The Blocks of Art

The work and its context

The Blocks of Art is a 500-work Curated series by Shvembldr, released through Art Blocks in May 2021. Its cube-like forms carry small geometric compositions on their faces: bars, rings, grids, moving lines and other compact systems. Several processes share one view, but the restricted palette and repeated isometric structure hold them together. A single letter panel links each work to a collecting scheme based on ARTBLOCKS. ¹²

Shvembldr described the work in July 2021 as a dedication to Art Blocks and a representation of artists joined by a shared idea. His account connects the multiple panels to the platform's collective character. That is a useful starting point for interpretation: the cubes are both depicted objects and supports for other images. Their faces organise differences rather than eliminate them. ³

The AB5D artist dossier provides a broader account of the practice. Here the focus is the series: how a finite arrangement of faces gives several generative procedures a shared setting, how animation changes the pace of looking, and how the letter introduces another way to compare otherwise complete individual works. ⁴²

Conception and development

In the inspected 2021 interview, Shvembldr describes discovering generative art while working as a frontend developer on small games. Randomly placed lines led him toward further study, including lessons by Joshua Davis and Daniel Shiffman. That recollection locates the practice in programming and experimentation, without supplying a detailed chronology of this particular project. ³

For The Blocks of Art, his stated subject was the platform itself. He associated the small panels with individual artworks and the assembled cubes with artists sharing a common purpose. The visual arrangement can be read in that light, but it also creates a more specific perceptual problem: how to follow several small events without losing the whole construction. ³²

The interview also describes a club organised around collecting nine works whose letters cover ARTBLOCKS. Benefits were described at that time, including earlier access to subsequent releases. Those are historical statements, not verification that the same benefits or admission process remain available. The currently inspected club site lists AIXXA, dated December 2021, and [post]-konstrukt, dated April 2022; the latter is described as an internal project for members and token holders. These listings extend the documented history of the club without proving its present operational status. ³⁵

No dated sketches or version history specific to the series were recovered in this review. The registry-linked cent.co interview was not substantively accessible in the submitted research. Its contents are not used here. The inspected July interview is a separate source and should not be mistaken for a recovered copy of that missing material. ¹³

How the work was constructed

The full artist script was retrieved from the official indexed project record at the Art Blocks mainnet GraphQL endpoint, filtered by the exact slug the-blocks-of-art-by-shvembldr and corroborated against contract 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270 and project ID 74. The retrieved script is 15,513 bytes with SHA-256 digest 80eb116fec4d68611b91fa7873101c1d1184537cbc01475b2fc126cbf9cdedb4 (recorded in evidence.json; the script itself is not redistributed). The indexed runtime is p5@1.0.0 on a square 2D canvas, with no external asset dependencies.¹²

The generator seeds its pseudo-random number generator with the first sixteen characters of the token hash, including its 0x prefix, parsed as an integer, to initialise a xorshift sequence used for composition and panel parameters.² The composition is a honeycomb: five rows of hexagons, the count per row drawn from small sets (1 to 3 in the first row, 3 to 4 in the second, and so on), each hexagon then rendered as an isometric cube whose three visible faces are clipped with shear transforms. For every cube the script allocates three offscreen graphics buffers, one per face, and fills each buffer with one of sixteen routine types in the ordinary panel pool; a seventeenth routine supplies the letter. The ordinary routines receive parameters from the hash-driven random stream and include line grids with flicker, barcodes, concentric circles, dot fields, waveforms, cross-stitch stars, pinwheels, nested squares, scribbled wave signatures, and others.²

The letter panel is structural, not incidental. After the panel list is filled with random picks from the sixteen ordinary types, the script appends exactly one instance of the letter panel type, its letter picked from the nine characters of "ARTBLOCKS", and shuffles the list before assigning panels to faces. Every output therefore carries precisely one letter, which is what makes the nine-letter collecting game possible.²

