Damo's Cave

As my exciting journey through fxhash this year is coming to an end, learning about generative art creating and collecting is like getting out of Plato’s Cave, figuratively. I explore visually to the best of my coding ability, on the topics I have always thought about inside my cave, eg nothingness, void and non-void, tea ceremonies, musical composition, ambiguous landscape, I-ching, teardrops and memories of my grandparents, collaboration in GAN and glitch calligraphy, staring at temple stone garden, last but not least collaborating on a children’s book with absurd narratives.

Looking back on the journey this year, I would like to crawl back inside to my cave now, not unlike Damo and his cave. Wall gazing or meditating or remembering each of my creative impulses for each drop. What I truly see, not necessarily in sight, is me, literally my code in my Damo’s Cave.

Private release at 100tz. Public release starting at 200tz. Prices are subject to change at any price above 200tz.

Please be patient, rendering is hard on the laptop, avg rendering time is 116.32 seconds.

Press ‘2’ to save png.

Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Notes on Damo
Damo (達摩), aka Bodhidharma, aka Daruma, a semi-legendary Buddhist monk, credited as the transmitter of Zen Buddhism to China, and regarded as its first Chinese patriarch.

The legend of 9 years of wall-gazing goes something like, after failing to make a favorable impression in China, Damo is said to have travelled to the Shaolin Monastery. After either being refused entry or being ejected after a short time, he lived in a nearby cave, where he "faced a wall for nine years, not speaking for the entire time". An inward introspection of the self.

The biographical tradition is littered with apocryphal tales about Damo's life and circumstances. In one version of the story, he is said to have fallen asleep seven years into his nine years of wall-gazing. Becoming angry with himself, he cut off his eyelids to prevent it from happening again. According to the legend, as his eyelids hit the floor the first tea plants sprang up, and thereafter tea would provide a stimulant to help keep students of Zen awake during zazen.

In contrast to Plato’s Cave, Plato’s Cave is about those who are freed from the cave come to understand that the shadows on the wall are actually not the direct source of the images seen. A philosopher aims to understand and perceive the higher levels of reality. However, the other inmates of the cave do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life. An artist aims the same but also has many desires to express understanding and perceptions. An outward extraversion of the senses.