STANDARD

Ethereum Mainnet·0x939e...70c4

STANDARD depicts a white flag - a symbol of peace and surrender - formed from plumes of water vapour evaporating over a desert landscape in Nevada, USA. The work meditates on the possibility of a world less dependent on fossil fuels, and on ideas of stoppage, parlay, and submission to larger planetary realities. STANDARD is a complex word: both a kind of flag - one can raise the standard - and a value. The work proposes that we share one atmosphere, an invisible commons that recognises no national or political boundaries, and that we may choose collectively how to care for it. It is the third in a triptych of flag works tracing petrocultures across past, present, and future: Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas) 2017 looks to the past, simulating a dark flag of smoke on the site of the Lucas Gusher oil strike in Texas USA. Flare (Oceania) 2022 is an alarm for the burning present, rendering a gas flare over a heating Pacific. STANDARD turns toward the future, simulating a flag composed of water vapour as a tentative symbol of hope and change. The artwork is a real-time software simulation, not a video. Built on a game engine, it generates every frame live at approximately 50 frames per second, with no two moments ever repeating. The simulation is locked to the computer's clock: the sun rises and sets at the exact times it would at the depicted location near the Mojave Desert, and day lengths shift with the seasons across a full 365-day cycle. To own and display the work, the collector downloads and runs this software on a local PC. STANDARD exists in a fixed and immutable edition of 4 + 2 artist's proofs (AP). The edition was established in 2023 and is not expanded or altered by tokenization. Each edition is accompanied by either a paper based certificate of authenticity or a blockchain token (NFT) on the Ethereum network, which serves as the on-chain certificate of authenticity and proof of ownership for that edition. This token is represented on-chain and on platforms by a proofing still image stored on Ethereum. A 1920 x 1920 video proof compresses one day of the simulation from pre-dawn to dusk into a single viewing, revealing the work's time-bound behaviour as the light shifts across the full arc of the day. Neither the still nor the video proof constitutes the artwork. The online archive of the work is sustained into perpetuity by the john gerrard Estate. Produced by Werner Poetzelberger Programmed by Helmut Bressler Landscape scanning by Cedarleaf VFX Game engine by Unigine Commissioned by Catherine Walsh and premiered at the Hayward Gallery, London, summer 2023. STANDARD featured in U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere, Las Vegas, 2023.