THE SEEKER
by KARBORN

A giant eye at the centre of the <self>, surrounded by a mass of images.
A brave new world with individuals selecting,
+ Arranging the images to make their own story,
- And so becoming strong enough to withstand tyranny.‍

Jump to:
**- About
**- Background
**- HyperCollage
**- The Artworks
**- The Medusa?!
**- Inspirations & References
**- About ‘The Collectors Choice’ Contract from Transient Labs
**- Instructions For Holders
**- FAQ
**- Credits
**- Contact KARBORN

### ABOUT

‍The Seeker captures the essence of the many pioneering entities and archetypes engaging with digital art in The Space.

This edition is built on the remarkable new ‘Collectors Choice’ contract from Transient Labs, which allows the holder to possess and switch between any of these prototype-archetypes at will. Furthermore, new pieces are frequently added into the contract, even post-mint (for now - BEWARE! THE MEDUSA!)

Whether you wish to embody the heartfelt qualities of The Lover, the wisdom of The Seer, or prefer to be an ANON, I see you. Perhaps you send work into the eternal flames as The Burner, or hodl as Diamond Hands. Is your benevolent mission here about Building Better Worlds? There's always rooooom for SHROOOOOMS. Perhaps you carefully observe other holders’ choices in order to find The Path Less Taken? You’ll need to adapt to change of course... At the end of the day Power Down. Step Outside. Into Cool. Night Air. Anyway, it's yours.

“*20th-century humankind had the benefit of a hybrid visual apparatus, acquiring new capabilities and new, non-renaissance perspectives thanks to the advent of photography and film. It is a creative act where a person sees, thinks and feels, not a sequence of phenomena, but the world as an integrated, coordinated whole, ***an act that bridges the divide between the ancient Greeks and us, a divide that was formulated by Matthew Arnold: “They regarded the whole; we regard the parts.” - Quote paraphrased from an article by Olga Shpilko.

### BACKGROUND
‍
As an 80s child, I grew up with a Commodore64 and roamed wild on Amiga BBS/Bulletin-boards, graduating onto a 386 DOS computer and followed soon by Win 95 + Apple machines during the emerging WWW era. I learned to code HTML extensively as a child, and in early 2001 I registered karborn.com as my homepage for my mixed-media digital artworks. I was just 15 years old and I believed this was the future, man! "Digital images are worthless son" my Father would explain sagely, with all the best intentions. And he was correct, for a long while...

Cyberpunk, science fiction, ASCII/ANSI art, Ancient Greek mythology, scripts, code, warez, cracks, trojans, mail bombers, chatrooms, web-art, gifs, homepages, self-publishing… and so on and so on. The burgeoning Cyber Culture poured in - A generation seeking and sharing all sorts of largely uncensored material online - wild, fecund, dangerous, beautiful and irresistible, a brave new world…

“New frontiers are always fraught with danger, romance, utopian flights of fancy, and no small amount of madness…” - Beyond Cyberpunk (1991)

The human body was virtualising, and the use of multimedia to socially construct stories and form new identities had arrived. Unknowingly, we had become cyborgs - A new kind of experimental human/machine hybrid seeking out the emerging world. Perhaps this was true postmodernism.

### HYPERCOLLAGE

The collage works of Max Ernst, particularly "Une Semaine de Bonté" and the many-layered-meaning title of "La Femme 100 têtes," captured my imagination when I discovered them in my twenties. Around this time, in a book about Bauhaus found abandoned on the streets of London, I discovered the remarkable graphic artworks of Herbert Bayer for myself. His 1930 piece "Extended Field of Vision" struck me as significant - a single individual, formed primarily of a large eye, radiating beams and observing numerous floating panels (artworks) presented before them. A prophetic vision, one I believed warranted re-investigation - and so this formed the basis of THE SEEKER artworks.

It occurred to me that instead of looking through Bayer's early 20th century architectural panels, we do so through the windows of our 21st-century operating systems and machines… The observer mutated, changed by their very own acts of observation and interaction with the artworks.

