Project Description

I find myself in a world of chaos and turbulence, of confusion and disorder. At the still point, I—or perhaps we—find ourselves, yet we are never truly still. This work is both a meditation and a portrait of modern awareness: an algorithmic reflection on the search for calm within uncertainty.

The title echoes a line from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, which contemplates presence within time and the dance of the living moment.

Inspiration and Creation

At the Still Point of the Turning World (AKA “Still Point”) is the fifth project in the Zenerative series, a collection of Zen-inspired generative art projects. “Still Point” explores holding presence in a dynamic world and maintaining calm within a sort of structured chaos.

Within each output is an identity surrounded by overlapping and interacting rings that create interference. The motion of the outer world affects the inner, and a visual motion is hinted at while a psychological motion is created. These effects are enhanced when a piece is portrayed digitally, as pixels on the screens will dance with the narrow and high contrast lines. The artworks are size agnostic vector graphics, and they are both plottable* and feature togglable animation**.

I choose to only use black and white for this piece, because I wanted to emphasize this strange vibrancy of chaos and confusion that I find myself in. Color made it too…pedestrian, or pretty. Only stark black and white seems appropriate for this portrait; their interplay and overlapping patterns adding to the visual aesthetic.

While I made this piece to reflect my experience and visualize my state of being, I know that others resonate with the theme and symbolism. It’s not a traditional self portrait, and it may not be a portrait of only me. Others may see themselves in it as well, and while we may feel like we’re alone in that center, we’re together in the experience.

*”Still Point” is plottable, but paths must be cropped to the SVG viewport.

**”Still Point” features animation that can be activated by using a URL flag, but due to technical constraints, outputs do not animate smoothly on all devices. Modern smartphones, as well as Mac computers with Apple Silicon chips running Chrome should give good results.

A Moment of Reflection (Dec. 24 2025)

The December holidays bring many families and friends together, and if not in person, across distances…and if not in the present moment, in memory. December also brings the year to a close, one year ending and giving way to a another, a cycle that as I age takes on different meaning. Looking at passing time feels layered: there’s memory of what was and what wasn’t, the present moment and what is – or appears to be, and projections of what could or what cannot. There’s sometimes longing for moments of the past and anticipation for moments of the future, but it is all felt, always in the now.

This year was a challenging mix of uncertainty and turbulence. At no point did the world feel calm, and it was filled with noise. Sometimes it felt loud and obnoxious, sometimes disorientating and painful, but it was always present and inescapable. Within that, a quiet mind was elusive. I was always moving, always trying to maintain center. Tranquility was never easily found, and cultivating it required real effort. Success in achieving it was never guaranteed. I needed something that could give me structure, something to anchor to and to ground me.

While I worked on various projects throughout the year, one in particular resonated deeply with me and my relationship to the present world. As it evolved, working on it became a practice of attention and focus. It allowed me to quiet and find order within the loud and fragmented world I felt moving around me. In the process, it helped me find stillness within the complexity, and it reminded me of a line from a poem by T. S. Eliot: “At the still point of the turning world.” That line, this year – especially this year – connected with me so strongly. I found both challenge and release in it, inspiration and acceptance. It became the title for the project, and the project became a way of holding myself present in the turning world. It helped me structure the chaos and bear witness to the motion surrounding me.

This algorithmic project is an abstract portrait of my experience this year, but it’s not representative of only me. It can act as a mirror. If you’ve found yourself feeling like you’re standing in the center of a turbulent world, you may recognize yourself here too. I hope it offers a place to pause.

_/\_

The Generative Program

This project utilizes vanilla JavaScript to create the artwork. This JavaScript is stored onchain in an ArtBlocks.io project (arguably the premiere platform for onchain generative art), where outputs are created upon purchase with Eth on mainnet Ethereum. In this ‘minting’ process, an NFT of the output is sent to the purchaser. Generated outputs each use a unique random hash (provided by the platform at purchasing) to determine the individual characteristics of the token. Together, the minted tokens represent the only official outputs from the algorithm.

The source code for this project is approximately 375 lines long and 12.3 Kilobytes of data. Each NFT image can be rendered directly in the browser, utilizing only standardized JavaScript. The token artworks are fully deterministic and resolution-agnostic, and they’re interactive through hotkeys and URL parameters. The first output from the project, #0, is created when launching the project on ArtBlocks, and is frequently retained by the artist.

Artwork Release

At the Still Point of the Turning World was launched on Matto’s ArtBlocks Studio contract. The collection is being released as a timed open edition, meaning that there is a specified time duration while the project can be minted, but there is not a preset quantity available for minting (the collection could be completed with as few as 2 or as many as 1 million outputs). This style of release was selected in part because a pen-plot of tokenId #1 of the collection has been accepted into the Durham Art Guild’s 71st Annual Juried Art Exhibition. To engage the local community and provide ample opportunity for collectors who appreciate the project to mint, the open edition will run the length of the show, from December 19th, 2025 to February 8th, 2026.

Each mint costs 0.015 Eth (with Eth price around $3,333 this is a hair under $50) and requires an Ethereum wallet. Visit the ‘Learn’ pages on ArtBlocks.io for more information on how to purchase an output.