Onchain Summer Solstice

On Friday, June 21st, together with UncleDavo and Serendipity, we hosted the Onchain Summer Solstice. Our goal was to bring together New York Casters and artists for a celebration of the longest day of the year, digital arts, and community.

The event was a great success, with approximately 50 people in attendance for the first half and 50 more people for the second part of the evening! Throughout the night, 26 attendees claimed the POAP, physically included in the booklet. Both canvases we set up were covered in paint.

We celebrated the longest day of the year together, collectively on the rooftop as the sun set, creating an unforgettable experience forf everyone involved.

As part of this celebration, we collaborated with over 30 artists and 7 local DJs to create a projection mapping sequence on the local church. For anyone wondering what this looks like, here's a picture!

Each artist had a 15-minute projection sequence, where a selection of their work was projected onto the church. Many of the works were curated from collections released on the blockchain. A few of the collections involved static images and photography, so it was important to think about how to best display these with audio-reactive elements. The projection mapping software used was HeavyM, which allows for listening to a line-in. Using an RCA cable and an audio interface, my laptop could pick up the feed directly from the CDJs. This meant the projection sequence could react to the bass, mid, and low frequencies that the DJs were playing.

The church was separated into sections. The faces and steeples were reserved, and only the artists' work was projected directly onto them. The spires, windows, and bottom ring were kept for custom effects mapped to the frequencies being output by the DJs.

HeavyM utilizes shaders to manipulate images. The most common shader used was the VHS glitch effect, mapped to the bass and mid-frequency of the DJs' sets. This created an effect that made the whole mapping appear to glitch and move with the music being played.

We looped in the local pastor, Rick, and told him about what we were planning. He, along with the entire parish, was extremely supportive of the projections on the church and was fascinated by it! Having their support legitimised the entire process, enabling me to focus on creating a seamless experience.

Artists

Overall, 31 artists were projection mapped. Below is a list of all the artists and their Farcaster profiles/websites.

New York Artists:

Lars Wander, steviep, Maya Man, LoVid, Clay Devlin, Emily Xie, David Nobody Jr., Dave Krugman, Ngozi, Luke Shannon, Efdot

Artists curated from Farcaster:

Bombay Malayali, Compusophy, Trevor Traynor, Anemale, Typo, Morbeck, Eduxdux, Gabriel Nebular (metaliminal), Priyanka (metaliminal)

Artists curated from fx(hash):

Pixel Symphony, punevyr, pxlshrd, Lammetje

Artists curated from Art Blocks / Bright Moments:

Julian Hespenheide, Kim Asendorf, Andreas Gysin (ertdfgcvb), Motus Art, Spongenuity, Fingacode

Farcaster Collectives:

higher

Squibs, Sicoli,

Le Petit Box (instagram):

J4ck, S A M I, Manimogo, PAC, OKDunc

We wanted to highlight local artistic talent. To do this, we began asking people who we knew lived in the local area if they wanted to play. The first person we approached was Sicoli, who has been playing for a long time and has supported many artists. Sicoli played the sunset set, from 8 PM to 10 PM. The next DJ we approached was Squibs, who lives locally and is a Brooklyn regular, traveling around New York playing his music everywhere. Squibs played from 10 PM to 11 PM.

Finally, we approached Jack of the Le Petit Box (LPB) crew. LPB has just started their residency at The End in Bushwick and are all regulars around Brooklyn. Asking them to play wasn't even a question, and five guys from the crew played from 11 PM to 3 AM, creating an electric atmosphere while the projection mapping went crazy behind them.

An aspect of digital art that we wanted to highlight was pen plotter art. Pen plotter art is one of the earliest demonstrations of computed creativity, with Vera Molnár, Manfred Mohr, and Harold Cohen being among the first pioneers of this medium. Simplistically speaking, this involves using a computer to draw with a pen mounted on an arm that moves back and forth across a page.

We wanted to highlight pen plotter art for many reasons. Pen plotted art played a significant role in the 1968 exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity. This exhibition was organized at the ICA in London, and due to funding constraints, many of the invites and artworks were created using a pen plotter. This was massively inspiring, and thus, we decided to plot many items for this event. We plotted 10 physical invites, each admitting two people to the event in the evening. These were handed out to anyone we met in person and included the address, time, and admittance details for the evening.

Early on, we formed a partnership with /higher, who offered us funding and support to run the evening. As part of this sponsorship, we were able to offer every attendee a pen plot, as well as three commissioned pen plots which were raffled off to attendees.

The higher pen plot designs were split into two categories. The first category needed to be simple and unique because pen plotting can take a long time. This is fine for more detailed, rarer prints, but we wanted to provide every attendee with a plot they could take home. The final designs we landed on are described below.

