This collection is a study of identity in the modern digital era, increasingly dominated by NFT profile pictures. We all construct complex identities to project out into the world, perhaps to distract ourselves from facing the real question that is gnawing at our subconscious. "Who am I?" The moment we feel ourselves begin to grasp an answer it recedes further out of reach leaving us in free fall. The good news is there is no ground.

We pay homage to Ukrainian-born artist Kazimir Malevich, founder of the Suprematism movement. In the same way that artists from this movement explored the supremacy of pure artistic feeling, we explore the pure essence of identity and self-expression.  In Malevich's Suprematist theory, an important place is occupied by the concept of "facelessness", which he puts on a par with such concepts as non-objectivity and non-figurativeness. Malevich represented the face as a hard shell, a frozen mask, a mask that hides the essence. The feeling of the abyss of nothing, the metaphysical emptiness, is expressed here with no less force than in the Black or White Squares.

The project imagery represents a duality: facelessness as (literal) detachment from the ego, and ‘faceless figures’ as an uncanny symbol of the new reality where online identity is fluid, where everything is multiplying, blending and merging. By superimposing the early and the late work of Malevich made under very different conditions — the non-referential paintings of his Suprematist period and the faceless figures of his work from the 1930s — and endlessly generating compositions of faceless figures on Suprematism-inspired backgrounds, we’re creating new iconography reflecting the ever-changing appearance of individuals and their identity in the new multifaceted digital world we all live in, limitless and borderless.

The concept of Ego Death has been explored for thousands of years from ancient Buddhist teachings, to the early 20th century analytical psychology of Carl Jung (complete loss of subjective self-identity), to modern science-backed meditation techniques that activate the pineal gland and put the brain into theta and gamma states where the sense of self completely dissolves.

We explore the Ego Death concept by combining pioneering suprematic compositions with modern long form generative art. Each piece represents not just the beautiful combination of geometry and faceless human energies, but can be used as a meditation object that will remind the collector of the illusion of self. We have created a new type of pfp project that doesn’t just represent the egoic desire to fulfill ambitions and own scarce luxury goods, but rather is a true expression of one’s soul on the journey to enlightenment. 

A strong authentic community can only be built if each individual is willing to go through the ego death process, connecting to the source of oneness that is everything and nothing, and realizing that every thought and feeling affects everyone in the space.

This was our most challenging project to date and required us to develop many technical innovations taking almost 6 months to complete.

Generative 3D Head

The constraints of the Art Blocks platform inspire creativity. In this case, one of the constraints is that now external assets or model files can be loaded. In order to render a 3D model of a bust it needed to be generated with math and code.

The first step was to create a CubicBezierCurve, which is a curve based on a start point, end point, and two control points, then rotate this curve around an axis to create a 3D shape. In three.js this is known as a LatheGeometry. We created a quick GUI to adjust the parameters until we had a shape that felt like a good approximation of a human head.

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Next we added a second geometry using the same technique to approximate a neck. For efficiency both the head and neck were merged into a single geometry before applying materials and rendering.

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Custom Brushstroke Textures

Next up was generating a texture using a GLSL shader that resembled the brush strokes of a painter. We were inspired by the suprematist work of Kazimir Malevich and Ilya Chashnik among others.

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To generate this texture we created a GLSL shader that does the following:

• Generate 5 layers of brush strokes
• Each layer uses a fractal brownian motion noise algorithm with the aspect ratio stretched to give the look of lines of noise. The noise value is used to mix a base color and a highlight color (black and grey in the example above)
• We multiply the brush strength by another fractal brownian motion calculation which varies with the x and y coordinates and creates the 'cloudy' looking effect
• The above is repeated 5 times with different random angles to simulate the organic brushstrokes of a painter
• We also apply a rotation to the whole coordinate system that varies with the x and y coordinates according to another fractal brownian motion calculation. This creates a slight 'swirl' effect to the brushstrokes rather than pure straight lines
• Of course, there are many parameters in each of these steps and it took a lot of tweaking to get something we were happy with

Additionally the edge of the texture has a splotchy effect rather than a perfect straight line to look more like what a painter would produce. We used a fractal brownian motion calculation on the alpha channel (transparency) of the texture, which varied in strength (strongest at the very edge of the coordinate space).

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Shapes and Compositions

Now that we had our texture we began generating shapes (starting with parameterized quadrilaterals and circles). We built a GUI to manually position these shapes and adjust the parameters, and Alina then spent hours manually creating compositions to get a feel for what might be possible for the project.

Ryan would study these compositions to understand the 'essence' of each, and then write an algorithm to produce similar outputs that vary with randomness from the token. Alina would study the outputs of the algorithm, we would tweak it further, and iterate in this fashion until we had created the 12 basic composition structures that make up the project.

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Texture Optimization

At this point we noticed a problem. Each of the shapes was a separate 3D object being rendered with our brushstroke texture on every frame. It turns out the calculations in the shader were complex and with this many shapes to render the frame rate dropped down below 15fps on a relatively high end Macbook pro, which was not going to provide a good experience to our collectors. Ryan spent days going through the three.js documentation optimizing everything possible but only managed to squeeze out a few extra fps.

