Into the Ether
Quote from CohentheWriter on 30. September 2022, 20:23Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0xfeA5b4cbE821eBFfAD4D68eF04Bbb1963a1fc48d&token=1&page=5
Source Link: https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xfea5b4cbe821ebffad4d68ef04bbb1963a1fc48d/1
Date Minted: January 8, 2020
Artist Description: Analog techniques without computer effects or animations. An exploration of perception and energy heavily influenced by meditation and astronomy.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
The best way I can describe UrBen’s artwork is “chemical.” I’ve never seen anything like it. UrBen’s “organic lens based art” is an exploration of chemical processes: the effects of oil and water, of solubles and insolubles, of bits of liquid matter expanding and dissolving and exploding and joining together, and all the weird, surreal, nearly-supernatural ways in which these processes —captured in incredible color and from microscopically close— unveil themselves. There’s a religious solemnity to the proceedings here, and a sense of great calm. Soundless but possessed of great movement, UrBen’s pieces inspire the awe which emerges from even these smallest, omnipresent happenings of the tiniest particles of our world. I’ve no idea the actual methodology UrBen uses to capture such astounding masterworks of the material world, but in their Description for this piece Into The Ether, UrBen notes that these are “Analog techniques without computer effects or animations.” Indeed, perhaps we’re tempted into thinking that these surreal artworks are computer processed. Generally speaking, when we see pieces with this kind of fluidity, color, and hyper-specific movement, which seem to be too-detailed for all but the most deific of human creators, we are tempted to reckon with that illogic by imparting praise onto the computer, an AI or generative software capable of rendering what the human mind can only imagine, if not itself create. But UrBen is a wizard. And the world UrBen shows us is one of minute and miniscule wizardry. Into the Ether is a moody and electrifying distillation of this process and output, one that only becomes more mesmerizing the longer you watch it, the more you allow the 28-second video to replay itself, the more fine and intricate details you find yourself enchanted by…new ones emerge every time you return.
Hypnotic as anything in UrBen’s oeuvre, Into the Ether —itself the name of another piece in our Genesis Collection, Beeple’s crypto-referential artwork— is a distilled demonstration of creation and destruction as seen through the lens of a single viscous orb. The piece begins with this dense black orb floating in a turquoise ether. After a single second, the orb explodes outward, doubling in size, maintaining the blackness at its center but growing translucent and indigo at its edges, edges which are no longer perfectly circular but crooked and jagged like a plucked flower petal. The orb continues to grow outward, and a dark blue patina grows around its edges. Meanwhile, in the center of the orb, the original blackness decreases in density, and texture begins to emerge. Deep ridges like we’d see if we zoomed in onto an eyeball’s iris, dark black creases that now juxtapose definitively against a royal blue sheen around them. Black matter from within the orb continues to flow towards its center, in a visual manner that appears to me like the windswept sand from the tippy-top of giant dunes wisping hither and thither in dusty streamers. The orb now quakes and shivers almost like an organism, and most of the original blackness is gone, with both the orb and the patina and the background all in various blues of descending darkness. Silver bubbles —perhaps air pockets— appear suddenly in a few spots, speckling the composition. The orb no longer has any defined outline, and the creases —lighter in color now— are the only signifier that there once was a dense node of segregated color there. Lighter and lighter the creases continue to become, until they appear like the shadow of water does on the bottom of a swimming pool, ethereal and squiggly. Just as the creases appear to be on the verge of disappearing completely, which would leave only a large, semi-defined purple-ish circle existing in the still-turquoise ether, the video starts itself over unceremoniously. There again is the black orb, of a now-shocking and complete darkness.
What a haunting and beautiful sequence. There is something supremely ghostly, if not outright spiritual, about the way the items within the piece dissolve into nothingness. It’s hard to believe that the end result of the piece is of the same theoretical materials as the beginning. The Alpha and the Omega seem to share very little in common. Change is the only constant, and a change so great that it more-or-less wipes out whatever states-of-being preceded the metamorphosis. Is this history in motion? Is this human development? If the chemical building blocks of our worlds and selves are subject to such complete transmutation, then how are we, or anything material —simply larger expressions of those same particles— to escape their influence? If the nature of the universe is change, an almost religious re-sparking, then how is any larger body, be it biological or cosmic, expected to escape that influence?
It’s these kinds of grandiose intimations that bubble up from within UrBen’s pieces. Such is the power of any who can capture the minutest maneuverings of the material world. With a microscope —or whatever tools UrBen uses— we see ourselves, clearer than we would with the finest of hand-crafted mirrors. In UrBen’s work —and apologies for the hyperbole— we see slivers of our own souls.
