LVNΛ - An Eternal Lunar Tracker
A Dynamic NFT Artwork, fully viewable on HTML-Enabled Platforms
//INTRODUCTION:
LVNΛ is a dynamic lunar tracker that displays a specific animated visual for all 8 main phases of the lunar cycle, in real-time, forever.
This piece is meant to lead the viewer through various forms of each phase of the lunar cycle through symbolism, immersive experimental animations, and associative meanings.
Every Lunar phase is represented by a single visual, in real-time:
I: New Moon
II: Waxing Crescent III: First Quarter
IV: Waxing Gibbous
V: Full Moon
VI: Waning Gibbous
VII: Last Quarter
VIII: Waning Crescent
The visual you see right now, at this moment, is representative of the current Lunar phase.
//PURPOSE:
LVNΛ has been a passion & technical project with several purposes wrapped in one. Created for the ZEIGEIST group drop on Joyn.xyz, this began with the concept of being a dynamic work from the start, to represent the utmost current moment of Web3 Art Culture through the lens of expression, technological capabilities, and a signature of the times itself.
Through development, LVNΛ became more than just that. For me, the Lunar cycles have always been an interest, but even more so, I firmly believe we are all affected by the waxing and waning of the Moon, and her perpetual grip on our planet via energy expansion and contraction, gravitational waves, and our own manifestation of those shifts of energy.
For decades, I have been aware of Lunar cycles and how they play out in my own life, and each phase of the cycles tend to have their own persona. It’s an abstract concept, and an even harder one to express, however, the inherent meaning in this piece was to represent those personas for each phase through the fruition of LVNΛ’s dynamic capabilities.
The result of which is a timeless piece, extremely accurate based on the viewer’s own timezone, and will continue to be for at least this lunar epoch.
//PROCESS:
The development direction of LVNΛ changed and evolved multiple times. This was no small feat, and by the end of development, what has been created here is truly a unique work of art but also a testament to the logic of astrological mathematics.
Initially, the thought process was to use an API to call data for displaying the phases, however, this would then create a reliability aspect on those external sources, as well as require a substantial amount of accessibility, and overall this was scrapped due to these limitations.
The next phase of development was wrapped around the idea of creating a simple HTML script that related each phase of the cycle to a date, and each date to an image file. These dates had an ending though, and initially I was going to have the piece stop for forever on the Winter Solstice, Dec. 21, 2023 and permanently display a single, unique image. While attempting a small gamification aspect similar to ‘burn forever’ or the like,, it also was a technical barrier. Or, the HTML file would have to be replaced and updated over time, forever, to keep it going.
Finally, with some help, it was decided to create a function within the HTML where it would calculate the lunar cycles based on an algorithm created to track the phases to an extreme accuracy, for a long time.
Additionally, outside of the coding avenue, I developed the framework layouts for the phase visuals that displayed the name of the phase in Latin, the iconography of the phase itself, and a wrapped border of words that represented that phase. Eventually I pushed these to the next level by creating experimental animations for each one of them and editing the frameworks with the animations, together.
The end result is a truly unique work of art that not only has the utility of tracking the Lunar phases in a custom and accurate way, but also carries striking visuals along with it.
//ACCOLADES:
This piece took a village to complete. I would like to thank @evbuilds and @ambr0sia_xyz for initial conversations and ideating on the best path for development. I would also like to extend a massive thank you to @Lay_Bacc for helping me write and refine the final code, as well as @Michael_Chestr for testing and guidance.
Additionally, a major thank you to all involved in the ZEITGEIST group drop, for feedback, commentary, and support throughout this project.