The first design, a 4x4 grid of detailed arrows, is AI-generated. ChatGPT was trained to create images with only black lines and a white background. It was then asked to generate one arrow, which was duplicated in a 4x4 grid, resulting in the design we see in the final output.

The second design, displayed in the middle, demonstrates an arrow rotating one degree at a time until it completes a full circle. There are 20 rows of 18 arrows, with each arrow rotating one degree. This design is inspired by contemporary pen plotter artists, particularly Lars Wander, whose work focuses on niche patterns such as the many different ways to fold a rubber band.

Finally, the rarest of all the take-home plots is the arrow that rotates five degrees at a time. This design was plotted about 10 times, but I didn't like the way it looked, so I stopped after the 10th plot and focused more on the 360-degree arrows. However, I decided to include it as it is the rarest of all the take-home plots.

We also wanted to create something special to celebrate higher and for people to take home—something that people would want to hang on their wall, and something they could look at to remember the Summer Solstice of 2024. We decided on AI-generated pen plots of arrows, framed nicely for display. These were created using ChatGPT, and presented three different scenes.

The first scene included New York, symbolizing the community coming together to celebrate the solstice. It featured arrows transcending higher over a mesh of New York buildings, resembling the south of Manhattan.

The second piece focused on an arrow enmeshed in a mathematical grid, appearing as if it was breaking the rules of the grid. This tongue-in-cheek design symbolized working against norms and expected behavior, much like the Farcaster community.

Finally, the third piece featured an arrow with a beautifully detailed pattern, almost emerging from the page. The arrow wasn't pointing directly upwards, but the focal point was the texture and pattern on the arrow. These pieces were a huge success and people loved them! They were displayed prominently as you entered the roof.

Finally, an absolute treat was Pixel Symphony reaching out a couple of evenings before the event, asking to add two plots to the lineup! I received two SVGs of pieces, which were then plotted and framed on the day of the event. These were added to the raffle and handed out to lucky winners to take home! One of these winners was Steen, who runs the Metaliminal channel on Farcaster. He loved the plots and won the exact one he had said he liked when they were displayed on the table. Happy days!

To support the cost of the frames, Pixel Symphony minted three pieces of the generative collection, and we used the proceeds to purchase frames for the pieces!

We wanted to create an environment that was fun, intentional, and educational about generative art. Despite its rise in popularity during the bull market of 2021, generative art still feels like a mystical and unknown genre to many. We aimed to provide an opportunity for people to learn how this medium works. Therefore, we made generative art an integral part of the night, a consistent theme throughout the planning phase.

We started by creating a generative piece intended for people to mint as a ticket. By doing so, they would both collect a piece of onchain generative art and provide funding for the event.

A key part of this piece was to incorporate features common in generative art released via a blockchain. Therefore, this piece includes rarities, traits, and all the code is stored in a smart contract on the base network. We wanted to highlight the strong communities emerging on Farcaster, and thus we created Farcaster-specific palettes and rare traits.

The palettes were all inspired by popular culture and trending memes. For example, there is the Depe palette, inspired by the first memecoin deployed on the Degen L3 network. There's also the Goat palette, inspired by GOAT and all the shenanigans with Enjoy, Degen, and the Goat token. Additionally, we created rare palettes that would change the aesthetic of the piece. They are pictured below.

Highlight is doing a lot to push generative, onchain art forward, so releasing this on Base, on highlight.xyz, made complete sense. We wanted the piece to be in line with the solstice and our event. Therefore, the mint opened 28 days before the solstice and closed 24 hours after the solstice. Our thinking was that people who wanted to support could do so beforehand, and people who attended the event and then wanted to support could also participate. The variations can be found below.

Collect NFT

Overall, 96 editions of this collection were minted. This included two rare mints: one of the Degen persona (#7) and one of the Base persona (#93). The collection has three possible speeds: Moderate (39), Leisurely (16), and Turbo (41). Out of the nine possible palettes, the most common is a tie between Summer Pilates Habit and Grimace Shake.

There are two states for the background: Void and Active. Void means the background has no moving particles, while Active means the opposite. There are also two fill types: Solid and Varied. Solid means the lettering "ONCHAIN SUMMER SOLSTICE 06.21.24" has a constant color, while Varied means the colors differ in a grid style across all the letters.

Finally, the persona trait includes four personas: Degen, Jesse Pollak, Onchain, and Higher. Three out of the four were minted: Degen, Jesse Pollak, and Onchain. The Higher persona is a super rare persona and was not minted at all while the collection was open!

So far, this details the digital aspect of generative art, which, thanks to the blockchain, is now incredibly accessible across the world. However, generative art can also be done in an analog way. My goal was to create something that everyone could do, that was fun, and that demonstrated the principles of generative art without completely blasting the budget to Mars.

