An interactive visualization of The Memes' collectors and artists, built from years of collecting data. It exists as two linked works: The Network, a meme card where you can find yourself by name, and The Art, a 1/1 companion presenting the same data without names. Two views of one structure, in mutual support and tension.
Meme Card
"We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves."John Berger
Collectors in the center, artists in the outer ring. Type a handle and hit activate, click any node, or let autoplay run. Energy ripples outward through connections until the full network lights up.
The gif button records an activation and captures the result.
Art's meaning and value has always come from its network. This represents that social construction, but network art also enables new possibilities. You can't do this with Kandinsky collectors.
1/1 Companion
"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."Thomas Merton
The same network, without names. The social can overshadow the artwork. Two versions allow each to take the foreground in turn.
The 1/1 entails stewardship: a minimal owner mode unlocks across both works, but only when held in-network. The final Epoch 1 snapshot defines the boundary.
Enter a 6529 handle in the search field, or click individual nodes. Energy spreads through connections: from a person to the artists they collect, then outward to those artists' other collectors. You can also let autoplay run.
The GIF button is built into The Network artwork. Find your handle, let your activation play out, and use the button to capture it.
Data is sourced from 6529's Arweave snapshots and APIs, spanning June 2022 through the end of Epoch 1. The network includes approximately 10,000 nodes and 100,000 connections.
Both works update weekly during Epoch 1 as new collecting activity occurs. When Epoch 1 concludes, the data freezes and the works become fixed.
Click the artist signature in either work to toggle Time Mode, which lets you see the network as it existed at different points in its history.
If The Art is held in-network (in a wallet that also holds any Meme), a minimal owner mode becomes accessible across both works. The final Epoch 1 snapshot determines who qualifies as in-network.
Beyond the weekly data updates, the artist may adjust visual configurations or address bugs as the dataset evolves. The work may be refined to maintain quality and accuracy through the epoch's conclusion.
Built with p5.js, HTML, and CSS over the course of a year. Data is preprocessed and served via ArNS with a CDN mirror.