Concept + Photographic Method

Ordinary Vessels began with a visit to the Getty Center in Los Angeles and a question I have returned to for years: what is art?

The Getty itself felt like an artwork. Its architecture, light, and infrastructure shape the experience of encountering what it contains. At the same time, its collection spans thousands of years and reflects continually changing ideas of what art can be. My experience in Web3 further challenged my own assumptions about that question. I eventually arrived at a distinction: anything can be art, but not everything is.

I returned to the Getty with one rule:

Photograph everything except the art.

I photographed the things that normally recede into their function: architecture, lights, elevator buttons, restrooms, parking structures, maps, even the remains of my lunch. Rather than photographing what the museum presents as art, I photographed the vessel surrounding it.

The photographic process was intentionally ordinary. I used an iPhone 16 Pro, stayed within the normal flow of visitor traffic, photographed primarily from chest height, avoided cinematic and dramatic framing, and allowed myself roughly four seconds to make each image. Repeated and near-identical photographs were retained, reflecting the ordinary rhythm of a personal camera roll.

From this process, 44 photographs were selected and inscribed on Bitcoin.

Generative System

Those photographs became both images and data. A generative system reads their color, brightness, contrast, saturation, edges, texture, and visual weight. That information is combined with the on-chain conditions created when each photograph was inscribed, including its transaction and block data, Merkle root, fee rate, and other reveal conditions.

Together, the photograph and Bitcoin data determine how each vessel resolves: material, finish, formation, deformation, composition, mood, atmosphere, and lighting behavior.

The 44 photographs produce 444 pairs: 444 Sculptures and 444 PFPs, totaling 888 Ordinary Vessels. Each pair shares the same source photograph, material, finish, mood, atmosphere, and underlying conditions, but resolves through a different visual language. One becomes an abstract sculptural form; the other begins with the familiar structure of a sculptural bust and resolves as a PFP. Each exists as its own inscription.

Their pairing is intentional. Sculpture and portrait busts carry centuries of institutional recognition as art. The PFP, a form closely associated with blockchain culture, carries different assumptions. Ordinary Vessels places them on equal footing.

The collection contains 20 material families, ranging from ordinary substances to materials associated with value. Material rarity is tied to the economic conditions of inscription: greater fee pressure can push a work toward rarer material families associated with greater physical value. Each material receives its own finish and responds differently to the photographic information and light.

Each vessel also resolves on a spectrum between calm and tense. That state is expressed through its atmosphere and the line surrounding the form. Calmer conditions produce smoother, quieter movement; more intense conditions create sharper, more restless structures. The line acts as a visual trace of the conditions involved in bringing the source photograph on-chain.

Browser + On-Chain Process

The viewing environment introduces one final variable. The source imagery uses AVIF, allowing color, contrast, and tonal relationships to shift across browsers. Rather than normalize those differences, I preserved them as part of the work. The browser becomes another vessel through which the artwork is interpreted.

I wanted the collection to be built from the purest on-chain data possible. Rather than rely on live external APIs, the reveal data from each source photograph was collected and inscribed as its own dataset.

This creates a feedback loop between image and inscription: the photograph creates the on-chain conditions, and those conditions return as material used to construct the final vessel.

Process

01 — Photograph | Getty Center source photography
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02 — Minimal Processing | Lightroom color correction, curves, sharpening + contrast
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03 — AVIF Source Inscriptions | 44 photographs permanently inscribed on Bitcoin
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04 — Bitcoin Reveal Data | On-chain conditions retrieved from the source inscriptions
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05 — Inscribed Dataset | Reveal data compiled + inscribed back onto Bitcoin
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06 — Shared Generative Runtime | Codex GPT-5.4 infrastructure + manual VS Code development and fine-tuning
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07 — Generative Inputs | Source Images + Bitcoin Data + Runtime + OCM Dimension 300 Libraries
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08 — Final Generative Art | 444 Sculptures + 444 PFPs = 888 Ordinary Vessels

Two Records of Experience

Ordinary Vessels brings together two records of experience: a photograph from an ordinary museum visit, and the Bitcoin data created when that photograph was permanently brought on-chain. The final vessels become a third space where the physical and on-chain experiences meet.