Dear God, Layer of Roads (Travelers)

by Loucas Braconnier (Figure31)

DGLR (T) is a dynamic smart contract artwork on the Ethereum Blockchain, allowing individual addresses to travel through time, represented by Ethereum Blocks. These travelers may move forward or backward in time. As they start their journeys, each block spent travelling adds a character to an ever-evolving string, shaping their individual landscape. With each passing day, they leave a footprint on a collective landscape, which becomes part of all other individual landscapes. Once a traveler ends a journey, a monument is generated upon the landscape. Its size is proportionate to the length of the previous journey.

This artwork creates parallels between real and virtual time, scaling alongside another perpetually expanding network. It forever pushes against the limited computational environment of the Ethereum blockchain—a negative space growing within a positive one. After Michael Heizer, Double Negative.

To travel, connect your wallet and choose your travel direction: either [forward] or [backward]. You are free to stop at any time. When you do so, a monument will be added to the end of your previous landscape. If you wish to travel again, you will start from the block at which you last exited.

All travels are recorded on-chain. The contract’s limited read functions only allow viewers to generate fragments of landscapes. However, complete ones can be generated off-chain using the algorithm provided within the contract or by downloading them from this page.

At the moment there are 46 travelers on the road. In total, 57 journeys have been taken.

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