NFT / Digital2021
SoulSea
Contents & work details
- Archive year
- 2021
- Type
- NFT / Digital
- Artist
- Che-Yu Wu 吳哲宇
- Origin
- December 2021, New York; a wave written for a commercial job that was too good to hand over, so it was released as his own
- Release
- 29 December 2021, fxhash #5438, 300 editions at 39.99 ꜩ; sold out within thirty seconds of minting opening
- Medium
- p5.js, a height field of sine waves and noise, sea sound synthesised in p5.sound; computed live in the browser on a square canvas
- Sound
- Pink and brown noise swelling and fading, with a triangle-wave bass on E1, A1, C2 and E2; the minting build sounds on a click, the exhibition builds are silent
- Shown
- Chaos Laboratory zone one, 2022; The Great Equation, Life chapter, 2023; Tehran Tech Summit, 2023; the Sacred Forest stage, 2024; on permanent view at Tempo House since August 2024
- Permanent home
- soulsea.art.cheyuwu.com (the root is the 1920 × 1080 exhibition build, /fxhash/ the 2021 minting build)
- The 300 editions
- Every hash, the seventeen traits, the colour range and the capture at mint, filterable by palette, creatures, stroke and shape
Overview
You look down and find that the ocean in your heart is a sine wave; the tide gently laps onto the shore. The soul is the sea, you are the land; there are waves on the shore, and the waves are slices. Gazing at the slices you feel the cold of the Arctic Ocean, the permafrost of the Antarctic sea, the deep darkness of the bottomless sea, and you hear the sound of waves lapping at innumerable shores far away. Feel the soul of the digital ocean.
I was in New York then, and out of loneliness I often took the subway to the sea and watched the waves break on the shore, as if in conversation with nature. In that moment a solitary cellist appeared in my mind, standing on the sand, looking out to the horizon, playing piece after piece to the ocean and the beach. SoulSea is my attempt to find out whether noise can carry the feeling I love most: the emptied mind of staring at an endless ocean washing in. The sea does not speak, and whatever mood or life story we bring to it, it does not judge; we keep proving ourselves inside the collective when all we are looking for is somewhere to belong, somewhere that ends the eternal loneliness.
Where the sea comes from
This sea has two sources. One is in New York: taking the subway to the shore out of loneliness, watching the waves break, imagining a cellist standing on the sand playing to the ocean. The other is on the desk: at the end of 2021 I wrote a wave for a commercial job, starting from a single wave and layering noise onto it in several places so the ripples ran continuous and natural, adding texture and small creatures, and it came out too beautiful to hand over, so I released it as my own. It was my second work on fxhash, two weeks after the first, SoulTree; the Chinese text of Soul Sea was conceived together with Mashbean.
On 29 December 2021 the work was published, minting opened thirty-four minutes later, and all three hundred editions were minted within thirty seconds. That same day four impostor accounts rushed out works under the same name, one of them simply calling itself Che-Yu Wu, and the platform flagged them all as malicious; it was the second time being copied had happened to me.
How the sea grows
One hundred and ten lines cross the picture; each is sampled along the horizontal, its height stacked from two layers of Perlin noise multiplied by a sine wave, and each frame pushes it a little further, so the sea moves; hold the mouse and move right and the waves run four times as fast. The black ground is covered by only the thinnest layer each frame, so the previous frame’s lines linger, every wave trailing the path it came by; lines are blended with screen, and the oil palette switches between screen and normal with the noise. A single white pixel is a splash, its threshold set by the hash; a hundred and twenty small creatures, shells, stars or fish, drift among the waves on the noise. Last, each frame is overlaid with a grain texture the program generates itself, like the tooth of paper.
All seventeen traits are given by the hash on chain: six colour bounds, the palette (colour in two hundred and twenty-five editions, oil in forty-three, mono in sixteen, ocean in ten, silent night and maverick in three each), creatures, stroke, shape, wave noise, vertex span, glitch frequency, two wave frequencies, the splash threshold and the canvas angle. The same hash always grows the same sea.
The lowest-numbered edition of each palette, rendered frame by frame from the exhibition build for six seconds; the lines are the same system, the colours and blending are set by the hash.
- 01
15 December 2021
SoulTree #3552, the first work on fxhash, 128 editions
- 02
18 December 2021
The SoulSea repository begins, working title DigitalOcean
- 03
29 December 2021
Published as fxhash #5438; minting opens thirty-four minutes later and 300 editions sell out in thirty seconds
- 04
21 January 2022
United Daily News 500 Times, issue 49: two pioneering Taiwanese NFT artists
- 05
March to May 2022
Chaos Laboratory, the first solo exhibition: zone one, ocean life
- 06
October 2023
The Great Equation, Life chapter, Taipei 101
- 07
November 2023
The Tech Summit LED wall in Tehran; submitted to the Shanghai Light Point digital image festival
- 08
29 June 2024
Sacred Forest × PTS × NHK, Liberty Square, scene five
- 09
From 5 August 2024
On permanent view at Tempo House: a print 10,240 pixels wide
- 10
September 2026
After fxhash went dark, the 300-edition record and the minting build are kept here
Dates follow the on-chain record, the organisers’ documents, the repositories and the archive.