Many panel routines depend on a time value derived from the frame counter, producing pulses, scrolling or changing shapes. Not every panel animates: thing11 supplies a plain background and thing12 a static line grid. That distinction lets relatively stable faces coexist with more active ones. The coordinator independently inspected the original renderer for the AB5D-held edition 319. Its rings, waveforms and other panels visibly changed between observations. Clicking inside the canvas stopped those changes, two subsequent views remained stable, and another click resumed them. This matches the script's mouseClicked handler, which toggles the drawing loop. ⁶ The script also maps the s key to saving a PNG named after the token hash and the number keys 1 to 9 to the render pixel density, affordances for collectors exporting stills.² Direct inspection found no audio code.²

The program also draws corner border marks and four hundred small speckles per frame. Their positions use the seeded random stream, while their sizes use noise. A panel routine also calls noise, and the inspected program contains no noiseSeed call. Hash-seeded layout therefore should not be expanded into an untested promise of identical whole-frame replay across reloads. ²

The script was inspected through the current Art Blocks index. This is not a block-pinned contract retrieval and does not establish the complete history of its storage. Its declared p5.js environment runs in the viewer's browser. ¹²

The mint

The indexed chronology distinguishes the first token from the recorded release.¹⁷ The first token, edition 0 (token ID 74000000), was minted on May 25, 2021 at 20:04:21, three days before the recorded release. The project was activated on May 27, 2021 at 16:48:03, and the recorded release followed on May 28, 2021 at 16:00:49: the registry's sale-start timestamp coincides exactly with the second token's mint, and the official collection page carries the line "Released May 28, 2021, 4:00 PM".¹⁸⁷

The indexed completion is May 28, 2021 at 17:38:28, an interval of one hour, thirty-seven minutes and thirty-nine seconds after the recorded start. Edition 0 predates that interval. These fields cannot establish that all 500 works were sold publicly during it, or distinguish artist, reserved and administrative allocations. The current invocation count and maximum both equal 500, and the index marks the project complete and locked. ¹⁷

The currently indexed price is 0.1 ETH per token; no dated 2021 source inspected here states the original mint price, so that figure is reported as the present registry value and the launch price remains unverified, as flagged in the research notes.¹ The current unpaused setting does not establish a complete history of pauses or pricing changes. Full timestamps and offsets are retained in the research record.¹

Copyright and licensing

The current Art Blocks record labels the artwork CC BY-NC 4.0 but supplies no terms link. The named Creative Commons deed permits sharing and adaptation with attribution, a licence link, indication of changes and a noncommercial restriction. It also prohibits additional restrictions on those permissions. The label and the linked deed are recorded separately; this review has not reconstructed the history of earlier artwork terms. ¹⁹

No separate reuse grant for Shvembldr's script was found in the inspected program. Public access to code does not itself supply that grant. The p5.js 1.0.0 repository contains the LGPL version 2.1 licence text; that library record is separate from the artwork label and the artist's program. ²¹⁰

The historical club description concerns collecting and membership, not an additional copyright licence. The artwork above is displayed through the original Art Blocks renderer with a linked token record. AB5D's CC0 dedication applies to the original essay prose, while artwork, artist code and library permissions remain separately identified. ³⁵⁶

Close reading of examples

The comparison uses editions 0, 1, 10, 20 and 319. The first four retain the submitted early-edition sample; 319 is the verified AB5D holding. The coordinator inspected two visibly different states of each original renderer and tested pause and resume on 319. This small sample supports comparison, not a distribution or rarity claim about all five hundred works. ^117126131415

In edition 0, blue and turquoise panels stand against a pale yellow ground. The central cube, covered in rectangular cells, is more solid than several surrounding forms. At the upper left, an isolated striped face seems to float because adjacent faces merge into the ground. Near the bottom right, a turquoise face carries T. Rings, sloping line grids and linked circular nodes distribute attention around that central mass. In the second observed state, the central grid darkened, rings changed their interiors and the waveform changed shape, while the overall arrangement held its position. ¹²