The 'aha' moment came when Ryan realized that the textures are static, there's no need to calculate them on every frame. He wrote some code to generate the textures in an off-screen render buffer and then apply them as 2D bitmaps to the geometries. While the code was difficult to get right (especially scaling to different sizes without distorting the textures), it solved the problem and we were back above 60fps.

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Combining Head and Shapes

It was now time to bring the head back into the composition. We experimented first by applying a single color texture to the head but decided we wanted more variety. We then brought in some animated noise patterns that we used in our previous project (Window to the Soul) and applied these to the head for a ghostly effect. Another 'aha' moment came when we realized we could use the same off-screen render buffer technique described above, but this time render the entire composition and then apply that texture to the head. We liked this effect the most, but decided to keep all three types as possibilities in the project.

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Color Palettes

One of the most important pieces of this project was the selection of color palettes. Ryan created a GUI for Alina to manually create color selections and test them with the generated outputs. After crafting these for days we ended up with 22 core palettes that the algorithm selects from when generating an output.

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Post Processing

To add a little bit more visual interest to the final output we added a post-processing step to the render pipeline. We created a custom shader that generates the look of cracked paint (using a turbulence noise algorithm) and dirty/aged edges (using fractal brownian motion).

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Animations and Interactivity

From the beginning we wanted the outputs to stand alone as a static images that could be printed and framed, but also have a surprise interaction that would bring them alive and expose the 3D nature of the project. We decided simplicity was key, so the only interaction is a single mouse click. Once clicked, moving the mouse allows the composition to be explored from different angles. Over time the lighting begins to fade, leaving a minimal silhouette that represents the ego death process.

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We also decided to add a bit of fun to the minting process by having the outputs first appear with a dramatic lighting effect.

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Finishing Touches

As any long form generative artist knows, the final 20% seems to take 80% of the time. We spent many weeks tuning parameters and the range of possible outputs so that everything the algorithm produces is something we are proud of. We also added a few rare combinations that may or may not appear in the mint!

I was raised in an intellectual family collecting books of art, history and philosophy from a very young age.  On the shelf in my room I would find all kinds of albums of artworks, but my favorites were the depictions of medieval Holland by Bosch and Bruegel. They were magical worlds that would allow me to travel into other dimensions as a child.

Later in my adult life when I discovered shamanic plant medicine ceremonies, all those images in my mind were synchronized with new visions and I would travel deeper, stimulating my desire to create art. It was, however, always a little scary and never brought my mind peace.

At some point I found a little book, printed badly on cheap paper, that was called ‘Suprematism’. In it were the artworks of Malevich and his students Chashnik, Suetin etc. That book changed my life completely. I was already reading the works of Blavatskaya and Jung and I could barely understand what they were talking about, but studying Malevich helped to illuminate my understanding of existence. Later in my career I would come back to different eras in art, but studying Suprematism and bringing it into my works was always my most pleasing inspiration.

When I met my husband Ryan at Burning Man, from our first meeting we started to talk about consciousness, humanity, higher dimensions and the purpose of life. In our relationship, besides work and raising our child, a big focus is on meditation. We’ve discovered practices that help to calm the monkey mind, relax and heal, and go deeper in our growth.

When last year I got sick with an autoimmune disease and was almost paralyzed, we decided to go through a shamanic plant medicine ceremony called ego death. I experienced unity with God's mind, and when I came back into my body I was healed 2 weeks later and I was at peace.

When the war happened between Russia and Ukraine, the grief of death and the anger of the injustice brought me back into depression and my symptoms returned. From that moment we decided to learn the pineal gland meditation, an ancient technique to generate an ego death mystical experience. Practicing this meditation daily helps us to experience oneness, love, and to heal the body. When the brain experiences theta and gamma states, the body dissolves. There is no time or space, no matter, it’s only energy that moves in the most beautiful vibrant kaleidoscopes. No senses are involved other than intuition and the pure knowing awareness of consciousness.

This is the most beautiful, the most empowering, the most heart opening experience that we would like to offer for everyone through the vision of our art.

Electralina is a wife and husband collaboration between Alina Karo and Ryan Junee.

Alina started her professional career as a fashion photographer in 2004 and by 2006 she was working with top modeling agencies in Paris, London, New York and Moscow, with her photographs featured in Vogue, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Interview, L’Officiel, Interview, Numero, Tatler, Elle, Marie-Claire and many others. In 2014 she turned her attention from the commercial fashion industry towards artistic independent work and created collections like “Seven Deadly Sins'' and “Vollipsis” that were exhibited at galleries in Paris, New York, Miami and Los Angeles. Combining the elegant poses of high fashion with the grotesque, the anti-sexual and with stunning disregard for what is expected, she told the story of society’s increasing consumerism, environmental destruction, false idols and the irony of modern trendy spirituality. Continuing her artistic journey, the rise of NFTs and digital generative art caught her eye and became her newest medium for exploration in collaboration with her husband.

Ryan has a background in programming and technology, originally studying engineering at Stanford University. He always believed coding was an art form - an elegantly written algorithm inspires the same feelings of beauty as a painting or a sculpture. He is particularly attracted to abstract art, perhaps due to its similarity to code. Collaborating with Alina on Identity has been the perfect marriage of art and code (pun intended).