Witness The Draft
At Untitled Frontier, we keep experimenting at the intersection of storytelling, art, and the creative process.
“Witness The Draft” is an art project that combines literature, social + dynamic on-chain NFTs, and a novel way to document the creative process. In making these NFTs and selling them, it in turn aims to fund the completion of the novel.
In November 2022, I (Simon de la Rouviere) wrote a draft of a novel, called "Witnesses of Gridlock", a sequel to "Hope Runners of Gridlock".
In 30 days, I wrote 51,591 words of the draft.
As part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), for each day of writing, I inserted a daily log of the day's writing into a smart contract (Witness.sol).
You can find Witness.sol here: https://etherscan.io/address/0xfde89d4b870e05187dc9bbfe740686798724f614
Thus, for 30 days, there are 30 inscriptions containing the timestamp, day nr, the total word count, and a sentence taken from the day's writing.
The NFTs:
The "Witness The Draft" project consumes these 30 days of logs on-chain, directly into a set of 30 dynamic on-chain artworks.
You can see the set here: https://opensea.io/collection/witness-the-draft
Each of the 30 pieces consists of 2 parts: its eyes and the daily log.
Each piece contains eyes in 5x6 grid with one eye open (at the start).
This initial open eye is different from the other eyes (a radiating pupil) and is located in the grid corresponding to the day.
The grid goes as follow in terms of days:
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 etc ....
The colour of the eyes and the positions of the pupils are all algorithmically generated from seeds that was chosen by me (the artist).
Witnessing:
This work contains a novel social mechanic where an owner can witness other pieces in the collection.
When one witnesses another piece, their piece will open an eye at the index of the piece that you own.
eg, if you hold day 5 and you witness day 7, the 5th eye will open up in the day 7 piece.
When Day 5 witnesses Day 7. The eye at Day 5 opened up.
In different terms: if you want an eye on your piece to open up (eg, eye at Day 24), you have to ask the owner of that piece (Day 24) to witness your piece.
Each owner can also choose to close an eye on other pieces, a process called "unsee".
Each owner can witness & unsee all pieces, including closing the special eye of their own piece (closing your own, special eye does not change its special radiating design).
This opening and closing of eyes can be repeated ad-infinitum.
Transfers do not reset witnesses.
How To Witness:
Currently, to witness is only accessible in EtherScan. If there’s demand for a custom interface, I will create one.
1) Go to the smart contract here: https://etherscan.io/address/0x45aa3f3a6cf6e28fb4b762ce7cf5a62419b778c4#writeContract
Ensure you are on the “contract” + “write contract” section.
2) Connect to your preferred wallet. The button that says “Connect to Web3”.
3) Enter the details in the appropriate function and send the transaction.
Functions 7, 8, 9, and 10 is what you will use. Each piece is numbered by ID from 0 - 29 which corresponds to days 1 - 30.
eg, Day 1’s piece is ID: 0. Day 24th’s piece is ID: 23.
If you own the piece from a specific day, you can then choose what piece to witness or unsee. You can either do this by ID (witnessById + unseeById) or by Day (witnessByDay + unseeByDay). The latter is a helper function.
For witnessById:
toID is the piece you want to witness. If it’s Day 2, it’s ID is 1.
fromID is the ID of the piece of that you own. If it’s Day 17, it’s ID 16.
You must of course own the piece to witness other pieces. The transaction will fail otherwise.
This project was inspired by:
- The Mesh from Takens Theorem, where one's NFT changes depending what NFTs you and other owners hold in the collection.
- Conversations with Mackenzie Davenport and his project, Ensemble, that helps surface the objects used in the creative process.
If you are interested in learning more about the learnings of writing a novel in a month, check it out here: https://blog.simondlr.com/posts/writing-a-novel-draft-in-a-month
