Peter Burrs BOOM TOWN is a fictional neighborhood on the blockchain inspired by towns that live and die with the boom and bust cycles of speculation. Like most of Burrs works, BOOM TOWN is a richly crafted narrative world that is deeply evocative while remaining mysterious and restrained. Displaying the artists gift for creating images and environments that hover on the boundary between abstraction and figuration, they invite the viewer to fill in the blanks with their own interpretation, suggesting a story that is barely legible yet unmistakably present. Inspired by the tools and aesthetics of video games, Burrs compositions draw on generative dynamics and the complexity that emerges from simple, rule-based systems. Each of the eight works in BOOM TOWN follows a precise logic for generating the structures architecture, its ground and field, its shadows, planes, and colors. The resulting images are reminiscent of 8-bit video games and early computer graphics, as well as the flat diagrammatic quality of CAD architectural drawings.  Julia Kaganskiy

Feral File  BOOM TOWN

<em>The empty lot is the best piece of real estate in BOOM TOWN  a future garden rustling in the vacant breeze.</em>

Every one of the structures in BOOM TOWN represents a unique, living artwork comprised of 1,000 images that will change over time, evolving as a kind of durational stop motion animation over an undetermined period pegged to Ethereums block time  that is, the length of time it takes to add another block to the blockchain. Collectors receive the full set of images as part of their acquisition package and can browse or even create prints of the works past or future state, but they cannot make the work advance any faster or slower than block time. 

Burrs process blends traditional animation techniques with the affordances of generative algorithmic systems. Each work originates with intentionally unoptimized algorithms developed by Burrs collaborator, Dave Tandem, and follows a precise composition logic that dictates its form, ground and field, shadows, planes, colors, and weight. The software allows Burr to draw structures on a gravity-influenced canvas and to animate them changing over time. Burr is interested in highlighting the unique fingerprints of various software and in his practice often works across tech pipelines to weave these diverse fingerprints into a unique aesthetic, reveling in the compression and dithering that occurs through this approach. The final images are outputted into a custom framework built by Tandem that uses block time to advance their evolution.