-things-future-conversation-emily-xie-artist-experimenting-blockchain\n[^S06]: Joe Morgan, \"Interview with NFT artist Emily Xie: brushstrokes made of code\", The Cryptonomist, 27 November 2022. https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2022/11/27/interview-nft-artist-emily-xie/\n[^S07]: The Monty Report, \"The Curiosity and Ambition of Emily Xie\" (undated). https://www.themontyreport.com/p/emilyxie\n[^S08]: Greg Oakford, \"Creating 'organic' generative art from robotic algorithms: Emily Xie, NFT Creator\", Cointelegraph Magazine, 22 March 2023. https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/creating-organic-generative-art-from-robotic-algorithims-emily-xie-nft-creator/\n\n### Video and audio\n\n[^S09]: Video and audio, titles and channels as returned by YouTube's oEmbed service on 20 September 2026. The recordings were identified but not watched for this draft.\n    - \"Emily Xie \"Off Script\" Q&A at Bright Moments London\", Bright Moments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTCWqeK-AuE\n    - \"S2E7 - Emily Xie, From Software Engineer to Visual Artist\", SquiggleDAO, 29 July 2024; its description lists \"the inspiration and process of 'Memories of Qilin'\". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEgfh2rihLc and https://podcast.squiggledao.com/2244679/episodes/15475011-s2e7-emily-xie-from-software-engineer-to-visual-artist\n    - \"UN Trailblazer Artist Speech - Emily Xie\", Emily Xie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcY6L1L_V74\n    - \"Emily Xie - Making Art with Python - PyCon 2018\", PyCon 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3d-n41Tobw\n\n### Criticism, collecting and market\n\n[^S10]: nftnow, \"Collector's Vault: Punk6529 Shares 10 Notable Pieces in His Collection\". https://nftnow.com/collectors-vault/collectors-vault-punk6529-collection/\n[^S11]: Glitch Gallery Marfa, \"Memories of Qilin #600\", Every 30 Days window exhibition, November 2023. https://www.glitchmarfa.com/e30dgallery/memories-of-qilin/\n[^S12]: Sotheby's, Digital Art Day Sale, lot 15, Memories of Qilin #1010, 22 August 2024. https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/digital-art-day-sale-2/memories-of-qilin-1010\n[^S13]: Sotheby's, Contemporary Curated, lot 323, Memories of Qilin #694. https://www.sothebys.com/buy/b7fddb12-a551-4898-a4aa-15856861f58d/lots/f1aa835a-25e4-4e1f-839d-79bd1f05b301\n[^S14]: Jean-Michel Pailhon, \"Reflection on Emily Xie's Memories of Qilin\", Art Blocks Journal. https://www.artblocks.io/articles/reflection-on-emily-xie-memories-of-qilin\n[^S15]: 1stdibs, \"Memories of Qilin #20\", in \"Coded Elegance\", curated by Sarah Meyohas. https://www.1stdibs.com/nft/art/memories-qilin-20/id-n_lDxeIcr16J\n[^S16]: Le Random, \"Memories of Qilin #724\". https://www.lerandom.art/collection/memories-of-qilin-724\n[^S17]: Toledo Museum of Art, \"Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms\", Memories of Qilin (#713, #676, #345). https://infiniteimages.toledomuseum.org/collection/memories-of-qilin and https://infiniteimages.toledomuseum.org/artwork/memories-of-qilin-713\n[^S19]: The Lumen Prize, \"Memories of Qilin\", Still Image Award 2024 finalist. https://lumenprize.org/still-image-award-2024/emily-xie-memories\n\n### Further reading\n\n- Shutong Liu, \"Curated Conversations: Emily Xie\", SuperRare, 29 June 2023. https://insights.superrare.com/discovery/curated-conversations-emily-xie\n- Taschen, *On NFTs*. https://www.taschen.com/en/books/art/08154/on-nfts/\n- Project website (JavaScript application). https://memoriesofqilin.com\n- The earlier AB5D essay. https://ab5d.xyz/series/memories-of-qilin-by-emily-xie/\n",
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