Cryptocubes
Created by the artist Han, the original Cryptocubes collection was launched in 2020 as a series of 256 collectible NFTs, each one depicting a uniquely designed abstract arrangement of cubes. Subsequent collections have collaborated with different artists, including Alotta Money, Deekay Motion, ARC, Refik Anadol, Stina Jones, and Brendan Dawes, to name just a few. Each artist has brought their own style and themes to the original Cryptocubes concept, and Trevor joined their ranks with The 77th Configuration (Steampunk Sentinel), a 1/1 that dropped on 17 May 2023 on Nifty Gateway.
Special thanks to my two friends Ivo Nupoort and David Marr for helping me bring my vision to reality through animation and storytelling.
Thanks also to Apollo Entertainment for the use of the spectacular 3D Steampunk Bull they created.
How long have you been here? Here in the Desert of Dreams and Nightmares. Putting one step in front of the other, exhausted, thirsty, lost. The dead sands around you seem to stretch for infinity broken only by the barbed thrusts of impassable mountains. How long since you embarked on your quest? And what is it you seek? All you know is that you must resist hopelessness, keep moving forward until you have crossed the desert. Although you no longer know if it even has an end.
As twilight deepens and the air chills, you think you hear the distant barking of a beast and shadows stir in your memory, tales of a great bear that roams the vast liminal regions of the world, consuming all without the sense to stay huddled around the comforting campfires of civilisation.
How long you’ve stood in this place you do not know but when you come to your senses the day has faded and the light of Luna drapes the land in a golden gossamer. The Moon has never looked so full, so bright, so close. It makes the wastelands around you seem a place out of time, the jagged silhouettes of the mountains that earlier looked like broken teeth in an ancient sun-baked jawbone appear now almost beautiful.
The mountains.
A memory stirs – are the mountains not significant? The sharp summits and plummeting cliffs, the aggressive rhythm of their outline, they speak to you in a frequency that rouses recognition within your soul, dim recollection of fragments of charts and diagrams concealed in the dilapidated tomes of private libraries. Your heart beats faster. This is the place. The end of the desert. The dullness that has clouded your mind lifts and clarity washes over you like a cooling rain. You remember embarking from the City of Illusions – the memories flood your mind. It must have been almost two years now and yet somehow it feels like two hundred. And you know your quest; you seek the knowledge of the invisible worlds which are hinted at in the hidden texts.
With this clarity you hear the mournful wail of a siren. A warning, but from whom? You sense the way ahead will be guarded. Bronze, mechanical cubes etched with shimmering circles of power appear above you, around you, floating in defiance of all natural laws, emitting howls and throbbing pulses that disorientate your senses. You slow your breathing, calm your mind. The cubes arrange themselves into the 77th Configuration. It is the form of the Angels. Your fear is banished and your spirit fortified.
The structure turns and pulses with the heartbeat of the cosmos. The configuration bursts open and before you stands Talos the Sentinel Who Guards the Border of Dreams and Nightmares. The great bronze bull rears back on his hind legs and bellows. You plant your feet and raise your arms. The bull charges.