Turtle Vision

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

What is it like to be a sea turtle in the age of plastic?

Our global addiction to single-use plastic is destroying our marine environment. Over 11 million metric tons of waste plastic enter our oceans every year. Thankfully, there is a growing force of ocean defenders rising to combat this crisis. Activists and non-profit organizations around the world are working diligently to solve the ocean plastic problem — but they don’t have nearly enough resources to succeed. This project aims to help.

Turtle Vision uses code, chaos, and regl.js to offer us a glimpse into the experience of a sea turtle in 2023, struggling to survive in an ailing ocean. Turtles prey heavily on jellyfish, but have trouble distinguishing them from the countless plastic bags clogging our oceans given their similar shapes and movement patterns. Because of this, we are finding more and more sea turtles dead on beaches, having starved to death with bellies full of plastic bags.

We believe that generative art can help to reverse this trend and restore sea turtle populations to pre-plastic levels. Turtle Vision aims to raise money for 5 Gyres, one of the foremost nonprofit groups in the war on single-use plastic. 5 Gyres has a storied pedigree in this space, and has also emerged as a leader amongst conservation organizations in its embrace of blockchain technology.

This project is a collaboration between renowned generative artist @s_r_r_z, the creator of the iconic Generative Octopuses, and @Casson.tez, a professional ocean conservation activist who works at the intersection of environmentalism and web3.

We are grateful for the support of Tender.art, fx(hash), TZAPAC, the Tezos Foundation, and the entire Tezos community.

EDITION

• Series size: 534 (it's SEA)
• Price: 111-99-77-55-33
• Charity share: 40% of primaries, 5% of secondaries

TECHNICALS

Visuals:
This artwork portrays jellyfish intermixed with litter in the ocean, such as plastic bags and masks. The outputs offer variance in color, species, clarity, ratio, motion pattern, framing, and additional variables.

Species:

• Moon Jellyfish (Aurelia aurita)
• Crystal Jellyfish (Aequorea victoria)
• Sea Nettle (Chrysaora quinquecirrha)
• Spotted Jellyfish (Phyllorhiza punctata)
• Flower Hat (Olindias formosa)
• Pink Meanie (Drymonema larsoni)

Scenes:

• “Do You Feel Lucky?” (1 jellyfish + 1 bag)
• “Unwrap Before Eating” (1 jellyfish + 1 bag)
• “It’s In Here Somewhere” (1 jellyfish + n bags)
• “Two Bites Left” (2 jellyfish + n bags)
• “Fugu” (n jellyfish + 1 bag)
• “Omakase” (n jellyfish + n bags)
• “Feast” (no trash)
• “Famine” (trash only)

Controls:

• Drag to rotate
• Hold alt + Drag to pan
• Scroll to zoom
• Press the spacebar to pause/play (in
• Press R to toggle auto-rotation
• Press S to take a screenshot
• Hold the up/down arrow to adjust visibility

The work was made with JavaScript by s_r_r_z_, except for the following:

• regl (MIT License)
• glsl-random by mattdesl (BSD-3-Clause)
• glsl-lut by mattdesl (MIT license)
• glsl-noise by hughsk (MIT license)
• glsl-fbm by yiwen lin (MIT license)
• glsl-rotate (MIT license)
• simplex-noise (MIT license)
• alea (MIT license)
• hsv2rgb (MIT license)
• canvas-orbit-camera by hughsk (MIT license)
• hueShiftYIQ by MISAKI NAKANO (public domain)
• waterCaustics function adapted from jaybird (public domain)
• Compiled using fxhash-boilerplate-webpack by fxhash (MIT License).

2023. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. See LICENSE.txt for more information.

The rendering process is quite CPU/GPU intensive. It was tested on various browsers and devices, but please make sure it works on your device before minting.