Sound
The sound of the sea is not a recording. Pink noise and brown noise each run on their own channel, swelling for four seconds and fading over two, like a wave pushing up the sand and drawing back; beneath them one triangle wave, pitched by the hash to E1, A1, C2 or E2, rises and falls slowly. After Sliderverse this was the next time I synthesised sound directly with Web Audio; only with Soul Fish did real piano samples take its place. The minting build starts to sound on a click; the exhibition and web builds keep silent, because they often run all day on walls with no one at the controls.
- 01
Noise
One channel of pink noise, one of brown, each at a low level
- 02
Envelope
Four seconds up, two seconds down, a little sustain then release, like a wave up the sand and back
- 03
Bass
One triangle wave, the hash choosing among E1, A1, C2 and E2, scaled by 0.8 to 1.2
- 04
Hand
Hold the mouse and move right: the sea runs four times faster and the fish five; P pauses
The renders are the five he chose in 2024 and those in the MONOLAB record; the large print and the frame from Tehran are the two times this sea left the screen. Click to enlarge.
Where the sea has been
At Chaos Laboratory, the first solo exhibition in spring 2022, SoulSea was the first of seven zones, five minutes of ocean life projected beside the digital creatures, Pochi, the snails and the shoals. In The Great Equation in October 2023 it became the scene of the Life chapter, with visitors lying on the floor of Taipei 101 watching the journey run from Island Impressions to the Sea of Souls; in November that year it cycled on the LED wall of the Tech Summit in Tehran. On 29 June 2024 the Sacred Forest concert by PTS and NHK at Liberty Square drove the sea of scene five with live signals, changing its speed and drift; and since August 2024 a purple sea ten thousand two hundred and forty pixels wide has hung as a large print on the wall of Tempo House.
- 聯合報 500 輯PressTwo pioneering Taiwanese NFT artists: Wang Hsin-Jen and Che-Yu Wu
- Our own writingThe first community meetup, part one: the generative universe of Che-Yu Wu
- LivestreamLivestream: interactive web and generative art (SoulSea at 40:48)
- FilmWork film: SoulSea, filmed in the empty room of The Great Equation (33 s)
- DialogueTwelve rounds before the talk, round five: my favourite scene is SoulSea
- Release recordSoulSea #5438, the 300 editions
- On chainThe fxhash #5438 collection on objkt
- ExhibitionThe first solo exhibition, zone one: ocean life
- ExhibitionThe solo exhibition: the scene of the Life chapter
- ExhibitionA Journey in the Tide of the Soul: on permanent view
- PlatformThe licensed version on the French digital art platform
- Official recordArtwork record: Soul Sea
Clippings are the outside record, notes are our own films, articles and interviews, tags are platforms, exhibitions and the database page on this site; every one opens.
- 01
SoulTree
15 December 2021, fxhash #3552, 128 editions. The prelude on the same theme
- 02
SoulSea
29 December 2021, fxhash #5438, 300 editions. This page
- 03
SoulFish
June 2022, fxhash #15625, 400 editions; the first time a real piano entered the work
- 04
The Soul of Flowers
December 2023, fxhash #29643, 200 editions
The trilogy shares the signature and the layering of colour; SoulSea synthesises its sound with Web Audio, SoulFish moves to piano samples, and The Soul of Flowers is silent.
Credits
- Concept, code and sound
- Che-Yu Wu
- Chinese text
- Conceived with Mashbean
- Release
- fxhash (Tezos), 29 December 2021, 300 editions
- Chaos Laboratory 2022
- Produced by Monoame Design; visual design Jin
- The Great Equation 2023
- Organised by Monoame Design and AMBI SPACE; curated by Kuo Shao-Yun; music director KIVΛMKII; technical and visual director Chen Yu; photography Shao An-Tse
- Sacred Forest 2024
- PTS × NHK × One Song Orchestra (conductor Lee Che-Yi)
- Tempo House 2024
- Organised by Tempo House; produced by WA Co., Ltd.; project manager Chen Chia-Hsuan; photography Huang Chao-Ming
- Work film
- MONOLAB
Context & sources
- Open a living sea (exhibition build, a new sea every sixty seconds)
- The 2021 minting build, self-hosted, with sound
- The 300 editions: every hash, trait, colour range and capture at mint →
- The collection on objkt (on-chain record)
- United Daily News 500 Times: two pioneering Taiwanese NFT artists (21 January 2022)
- Livestream: interactive web and generative art (YouTube, April 2022)
- Work film (YouTube, MONOLAB)
- MONOLAB artwork record
- Creative notes: Twelve rounds before the talk (Chinese original) →
- Cheyu Wu Solo Exhibition | The Great Equation · 2023 →
- Tempo House Restaurant & Bar · 2024 →
- Chaos Lab · 2022 →
Exhibitions, research & collaborations
Contact the artist
