# Zoologic by ixnayokay

## The work and its context

Zoologic is project 287 on the Art Blocks V2 core contract 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, published under the canonical slug zoologic-by-ixnayokay and credited to ixnayokay. The indexed project record reports a completed edition of 300 of 300 invocations, runtime js@na, and the official description: --------- zoologic (zō- ə- ˈlä- jik) - relating to the properties and vital phenomena exhibited by an animal, animal type, or group. ---------  Why do animals evolve into different species? Why do they evolve to look or behave one way, and not another? Why do some animals have a few children, while others have many? What makes some animals better at surviving than others?  Zoologic is an exploration of these questions, and of forces that drive the evolution of life. It's a cellular automaton where small creatures ("crobes") compete for survival in a shared space, as their traits and reproductive strategies drift over time. Population dynamics and r/K selection theory play a role in their gradual evolution into new forms.  Life for the bacteria-like crobes is a simple affair. Each explores their world ,  a hexagonal grid  ,  according to their own pre-coded movement strategy. Each step requires a little bit of “energy,” the fuel that powers movement. Running out of energy means a crobe can’t move, but more energy can be obtained by consuming the only available food source ,  other crobes! Crobes can detect their neighbors within a couple of spaces, identify them as predators or prey, and react according to their needs.  Crobes consume each other for resources, then use those resources to reproduce -- but not perfectly. Each reproduction introduces new mutations, causing traits to change and new behaviors and appearances to emerge! The crobes’ neural nets learn over time, and only the fittest survive, making Zoologic an example of a neuroevolutionary algorithm. As neural nets are trained, they can be saved, loaded, and battled, shared with others. Train your crobes locally and compete with friends! Each output includes a fully on-chain, pre-trained neural net that has been generatively modified at the time of mint to give each set of crobes their own unique personality.  Key controls: [A] Fullscreen (press a second time for edge-to-edge animation), [H] Help menu, [I] AI menu, [Space] change color palette, [D] Toggle Dark mode, [F+#] Adjust framerate, [X+#/arrows] Adjust detail level, [N] restart animation with different random seed. Please see Help menu for a more comprehensive explanation of available controls and settings, including some intended for improved presentation for longer periods of time. [^S01][^S02]

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. [^S01][^S02]

76261-byte js@na. Official text names animal properties and maritime signal flags.

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. [^S04][^S09]

## Conception and development

The zoologic definition in the official description is the account. Token 0 is two hex-node clusters, which is an organism diagram more than a flag chart.

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 Zoologic are the ones relied on. [^S07][^S01]

Sentences that name another project are not treated as statements about this slug. [^S02][^S07]

## How the work was constructed

The complete artist program for slug zoologic-by-ixnayokay was retrieved from projects_metadata.script filtered by that exact slug. The UTF-8 payload is 76261 bytes with SHA-256 3834fb943af54a4c32ddfc6e4f5a0392ba43a4e1500a2650eee0c8b25ce35a56. Runtime on the project record is js@na. The script was read in full; it was not executed in this research session. [^S03]

76261-byte custom JS with rAF. Token 0: purple and red hex clusters on black.

Visual claims come from inspected PNGs of the listed token IDs.

Seed handling is visible in the retrieved program: Hash selects organism layout and colour style. Time and interaction behaviour in code is: rAF possible. PNG is one organism state. No audio heard. 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. [^S03][^S10]

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. [^S03][^S06]

## The mint

Indexed chronology for project 287 on 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270 is as follows. First token minted_at is 2022-03-21T22:04:34+00:00. activated_at is 2022-03-25T17:23:04+00:00. start_datetime is 2022-04-08T16:00:00+00:00. completed_at is 2022-05-20T23:54:30+00:00. Invocations stand at 300 of a maximum 300, with complete=true on the retrieved row. [^S02][^S04]

Calculated intervals from those timestamps: first mint to activation is 3.80 days; activation to start_datetime is 13.94 days; start_datetime to completion is 42.33 days; first mint to completion is 60.08 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. [^S02][^S04]

Indexed clocks: first 2022-03-21T22:04:34+00:00, activated 2022-03-25T17:23:04+00:00, start 2022-04-08T16:00:00+00:00, completed 2022-05-20T23:54:30+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. [^S01][^S02]

## Copyright and licensing

The project record stores the artwork licence label 'CC BY-NC-SA 4.0'. That string includes an explicit 4.0 version and is treated as Creative Commons version 4.0. 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. [^S02][^S06]

Artwork label copied exactly as 'CC BY-NC-SA 4.0'.