The past, the present and the future…

Growing up listening to Jungle music and Dub particularly, I admired the skill and creativity of musicians sampling material from the past, in order to build new works for today. Ernst had similarly demonstrated this in his collages. Inspired by this, I decided to create my own approach to collage, which I dubbed 'hypercollage'. Defined by the simultaneous combining of various multimedia in each piece. These include 3D modeling, scans from old books, comics, 60s zines, Victorian pulp illustrations, architectural prints and 80s/90s computer magazines, working with flickering CRT monitors and hacked analogue video kit, various forms of retouching / digital repainting and utilising tools such as Photoshop for the build-down and even some sprinkles of Ai. Occasionally even incorporating sampled elements from Bayer's and Ernst's works themselves - among other sources from the same period and before. I put it altogether on the machines, excited by the ideas as well as the power and flexibility of the tools at hand. A collage indeed, but now far richer and deeper - Almost a living thing.

### THE ARTWORKS

ANALOGUE FIRE CRT ANIMATIONS

The SEEKER pieces are created using a wide variety of media and techniques, and assembled down in Photoshop. The artworks are painstakingly animated as (typically) 8-step stop-frame animation loops, primarily inspired by the minimalism of 80s/90s video games and Terry Gilliam. The PS Selection Tool is also exploited in a very unusual way in many of the pieces.

The artworks are captured frame-by-frame on the holy grail of analogue Trinitron CRT monitors, the BVM-20E1E (1 of only 500 made) - lending them a glittering, floating, spectral feel. The final output is a collection of animated .GIFs.

SPECS (approx)
number of frames photographed on CRT - 12000
total file size of project - 968 GB
average dimensions of final artworks - 5000 x 4000 px
production time per artwork - 60 hours
total time spent artworking - 3500 hours (during 4 months)

### THE MEDUSA

ONE DAY SOON SHE WILL COME AND PETRIFY YOU ALL ETERNALLY.

BEWARE!

THE MEDUSA, ONCE RELEASED, WILL BE IN YOUR HANDS, NOT MINE.

AND TO WHOMEVER COMES TO POSSESS HER POWER - BE WISE ANON.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

### INSPIRATIONS & REFERENCES

Here are those I recall, in no particular order :

Herbert Bayer, Max Ernst, Adam Curtis, Virgil Finlay, Robert Fludd, Beyond Cyberpunk hypercard, Gustave Doré, Repoman 1984, Amiga and Atari computer magazines from 70s 80s, Herman Hesse taught me how to think, BBS UK underground early 90s, All the early internet freaks and pioneers, PARADOX, Cyberpunk, Mark Fisher, Fornasetti**,** Snatcher video-game 1994, Terry Gilliam (Monty Python animations), Eric Hebborn, Maerten de Vos, Stephen Ellcock, Kritz Kahn mAAHNMASCH, Jean Giraud, JG Ballard, Art and the Future by Douglas Davis, OZ magazine (early editions from the 60s), Martin Sharp, Hypnospace Outlaw, BLOOD, HEXEN, Discover my body video-game, DOS computer virus’s, and many more…

### ABOUT ‘THE COLLECTORS CHOICE’ CONTRACT BY TRANSIENT LABS

The ‘Collectors Choice’ contract by Transient Labs allows the holders to choose between and update the artwork displayed on their edition from any of those immediately available in THE SEEKER artwork array (BEWARE THE MEDUSA!)

New artworks are added frequently post mint, for the time being. Multiple holders may select the same artwork - which should make things interesting for those of you seeking rarities.

Every good story has a beginning, a middle and an end.

### CREDITS

Artwork, Writing - KARBORN. LONDON.

Tokenomics Advisor, Creative collaboration - XERO (@Tandhope)

TRANSIENT LABS (https://www.transientlabs.xyz)

SHILLR (https://www.shillr.xyz)

### CONTACT KARBORN
‍
https://www.karborn.com
‍
email // j@karborn.com
‍
twitter // @johnkarborn

instagram // @karborn