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Dust_gen

Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0xFBeef911Dc5821886e1dda71586d90eD28174B7d&token=236301&page=5

Source Link: https://knownorigin.io/gallery/236300-dust-gen

Date Minted:  November 14, 2020

Artist Description:Digital sculpture on generative textures made with neural networks, 2020. 8 seconds loop full HD, 60 fps,

CohentheWriter’s Commentary:

The evolving nature of gcrll’s KnownOrigin oeuvre is almost like the evolving nature of life itself. At the very beginning, the artist concerns themselves primarily with abstract shapes floating in a void. Diamonds and crystals. Morphing and multifaceted and malleable 3D objects. One such piece, worms::TheDead, appears to explicitly codify a single-celled organism, its wriggling as it propels itself forward, seemingly on the hunt. Later, in pieces like Machine, Traffic, and Entangled, single cells appear to replicate again and again, the chemical processes of a complex, multicellular organism demonstrated in all their gooey, mesmerizing glory. Soon thereafter begins the “modern” period of gcrll’s works, characterized by a study of biological organisms and tissues. Here, the artist is in full command of their 3D sculptural tools. Dust_gen, the piece before us today, is an incredibly detailed 3D rendering of an apparently biological object. Is it an organism? Is it simply a dust mote rendered in microscopic detail? Hard to tell, perhaps impossible to know. But with its variety of textures, and its array of iridescent colors, it’s a nevertheless beautiful object regardless of its compositional intent. Not as squelchy and slimy and off-putting as some of the other pieces in gcrll’s biological period —inside/trpf and drowned are two great examples of the artist turning towards the grotesque— Dust_gen, which was created using “generative textures made with neural networks,” uses the lessons from those other pieces but doesn’t centralize such textures, instead weaving them into a tapestry of textures that altogether makes Dust_gen onre of the most lifelike and mesmerizing objects gcrll has created.

I don’t say that as hyperbole; there’s so much to get lost in here, whether it’s the layers and layers of jagged folds in the subject’s surface, positioned like a mouth full of shark’s teeth, or the aforementioned color, and how it shimmers in the same way a puddle of oil does, with so many dark and psychedelic colors woven naturally throughout it.  Dust_gen is really a masterwork of texture, with sections of it that stick out with rounded spokes, other areas dominated by pock-marked craters, though perhaps our attention turns immediately to that bulbous yellow protrusion on the quasi-spherical object’s left flank. A remnant —as are the rows of egg-sac-like growths around it— of gcrll’s straight-up grosser works. From this distance, however, its moist surface and spider-web spindles don’t seem as repulsive as if it might had the same texture have in one gcrll’s earlier, more zoomed-in pieces. The spherical object in Dust_gen’s center sits in a dusty void, small silvery particles dotting the greyish environment like it’s a field of stars. Though neither the central object nor these little particles individually move, the camera through which we see them —the frame itself— does. It is as if we are an object within this space too, moving around it in a slow and slight clockwise fashion. Everything else within the frame changes position in relation to where we are, making it seem like the items here are frozen in time. It’s a clever framing device that allows us to not only feel more enveloped in this microscopic world, but that also allows us to see as much of the texture on the central object as possible. In this way, the whole environment really seems to come alive, with the full mystery of the subject’s purpose obscured, perpetually mysterious.

Mystery is, for me, the predominant mood that Dust_gen exudes. And mystery is an oft-overlooked aspect of the microscopic world, the unfamiliarity that borders on spirituality. Even though Dust_gen is slightly grotesque, I still feel shades within it of what Hayao Miyazaki and Marlon James make me feel: The implication of a larger, fascinating, unknowable world just beyond the limits of what we’re shown. Within Dust_gen is a mighty amount of this implication, the possible existence of other particles, of other perspectives, of an entire tiny world just out of our reach. 

Which isn’t to say that Dust_gen explicitly tells us a story, but it does invite us to imagine it in a more expansive way, the way prostitutes in Amsterdam dance in front of red-lit windows, evoking a sense of mystery and exploration, like the Sirens singing to Odysseus. And the way our perspective here slowly moves is also reminiscent of a dance, a swirling and hypnotic, albeit slow, gyration of the world. There’s a sensuality implied by the movement —not in a sexual way, of course, but in the purest meaning of the world as generating sensations. And that sensuality also appears in the hyper-realistic texture of the thing, in the sleek shine on its surface and in the many colors —the predominant pinks and greens and yellows and off-whites— that trace themselves across the canyons and spikes and crevices throughout the object’s visible face. The two most important aspects of a successful fantasy world are, in my opinion, the full realization of the world that you can see, and an equal tantalization created by the off-screen world being well implied. I say in no uncertain terms that, of the works of theirs I’ve seen, Dust_gen is gcrll’s masterpiece. I say that specifically because of how well the artist communicates both of those aforementioned aspects. And how powerfully I want to experience the world just outside the frame. 

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