ART BLOCKS × PACE

Petro National

John Gerrard

196 unique artworks

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196 nations and regions realised as gasoline spills on the world ocean.

Centering on a generative thin film refraction algorithm each country and region in Petro National reflects its per capita annual consumption of petroleum, with low-consumption countries and regions manifesting a very thin spill leaning towards the blue green spectrum to high-consumption countries and regions being thick, lustrous and highly iridescent forms. Society consumes 100 million barrels of oil every day with radically differing patterns between global north and south.

Each broad consumption category in the works encompasses different atmospheric, wave and sea colour traits which are further affected by the minting seed address.

Petro National is a first webgl piece both online and onchain which extends my sustained work over two decades in game engines. These respond to historic intersections of energy and power. See Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas) 2017 as an example or visit johngerrard.net

Each of the 196 generated worlds runs on local time as dictated by the time zone of its capital city. Night, day and seasonality will be experienced across the year in the work with long days in summer and short in winter. Countries and regions are openly allocated to collectors upon mint.

These are spatial worlds - click and drag on the scene to look around. Press R on a keyboard to slowly rotate the camera, O / P to zoom. G for full screen in generator mode.

For more information see : https://www.pacegallery.com/journal/john-gerrard-petro-national/

Production credits. Producer : Werner Poetzelberger, Programmer : Helmut Bressler.

RELEASE DATE

21 Jun 2022

LIBRARY

babylon@5.0.0

RELEASE DETAILS

196 works released with Exponential Dutch auction on 21 Jun 2022

CHARITABLE GIVING

25% of artist’s proceeds support atmospheric CO2 removal. Remaining funds contribute to regenerative farming organisations.

PROJECT ID

0x64780ce53f6e966e18a22af13a2f97369580ec11-0

CONTRACT

Etherscan

LICENSE

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

37

ABOUT THE ARTIST

John Gerrard

b. 1974 North Tipperary, Ireland

John Gerrard is an Irish artist best known for his sculptures, which typically take the form of digital simulations displayed using Real-time computer graphics. Gerrard's work probes the complexities of contemporary power and energy systems, highlighting the twentieth century's significant advancements and the often-hidden industrial structures underpinning our ...

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John Gerrard