Rituals by Boreta & Aaron Penne
Rituals – The Album
This album extends the Rituals – Venice Art Blocks NFT (non-fungible token) project by making the artwork accessible on major streaming platforms. The music and visuals in this album are windows into an infinite generative system created with code. The Rituals – Venice collection is made up of 1000 unique on-chain generative music NFTs stored immutably on the Ethereum blockchain.
The audio-visual artwork is synthesized from code live in the browser, capable of playing for 9 million years without repeating. This album gives a one hour tour of this infinite artwork – the outputs of 12 tokens were recorded, mastered, and produced to make the computer based artwork as accessible as possible.
Generative Music & Generative Artwork
Generative music and generative artwork have a long lineage with notable practitioners in both fields such as Brian Eno, John Cage, Vera Molnar, and Herbert Franke. This project combines these two fields in conceptual and technical ways.
There are 17 waveforms that independently drive the creation of both the music and visual artwork, the phases of these waveforms are randomly selected every time an NFT is viewed ensuring the artwork is unique on every run and never repeats.
The audio is generated from a combination of binaural tones, subtractive oscillators, and LFOs pulsing at odd time signatures so that it unexpectedly evolves over time. The audio is 100% synthesized from code, there are no samples. It uses a Pythagorean scale to create seamless harmonies that intertwine with the visual movement. For the album each of the 12 selected tokens were recorded in 4k and the audio was mastered through an analog system of tubes and transformers.
Boreta and Aaron Penne worked closely with Tero Parviainen of Counterpoint Studios to help develop the generative music system backend underpinning Boreta’s ambient compositions.
IRL Minting at Bright Moments
The first 200 mints were created individually in real life at the Bright Moments Gallery in Venice, CA, USA. Each collector minted their artwork in a private experience which included guided meditation, dinner from local chefs, live music, and personal time with the artists. The IRL concept was developed by Seth Goldstein and the wonderful Bright Moments team.
Charitable Giving
This project enabled $333,000 worth of charitable donations to the Alan Watts Foundation, Stonewall Alliance LGBTQ+ Center, Surfrider Foundation, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and other impactful organizations.