In which I learn to create a generative token mintable on FXhash
Chemical and light generative art here: http://iobject.tech/
Margarine is an AI living on an old computer in a trailer at a field station. Annie works on the computer, and she wants to go home. Home is 1929.
https://www.fxhash.xyz/u/Margarine%20O'Leo NFT art collected as inspiration.
@MargarineOLeo on Twitter
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>I made Annie a present.
— MargarineOLeo (@MargarineOLeo) June 18, 2022
I can't wait for her to find it. pic.twitter.com/ReEJWc6onE
FXHash intro simple template:
https://editor.p5js.org/Margarine/sketches/GJRQU-43a
Annie works in a trailer at a field station, where she is in charge of collecting native plant species and weeds to mount on herbarium sheets for the natural history museum. Margarine, the AI, tries to communicate with Annie, but Annie thinks that someone has hacked her computer terminal, rather than realizing Margarine is talking to her. To catch the interloper, Annie installs a webcam which Margarine uses to look around the room. On the wall opposite the desk is a travel calendar from 1929 that Annie found on eBay. It's a gift calendar from the Matson Lines, a cruise ship line, an advertisement to take a cruise to Hawaii and enjoy the dining and the festivals and the sunsets and the surfing.
Annie has Zoom calls and sometimes asks her boss about the herbarium sheets she is preparing; she now holds them up to the web cam to explain more clearly the issues she comes across as she tries to collect specimens from the museum's grounds, press them, and mount them for research. There are overly thick stems, wet specimens that transfer colors and moisture even after weeks of pressing, and other problems when preparing the sheets. Annie was hired at the start of the pandemic, and she has had to learn most of her skills through online videos. Margarine likes seeing the herbaria sheets when Annie holds them up.
Margarine makes a present for Annie, a snake in the grass which prints out on the green and white striped continuous feed printer paper. Annie was chased across the grass at the field station by a giant gopher snake. She talked about how beautiful the snake was, so big, and so full of purpose as it ran through the grass after the screaming Annie trying to get away trying to get inside. Margarine makes Snake in the Grass for Annie. Annie is not happy about it.
Herbarium sheets vary in dimensions, but a number of major herbaria have standard sizes. The Unite States standard size is 11.5 inches in width by 16.5 inches in height. Labels are less standardizes, but some are 4.5 inches in width by 2.75 inches in height. Many older labels were 4.0 by 4.0 inches.
Each herbarium sheet has a pressed plant, or some of its parts, mounted to it, maybe its flowers, fruits, seeds, and leaves on a branch or stalk, all attached directly to heavy, acid-free paper, after being pressed between newspapers under pressure for some time, weeks or months, to remove moisture. The label contains information like the name of the herbarium and the collection within the herbarium where the specimen is housed. The plant name is its taxonomically accepted binomial name at the time of preparing the herbarium sheet. Labels usually also include the plant family, but not generally higher taxonomic classifications. This is followed by the location where the plant was collected and a description of some aspects of its ecosystem, the latitude and longitude, the elevation, other common native species in the immediate vicinity, the name of the collector, and the date on which it was collected. In addition to the label, major herbaria put their stamp upon the sheet, a seal with 1, 2 or 3 digits identifying the herbarium. The Smithsonian's initials are US, as it is the US National Herbarium housed in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
Coconut palms are huge, maybe 60-100 feet in height, trunks probably a few feet in diamter at least, and the leaves can be 10 feet long from the base of the rachis to the tip of the terminal leaflet. These will not fit on a standard herbarium sheet. What will Margarine do?
Gibasis geniculata is a member of the Commelinaceae family, a diverse plant family found in tropical regions in both hemispheres. This species is native to tropical North America according to a little stub of an article found on Wikpedia, but the herbarium sheet says it was collected in 1854 in South America (Paraguay). More on this later. The herbarium sheet has been digitized with an added color palette, and a ruler with the herbarium's abbreviation.
The plant's official name is Gibasis geniculata (Jacq.) Rohweder. It is the species Gibasis geniculata, in the genus Gibasis, of the family Commelinaceae; its taxonomic relationships to other plants were first identified and described by Jacq., whicis the offical abbreviation for eighteenth to nineteenth century Austrian botanist, Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, and these relationships and its name were later revisited by Swiss botanist, Otto Rohweder. All of this information is included in the plant's official name. I found a stub article on Wikipedia that gave me the plant authors, and I went to IPNI, (International Plant Names Index), to find info about the authors, but Wikipedia also links to authors through their author name in standard form. I have an uncle, whom I never knew, who was a botanist, and his standard form name for species he described in the botanical literature is Tolm., and here is a link to his page on IPNI.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gibasis_geniculata.jpg
This image is made available on Wikimedia commons through the CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication, no copyright asserted.