Apex
April 2023 Update.
You may already know about Part 1 of Apex;
CYPHER. My ‘in-chain’ generative collection from August ‘21. Since when I’ve been talking of ‘transformations’ and ‘keys’ and all kinds of other cryptic stuff ever since.
It’s been a mission, and nearly two years later it’s time to starting building out in the open and explain what’s been happening behind the scenes.
So, to start, some background stuff - as I often get asked about the reason I have two series (‘Apex’ and ‘Origins’) — Why not just drop a collection ad-hoc based on what inspires me, write the code, release; rinse and repeat?
Basically; I like an arc — I like a thread running through my work, I’m a massive fan of Ridley Scott’s Alien (even Prometheus) and Blade Runner series — all the mystery, unanswered questions, synthetic life and the exploration of the origin of man — I’ve always seen his uncompromising view as quite inspirational. This is a large part of why I choose to build something with a wider view than just standalone projects.
By dropping collections as a series you get to take collectors with you — it’s an opportunity do something far more interesting as you lead them from one collection to the next carrying a thread as you go.
While Origins (Singularity, Fusion, …) does this, with a focus on creation, mutation and destruction — the Apex series to which Cypher belongs was designed to be the more experimental series, not just Art for Art’s sake, but something more akin to world building, with more depth and narrative than I can fit into a jpg.
When I dropped Cypher, I had a vision for four discrete chapters that would comprise an overarching project; Apex - each chapter with their own part to play.
Key, Transformation, Network, Civilization.
Apex serves two purposes it’s designed to be a place where I can experiment with technology, to explore what we can build with smart-contracts and NFTs, but it’s also a place my like-minded team and I can fuss over the narratives of science-fiction without scaring off those who are more just “here for the Art” — which is of course, absolutely fine.
In order to realize the above, as previously mentioned, I put together a team; Distance Fields
DF, led by me, have been working on Apex 2 and a jumble of side-features for previous projects since shortly after the Fusion drop in October ’21. Development was progressing nicely, and ’22 Apex 2 pivoted to become something significantly larger in scope — and split into both Apex 2 and 3.
Development continued to be carried out by the same team with a few more joining us but work continued in a different legal context which, in the end, turned sour, and development stalled.
This left a hugely ambitious NFT project half complete, with several members of the team unable to contribute to any further development, which was extremely disappointing to say the least.
In 2023 — it’s me carrying the project on my own, with part-time support from a handful of contributors. The project moves forward nonetheless, and I thought it was probably time to put flesh on the bones, get something out there that’s more than just monthly mysterious mutterings.
So, finally:
A CYPHER is an on-chain schematic that defines the construction of an orbital ‘mega-structure’.
In Apex 2 Cypher data held on-chain is used to seed something more intricate, adding a layer of detail to the broad-strokes of Cypher’s spinning circles to more clearly define the structure mentioned above.
Visually, I’d like to keep this under wraps for now, but a part of this involves the aforementioned transformations.
The second stage the project also defines the complete dataset for a given mega-structure on-chain; from it’s population, utility, location and its relationship to other structures within a network.
Essentially, each Cypher and the data and structure derived from it, represents a node within a system of 1024 interconnected mega-structures. It’s one huge metaphor for a decentralized network.
In part three, we develop the idea further still, with the procedural creation of the structures themselves, where generative, procedural systems create each individual structure seeded from a different Cypher. The structures are lit, textured and rendered in 3D, with gargantuan poly-counts and intricate detail.
— Some early and incomplete test outputs below (Nov 2022).
I’m not alone in any of this, I’m sure many of you know Galbraith for his writing within the space, and the work he’s doing on Apex is no less impressive — Richard has been pivotal in building out the world in which my mega-structures exist, and is on-going source of support when Apex looks like more than I can get over the line.
If you haven’t met him, be sure to look him up.
The DF team working on the subsequent chapters to Cypher has over the past months consisted of myself (Direction, Production and Art Programming), an Architect, Concept Artist, Writer, Technical Artists, Smart Contract Programmer, Sound Designer, Front and Back-end developers — We’ve all worked incredibly hard on Apex, and I’m excited to start sharing visuals, concept and outputs from the system over the coming weeks and months.
The timeline has been disrupted, but I’m confident in promising a delivery this year, even alongside the various other offerings in the pipeline for 2023.