After a conversation with a good friend of mine, Sofia Garcia, I discovered that people have used dice rolling in the past as a way to demonstrate the algorithms that power a lot of generative art. Inspired by this, I decided to plan an activity involving a huge 8-foot by 4-foot canvas, a dice, and six paints.

Keeping community at the heart of this event was an important narrative all along. The intention was to create a space to connect over art on the longest day of the year. Community was ingrained into every aspect of this event.

We partnered with FC NY, and working with Karo, we were able to stay focused on this narrative while ensuring we achieved the goal of highlighting art and artists.

We wanted people to feel special upon arriving, so each attendee received a custom handmade bracelet created by Karo in the days leading up to the event.

Another important aspect of community is POAP. POAP has done much to normalize the term and place themselves at every event. We wanted to create a unique experience for people to collect a POAP, so we worked closely and carefully to create something special that reflected the goals of the evening.

We decided to create a booklet with a claimable POAP at the end. This way, people were rewarded for engaging in person with something special on the evening. The booklet also allowed us to draw attention to all of the artists and DJs included in the projection show. Thanks to careful planning, the booklet came out high quality, and the first 100 attendees received one!

We also wanted to create an arts festival atmosphere. To achieve this, we printed 50 posters and wheat-pasted them to the wall on the roof. This was done the night before by Jess, who lives nearby and is on Farcaster as @jessjay!

A big part of this evening was having a barbecue running. We discussed different catering options, such as pizzas and cold foods however decided to settle on the barbecue. In my opinion nothing really signifies the summer and community more than the smell of a barbecue.

We were originally going to run the barbecue ourselves, however we decided against this as we would have many more tasks to do. Therefore, we used taskrabbit to hire a grillmaster called Baruch! He did a great job getting everything ready before people arrived, and providing high quality foods to people throughout the evening!

There were two aspects of funding this event. The first was through ticket sales. The proceeds from the tickets went towards better quality food and more refreshments for the evening. We wanted the ticket to align with the event, so we created a generative art piece and used the proceeds from that to fund the refreshments.

Overall, 96 pieces were minted at 0.005 ETH each, generating 0.48 ETH in funding for the refreshments.

We also approached /higher, Purple DAO, events.xyz, POAP, and Base with requests for support in funding the evening.

Higher supported us with a grant of 0.5 ETH. Purple DAO provided a grant of 0.25 ETH. Events XYZ contributed 200 USDC. Base supported us through their community grants program with 2,000 USDC, and POAP supported us by providing a photographer and creating booklets to commemorate the evening with a POAP.

Overall, we raised 1.23 ETH and 2,200 USDC from the broader community to run the evening and support the local DJs playing on the night.

This evening would not be possible without the incredible Farcaster community across the world and here in New York. Countless people reached out to offer help, and everyone was keen to contribute to making this evening a success! This allowed us to curate and provide a show for incredible artists and DJs, and bring everyone together to begin summer! Form the bottom of my heart I'd like to thank the following (apologies if I miss you!)

Thank you to everyone who financially supported - /higher, Events XYZ, Purple DAO, Base community grants

Thank you to everyone who contributed their time - FC NY, Jess, Karo

Thank you toI Iz for working with me on the physical booklet to commemorate the evening, and the POAP included with it

Thank you to the incredible Onchain Summer Solstice team for keeping the ship on course - Davo, Karo

Thank you to all the artists & DJs who got involved

Thank you to everyone who minted the generative piece! Every cent contributed to the quality of the evening

And thank you to the awesome New York Farcaster community for showing up and throwing down!

The evening felt like it flowed naturally. From 6 PM onwards, the rooftop was open for quiet conversation and painting, accompanied by burgers and beer. As the sun set, the music started to play, and the projections began to show.

There were two parts to the evening: the first, between 6 and 9 PM, created a safe, quiet, and comfortable space for creating and chatting. The second part had more energy and life, providing a space for letting loose and partying while visuals played on the church. For artists, it meant seeing their work in a unique setting, and for dancers, it meant dancing the summer in on a Brooklyn rooftop, surrounded by local artists and online artwork.

A lot of heart and soul went into making this event happen. By partnering with a mix of Farcaster native DAOs and collectives such as Purple and Higher, onchain stalwarts like POAP, and communities like FC NY and Events XYZ, we managed to maintain the original vision and create something special and memorable.

The community turnout was strong, and it was smiles all around. Despite being in an incredibly volatile market, throwing this event on a rooftop after all the craziness of the first six months of 2024 has proven how strong in-person connections continue to be.

Thanks for reading, and if you attended, thanks for coming! All of this has got me thinking - what to do next?