Virus Let Loose

Let’s Go Green with Virus (not the pandemic causing 👾), Kudzu is an NFT virus artwork that is on a mission to proliferate across the Ethereum network.

Kudzu takes its name from a green creeper, native to East Asia and is considered an invasive weed elsewhere in the world, a threat to local species.

Kudzu Rampage

Kudzu infection has gained momentum since it escaped from the lab. To get infected someone needs to send you the Kudzu NFT (We can’t call it an NFT as it leaves some traces everywhere it goes) or you can self-infect yourself by purchasing one from OpenSea. Addresses can only be infected once. Wallet gets infected with a unique avatar. A small segment of the Token ID is reserved as the viral chromosome allowing Kudzu to pass on one trait to recipients and one random gene. As Kudzu spreads the variant evolves and becomes more complex.

Kudzu No 67, price - 2 ETH, at opensea (during the time of writing)

Kudzu is a creation inspired by….No wait, not Covid !!!  

Elk Cloner is one of the first known microcomputer Viruses that spread "in the wild", i.e., outside the computer system or laboratory in which it was written. It attached itself to the Apple II operating system and spread by floppy disk. It was written around 1982 by programmer and entrepreneur Rich Skrenta as a 15-year-old high school student, originally as a joke, and put onto a game disk. Elk Cloner targeted Apple II machines, causing them to display the following poem.

The Generated image is a grained Jpeg compression similar to a Deep Fried Meme.

The Kudzu Graph

If you are infected, find yourself in the Kudzu virus outbreak graph. You just need to type your account address in the search and trackback your virus variants.

“We contacted the team and they all are excited about its resurgence and got their story from a first angle perspective. We also want to highlight another Evolutionary project from the Folia Team”. 

The NFT Laboratory - The Mutant Garden Launched By Folia 

The Mutant Garden is a new project from Harm Van Den Dorpel. Mutant Garden Seeder consists of 512 generative unique Ethereum NFT’s created by Harm Van Den Dorpel known as Mutants, this was released in collaboration with Folia in 2021. Mutants Garden has its origin in Harm’s earlier series Death imitates Language from 2015 which had a similar genetic algorithm bred over 100,000 digital paintings.

Death imitates language

Properties And Life Cycle Of The Mutant

Only one mutant can be minted per block number. The transaction hash of this chosen birth block is taken as a seed for a deterministic random function, used to populate a cartesian genetic network (“chromosome”).

User chosen seed block → Block hash → Properties + seed number → Deterministic random function → Cartesian genetic network + window dimensions → SVG → Artwork

Here is the catch, mutants mutate over time by themselves, based on the similarity of the seed block hash and the current block hash.

To add more life to the mutant it can have properties that include “Complexity”, “colour mode”, and “mutation frequency” which are fixed upon birth and do not change over time.

Frequency Of Mutation

At birth, each mutant receives a fixed mutation probability, based on the seed block hash. The most stable mutants mutate maybe once every five months, and the most dynamic ones mutate every single day. The decision of which gene to mutate and to what is dictated by the current block hash. This means that mutations, even though they are random and unpredictable, are fully deterministic. 

The NFT Virologist - Harm Van Del Dorpel

Harm was a pioneer in the NFT’s and founder of the Left Gallery. He also holds the merit of being the first artist to have an NFT acquired by a museum. He later expanded in 2020 with the first iteration of the Mutant Garden project + software. After a long period of development, the mutants are available in many variable editions.

For People In Search Of Mutants

Each mutant can only be adopted once, and only one mutant can be birthed per block. Mutants must be adopted within 50 blocks, otherwise, they will perish and be made unavailable to mint.

Well, viruses were never fun till now, and gardens mutated in sci-fi only. Folia Combines Botany and Virology with Blockchain technology in an artistic way.