Source Link: https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xfea5b4cbe821ebffad4d68ef04bbb1963a1fc48d/1
Date Minted: January 8, 2020
Artist Description: Analog techniques without computer effects or animations. An exploration of perception and energy heavily influenced by meditation and astronomy.
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
The best way I can describe UrBen’s artwork is “chemical.” I’ve never seen anything like it. UrBen’s “organic lens based art” is an exploration of chemical processes: the effects of oil and water, of solubles and insolubles, of bits of liquid matter expanding and dissolving and exploding and joining together, and all the weird, surreal, nearly-supernatural ways in which these processes —captured in incredible color and from microscopically close— unveil themselves. There’s a religious solemnity to the proceedings here, and a sense of great calm. Soundless but possessed of great movement, UrBen’s pieces inspire the awe which emerges from even these smallest, omnipresent happenings of the tiniest particles of our world. I’ve no idea the actual methodology UrBen uses to capture such astounding masterworks of the material world, but in their Description for this piece Into The Ether, UrBen notes that these are “Analog techniques without computer effects or animations.” Indeed, perhaps we’re tempted into thinking that these surreal artworks are computer processed. Generally speaking, when we see pieces with this kind of fluidity, color, and hyper-specific movement, which seem to be too-detailed for all but the most deific of human creators, we are tempted to reckon with that illogic by imparting praise onto the computer, an AI or generative software capable of rendering what the human mind can only imagine, if not itself create. But UrBen is a wizard. And the world UrBen shows us is one of minute and miniscule wizardry. Into the Ether is a moody and electrifying distillation of this process and output, one that only becomes more mesmerizing the longer you watch it, the more you allow the 28-second video to replay itself, the more fine and intricate details you find yourself enchanted by…new ones emerge every time you return.
Hypnotic as anything in UrBen’s oeuvre, Into the Ether —itself the name of another piece in our Genesis Collection, Beeple’s crypto-referential artwork— is a distilled demonstration of creation and destruction as seen through the lens of a single viscous orb. The piece begins with this dense black orb floating in a turquoise ether. After a single second, the orb explodes outward, doubling in size, maintaining the blackness at its center but growing translucent and indigo at its edges, edges which are no longer perfectly circular but crooked and jagged like a plucked flower petal. The orb continues to grow outward, and a dark blue patina grows around its edges. Meanwhile, in the center of the orb, the original blackness decreases in density, and texture begins to emerge. Deep ridges like we’d see if we zoomed in onto an eyeball’s iris, dark black creases that now juxtapose definitively against a royal blue sheen around them. Black matter from within the orb continues to flow towards its center, in a visual manner that appears to me like the windswept sand from the tippy-top of giant dunes wisping hither and thither in dusty streamers. The orb now quakes and shivers almost like an organism, and most of the original blackness is gone, with both the orb and the patina and the background all in various blues of descending darkness. Silver bubbles —perhaps air pockets— appear suddenly in a few spots, speckling the composition. The orb no longer has any defined outline, and the creases —lighter in color now— are the only signifier that there once was a dense node of segregated color there. Lighter and lighter the creases continue to become, until they appear like the shadow of water does on the bottom of a swimming pool, ethereal and squiggly. Just as the creases appear to be on the verge of disappearing completely, which would leave only a large, semi-defined purple-ish circle existing in the still-turquoise ether, the video starts itself over unceremoniously. There again is the black orb, of a now-shocking and complete darkness.
What a haunting and beautiful sequence. There is something supremely ghostly, if not outright spiritual, about the way the items within the piece dissolve into nothingness. It’s hard to believe that the end result of the piece is of the same theoretical materials as the beginning. The Alpha and the Omega seem to share very little in common. Change is the only constant, and a change so great that it more-or-less wipes out whatever states-of-being preceded the metamorphosis. Is this history in motion? Is this human development? If the chemical building blocks of our worlds and selves are subject to such complete transmutation, then how are we, or anything material —simply larger expressions of those same particles— to escape their influence? If the nature of the universe is change, an almost religious re-sparking, then how is any larger body, be it biological or cosmic, expected to escape that influence?
It’s these kinds of grandiose intimations that bubble up from within UrBen’s pieces. Such is the power of any who can capture the minutest maneuverings of the material world. With a microscope —or whatever tools UrBen uses— we see ourselves, clearer than we would with the finest of hand-crafted mirrors. In UrBen’s work —and apologies for the hyperbole— we see slivers of our own souls.