The Story
Polyphos [read: pol-ee-fos] is part of the Gamma Winter Pass art release and reflects the profound contrasts and nuances of the winter season. It’s a time when the interplay between light and darkness becomes most striking. The days, though often brief, can be dazzlingly bright with snow-covered landscapes, while the nights arrive early, illuminated by artificial lights.
Across cultures, winter is also a time of celebration and togetherness, marked by vibrant, shimmering lights that bring warmth and joy to the long, dark evening. The artwork captures its essence with a dynamic, colorful, and luminous composition. While rooted in the seasonal atmosphere, it also extends beyond to convey a universal message of light, life, and connection.
The Process
Polyphos [read: pol-ee-fos] comes from Greek, and may be translated as many/multiple lights.
It captures the essence of city lights and festive illuminations, glowing and flickering in myriads. Tiny filaments lighting up and fading, momentarily bringing life to the space. Each shimmer dances to its own rhythm, an unpredictable yet harmonious play of luminosity. These glimmers of forgotten words are bound by an invisible deeper pattern, revealing the delicate balance between existence and absence.
Polyphos is a generative art project where shapes evolve through a process of growth and decay, guided by simple rules of birth, survival, and disappearance. Sometimes disrupted by actor interacting with the artwork.
Polyphos invites you to engage with specials sats. Thanks to the exquisite ZedSatologistV0 script by Zed Zeroth, it recognizes a wide range of exotic satoshis.
Each special sat influences the likelihood of specific traits. For instance, a Pizza sat guarantees the appearance of the Pizza trait, while a JPEG sat ensures the Placeholder feature.
When using a sat with multiple satributes, the algorithm checks each one individually. For example, inscribing on a Nakamoto Palindrome sat will grant you both the Light Leaks (Nakomoto) and Symmetry (Palindrome) traits.

Features
Polyphos has a rich feature set that creates a wide variety of outputs. Some traits are random, while other are bound to a special sat used for mint.
Grid Scale
Determines the scale of the grid.
Examples — Grid Scale: 16 and 60.


Grid Lines
Determines the appearance of grid lines.
Examples — Grid Lines: true and false.


Filament Type
The Filament Type trait determines how the light filament is drawn, offering three options: Straight, Curved, or Animated.
Examples — Filament Type: Straight, Curved, and Animated.



Filament Glow
The Filament Glow trait adds a color glow to each cell.
Examples — Filament Glow: true and false.


Frame Rate
Frame Rate comes in 6 variants: 0.4, 1, 12, 16, 20, and 24 FPS. The lower the value, the slower the changes happen. Two lowest values — 0.4 and 1 FPS — are made to play and experiment with interactive part of the artwork.
Refraxia Strength
Refraxia Strength determines the effect. with four variants: Glimmer, Glow, Blaze, and Luminary. Luminary, the rarest and most unpredictable, operates beyond the algorithm’s standard boundaries. It can create unique outputs and even bend the fabric of reality.
Examples — Refraxia Strength: Glimmer, Glow, Blaze, and Luminary.




Refraxia Direction
It comes in 3 variants: Omni, Horizontal, and Vertical. Compositions using Horizontal and Vertical offer distinct directional rendering.
Examples — Refraxia Direction: Omni, Horizontal, and Vertical.



Refraxia Type
Comes in 4 variants: Haze, Glitch, Analog, and Cyber. Haze doesn’t affect the color palette, while Glitch introduces a clean RGB chromatic aberration. Analog adds a yellow-blue split, and Cyber features an orange-cyan split.
Examples — Refraxia Type: Haze, Glitch, Analog, and Cyber.




Palette
There are XX color palettes encoded in the project.
Sat Features
As the project has a very strong inspiration of special and exotic sats, there are certain traits that were dedicated to them, and guaranteed by choosing one of them.
Take a look at this table to see what chances are assigned to a particular sat type.

≡ Symmetry — Palindrome Sats
Guaranteed by Palindrome sats, Symmetry comes in 3 variants: Horizontal, Veritcal, and Dual.
Examples — Symmetry: Horizontal, Veritcal, and Dual.




≡ Inverse — Uncommon & Black Uncommon Sats
Inverts the color palette, limited to B&W and Vintage palettes.
Example — Inverse: true on B&W palette.



≡ B&W — Black Uncommon Sats
The only way to ensure a B&W output is by inscribing on a Black Uncommon sat. It also significantly increases the likelihood of unlocking the Inverse feature.
Examples — Palette: B&W.



≡ Vintage — Vintage Sats
A set of four color palettes with lighter backgrounds.
Examples — Palette: 1, 2, 3, and 4.




≡ Light Leaks — Nakamoto
Satoshi Nakamoto’s light shines so brightly that it illuminates the digital realm. When inscribing on Nakamoto sats, the artwork will gain subtle light leaks along the edges.
Examples — Light Leaks: false and true.


≡ Pizza — Pizza Sats
One of the most culturally relevant and fun special sat types, it transforms the grid into a round pizza shape! The Pizza trait also limits the Grid Scale to a maximum value of 25, ensuring a rich and detailed rendering.
Examples — Pizza: true.



≡ Placeholder — JPEG Sats
We’re all familiar with the frustration of a broken link or missing image. Inscribe on a JPEG sat to secure the Placeholder feature, transforming asemic doodles into a generative variation of an X mark.
Examples — Placeholder: true.



≡ Crosshair — Hitman Sats
Like any hitman, this trait should remain unnoticed. It only reveals itself during interaction, replacing the usual cell effect with a crosshair cursor that impacts multiple cells simultaneously.
Examples — Crosshair: true.



Technical specs:
- long-form generative series
- resolution agnostic
- 13 538 bytes of JavaScript; collection – delegated inscriptions
- recursive call to ZedSatologistV0 by Zed Zeroth
- Original inscribed on black uncommon omega sat 1592242499999999.
Interaction
[click/touch + drag]
— draw – illuminate the cell[S]
— save image[console]
– check console for traits table
Algorithm
Explore the algorithm.
Enter satoshi number below to explore variations. Leave empty for random output.