Third-party runtime js@na 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. [^S03][^S06]

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

Zoologic #0 is token 287000000 on 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, minted 2022-03-21T22:04:34+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Black field. Two clusters of glowing hex-nodes, purple above, red-violet below, triangle overlays. Indexed features returned for this V2 token: fade no fade; jiggle off; preset off; borders off; rotation mutating; topology bounded; crobe size 1.6; side count 4.  [^S04][^S05][^S09]

Zoologic #1 is token 287000001 on 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, minted 2022-04-08T16:00:02+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Second Zoologic organism. Indexed features returned for this V2 token: fade no fade; jiggle tails; preset off; borders on; rotation none; topology toroidal; crobe size 1; side count 4.  [^S04][^S05][^S09]

Zoologic #10 is token 287000010 on 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, minted 2022-04-08T16:00:28+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Tenth public mint of Zoologic. Indexed features returned for this V2 token: fade slow fade; jiggle off; preset off; borders off; rotation mutating; topology toroidal; crobe size 1.6; side count 7.  [^S04][^S05][^S09]

Zoologic #20 is token 287000020 on 0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270, minted 2022-04-08T16:05:23+00:00. The canonical token page returned HTTP 200. The inspected media-proxy PNG is a static frame. Twentieth public mint of Zoologic. Indexed features returned for this V2 token: fade slow fade; jiggle off; preset off; borders off; rotation mutating; topology toroidal; crobe size 1.6; side count various.  [^S04][^S05][^S09]

The AB5D header candidate is token 287000161 (edition 161), 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. AB5D Zoologic holding. [^S08][^S04][^S09]

Motion, interaction, and audio: rAF possible. PNG is one organism state. No audio heard. 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. [^S09][^S10][^S03]

## Significance and limitations

Zoologic is project 287 by ixnayokay. 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? [^S02][^S08][^S10]

This package is a draft for human review. Structural validation tests file shape, not the truth of seeing or of licence interpretation.

[^S01]: Art Blocks. [Zoologic by ixnayokay collection page](https://www.artblocks.io/collection/zoologic-by-ixnayokay). Accessed 2026-09-19.
[^S02]: Art Blocks Hasura index. [projects_metadata record for zoologic-by-ixnayokay](https://artblocks-mainnet.hasura.app/v1/graphql). Accessed 2026-09-19.
[^S03]: ixnayokay. [Zoologic on-chain artist program](https://artblocks-mainnet.hasura.app/v1/graphql). Accessed 2026-09-19.
[^S04]: Art Blocks Hasura index. [tokens_metadata for sampled Zoologic token IDs](https://artblocks-mainnet.hasura.app/v1/graphql). Accessed 2026-09-19.
[^S05]: Art Blocks. [Canonical token pages for sampled Zoologic outputs](https://www.artblocks.io/token/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/287000000). Accessed 2026-09-19.
[^S06]: Creative Commons. [Reported artwork licence label CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). Accessed 2026-09-19.
[^S07]: ixnayokay. [Zoologic official description](https://www.ixnayokay.art/post/about-zoologic). Accessed 2026-09-19.
[^S08]: Art Blocks. [AB5D linked wallet set and profile index](https://www.artblocks.io/profile/ab5d). Accessed 2026-09-19.
[^S09]: Art Blocks media proxy. [Static PNG renders of sampled Zoologic tokens](https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/287000000.png). Accessed 2026-09-19.
[^S10]: Art Blocks. [Live generator renderer for Zoologic](https://generator.artblocks.io/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/287000000). Accessed 2026-09-19.