# Sentience research checkpoint

Identity confirmed from cached index and current collection: pxlq, project 20, Playground, 144 works, public release page date 16 February 2021. First indexed token was 15 February 20:59:06, activation 23:16:18, second/start 16 February 00:30:37, completion 01:21:47. Current 0.15 ETH price setting is not historical price evidence. Artwork label NFT License, terms URL null. Artist description asks what self-aware art looks like; this is framing, not evidence of consciousness.

Source read: https://www.artblocks.io/collection/sentience-by-pxlq . Search found market analysis and listings but no specific development interview. Do not import market prediction claims into the art essay. Artist's other-project context can be located from the existing Cyber Cities source package, but must be re-read as needed.

Complete 5,591-byte script read, not executed independently. p5 1.0.0. 25x25 Grid, four orthogonal neighbours, seeded noise threshold for initial state, border/corner cleanup. Fourteen palettes including light/dark ground. CURSOR a/h/v controls neighbour choice. Pointer temporarily activates a cell and neighbours; pressed left pointer calls init_state/init_color so activation persists through reset. Colour spreads through search_party to connected cells. Rounded corner sizes depend on neighbour state; JOIN extends adjoining shapes. draw resets cells to stored initial state after display. This is not a demonstrated Conway-style evolving cellular automaton; no birth/death evolution claimed.

Controls found in code: left/right arrow select light/dark ground; B restores palette ground; up/down arrow enable/disable joins; space enables WANDER and chooses a currently inactive cell. Every thirty frames wander selects an inactive orthogonal neighbour using p5 random, not explicitly seeded in this program. Distinguish repeatable initial state from interaction-dependent and unseeded wandering behaviour. Ordinary rendering is interactive, not necessarily autonomous animation until space action. Official live rendering and controls subsequently inspected as detailed below.

Four token records and full script cached under .ab500-cache/series-expansion/sentience-by-pxlq/. Visual comparisons, controls, held example, licence-source inspection and drafting completed.


## Visual inspection and publication presentation

Canonical renderers for editions 0, 1, 10 and 20 visually inspected. In the four-frame comparison, 0 and 20 initially appeared blank despite canvas elements; direct navigation rendered both. No cause is asserted. Extension-origin console errors were not treated as artwork errors. #0 keyboard tests split and rejoined bars and changed the ground to pale. A brief click on #0 was not evidence of a persistent edit. A drag on #20 did leave a magenta passage after the pointer left. #1 and #10 were inspected in their initial states, not subjected to all controls.

Held #133 owner 0xdd19308a9731cdecb67e0d80ca6823394208c045 was checked from a fresh index query. Pale ground, lavender, blue, salmon and pink marks were viewed. Two successive frames of the autoplay wrapper show the pink wandering cell changing position. The wrapper retrieves the canonical renderer at viewing time and invokes the artist's space-key handler once after setup. It does not store the artist drawing code. Automatic wandering is an AB5D presentation choice; the original renderer leaves that mode optional. Pointer and keyboard behaviour remain authored by the project.

Dynamic Slices collection description and tagged p5.js licence read. The earlier project supports context about interaction, not a direct developmental lineage. Eight material references support the essay. Historical mint allocations, operative NFT License text, a separate artist-code grant and pinned-chain comparison remain unresolved.