The yellow ground is therefore active in the reading of #0. It is both the space around the construction and the colour of some of its faces. When a face matches it, the cube becomes difficult to complete mentally; a stripe or ring can look suspended without a support. The densely subdivided central cube temporarily stabilises this uncertain space. It supplies a volume against which the dispersed marks can be read, yet changes in its contrast make that stability provisional. The movement is internal to the panels, not a rotation of the assembled structure. ¹²²

Edition 1 uses a coral ground with dark blue and peach faces. Its letter L lies near the centre. The cluster is concentrated down the left and middle, with a thinner extension reaching into the upper right. Nested squares recur on several planes; circular dotted fields, bands and small outlined solids interrupt them. Between observations, the interiors of the square patterns and the visibility of grids changed. The large coral area at the lower right keeps this busy cluster from occupying the whole picture. ¹³

Edition 10 places peach and salmon against a muted blue ground. A carries a prominent position on the right-facing panel of the highest cube. Below it, the construction curls around a substantial central opening. Nested squares on the left answer circles and grids on the right; two small outlined solids appear detached at the upper left. Changing waveforms and the brightening rectangular grid make movement legible without erasing the opening, which gives this arrangement a clearer ring-like organisation than #1. ¹⁴

Edition 20 has a brighter coral ground, lemon yellow faces and dark teal accents. Several small outlined solids repeat across the construction, including one on a low, apparently detached face. A pair of concentric circular patterns on the right gives that side a strong vertical emphasis, while striped panels and fine parallel lines pull attention across the middle. In successive states, grids faded, star-like forms narrowed and the outlined solids changed their coloured facets. These observations support a rich panel vocabulary; they do not establish that this output has more panel types than the others. ¹⁵

The AB5D-held edition 319 uses off-white and pale blue on a near-black navy field. Its letter T occupies a right-hand face below the centre. A solid-looking grid-covered cube near the middle answers scattered rings, thin vertical bars and waveform traces at the edges. A small outlined solid sits near the lower right. Some dark faces almost disappear into the background, leaving pale marks apparently unsupported. Fine speckles and the thin corner brackets keep the empty field from feeling completely inert. ⁶

Watching #319 changes the way its weight is distributed. Broad pale faces remain conspicuous, but their interior marks contract or separate; rings become narrow outlines and then more substantial bands. The grid-covered centre alternates in contrast while nearby fan-like forms change their spread. The viewer can follow one small procedure or repeatedly return to the whole assembly. Pausing makes this choice unusually clear: the construction remains readable as a still, but the stopped image no longer offers the shifting emphases that drew attention from face to face. Resuming restores those changes without rearranging the cubes. That distinction is central to the work's combination of architectural stability and local activity. ⁶

Significance and limitations

The Blocks of Art brings two scales of attention into one picture. At the larger scale, the repeated cube form and limited palette make the arrangement legible. At the smaller scale, each face offers a different procedure to follow. The artist's platform dedication gives that relationship a documented context, while the program makes it concrete through separate drawing buffers and a shared system of placement. ²³

The letter adds a second structure without replacing the picture's formal organisation. It is both a visible mark on one face and a means of comparing works across the edition. The historical club developed that comparison into a collecting programme. Its later project listings document further activity, but they should not be used to infer current benefits or rank its influence without additional evidence. ²⁵

Preservation requires attention to more than a still image. Several panel routines change over time, others remain stable, and clicking can pause the drawing loop. The seed governs many initial choices, but the unseeded noise calls complicate a blanket claim of pixel-identical replay. These distinctions matter when comparing a marketplace preview, a paused view and a fresh execution. ²

Unresolved research questions remain: establish the original mint price and allocation history; recover the inaccessible registry-linked interview and any development records; compare the indexed program with pinned chain evidence; measure the distribution of letters without assuming exact uniformity; and test the consequences of unseeded noise across independent reloads. Current club operation also remains unverified. ¹²⁵