Kind of a social network, except the network is the artwork

send/receive

An on-chain network where you draw a pixel version of yourself, maybe make a tiny song, and decide whether you feel like sending, receiving, or both.

Every choice changes what other tokens see. The whole collection becomes a kind of live mood ring for attention and support.

Project 11 of 11network / continuation
send/receive #8506: a collector-authored pixel sprite participating in the shared network. Held by ZKM.
send/receive #8506View live
Released
Nov 27, 2025
Format
Participatory network artwork
Edition
10,000 maximum artworks
Platform
Art Blocks / Ethereum

The Idea

I wanted to make “I'm thinking about you” visible

send/receive is a fully on-chain network made out of the people who collect it. You draw a little pixel version of yourself (or whatever you want yourself to be), maybe make it a tiny four-track tune, and then decide what your token is doing in relation to everybody else.

Sending and receiving are actually separate choices. You can do neither, either one, or both. That sounds almost stupidly simple when I say it like that, but the combination changes your own artwork and also nudges the behavior of the entire collection.

The idea started with the phrase 'sending thoughts and prayers.' I'm not religious, but I have always understood the human part underneath it: I am thinking about you, I care, I am here. I kept wondering if an on-chain artwork could make that small gesture visible without turning it into some giant performative thing.

You Make Your Part

You draw the sprite and can add a tiny song. That becomes the version of you traveling around the network.

Two Separate Switches

Sending and receiving are independent. Doing both is not a third effect; it is both sides of the system running together.

All On Ethereum

The sprite, music, settings, and network behavior all live with the artwork on-chain.

Everybody Meddles

Your token is never completely by itself. What thousands of other people choose changes what you see and how fast you see it.

The Network

Two switches make four basic states

Sending is what your sprite gives the network. Receiving is what your token lets in. Turn neither on, turn one on, or turn on both. The Art Blocks interface currently handles the general versions of those choices; I built more directed modes underneath, but the friendly interface for them is still unfinished.

Sending

Your sprite goes out

The Art Blocks controls currently let you send into the general network. Your sprite stays centered here and pulses outward somewhere else.

  • Pulse
  • Contour
  • Glitch
  • Shimmer

Receiving

Other sprites come in

Other people’s sprites arrive; yours does not occupy a spot in a receive-only scene. The token’s grid, column, fall, or bounce layout was assigned at mint.

  • Grid
  • Column
  • Fall
  • Bounce

Neutral

Both switches are off. If you made a sprite it just sits there, which is honestly allowed. Nobody has to be social all the time.

Send

Your sprite stays in the middle of your work and pulses outward into the general network. The underlying system can also aim it at particular tokens, but Art Blocks does not expose that control yet.

Receive

Other people's sprites come through in grid, column, fall, or bounce. Your own sprite is not part of the passive receiving scene; the hidden games use it as the player once you wake one up.

Send + Receive

Both switches are on. You see the receiving behavior while a pulse around the edge lets you know your own sprite is going out too.

The Whole Thing, Right Now

The network has a pulse of its own

These are the same general counters the live artwork reads. They are not lifetime totals. They are what the collection is doing now, which is more useful and also a little stranger.

Every live token has a much nerdier version hiding inside it. Click the artwork and press N to open Network Status. I also put an N button with the playable examples below because absolutely nobody was going to guess that key.

NETWORK STATUS
TUNING IN

GENERAL NETWORK

Total Senders
—
Total Receivers
—
Sender / Receiver Ratio
—

ACTIVITY LEVELS

Spawn Multiplier
—
Approx. Spawn Interval
—
Bounce Target Sprites
—

Activity is the renderer's estimate for a token receiving from the general pool. Direct SendTo attention can make one particular work move faster.

WAITING FOR BLOCK

The Editors Hiding In The Artwork

Make a sprite. Make a little noise.

Press P in a live token and a pixel editor appears. Press T and there is a four-track music tracker. I realize that is extremely easy to miss, so I pulled both of them out here where you can mess around without connecting anything.

This is all scratch-pad territory. Opening an editor, changing a note, or drawing over somebody's sprite does not touch their token. It just happens in your browser.

A Tiny Animation Trick

One 64×64 image can hold four frames

Keep the two middle rows and the two middle columns empty. That blank cross is the switch: the renderer treats the four 31×31 corners as frames. Yes, 31 instead of 32. I stole two pixels from everybody so the artwork could tell a normal sprite from an animated one.

Two, three, or four nonempty corners work. This one is the actual four-frame sprite from send/receive #316, not a cleaned-up diagram.

The 64 by 64 contact sheet from send/receive 316, divided by a blank two-pixel cross
the one image stored on-chain
The four corner drawings playing as an animation
what everybody else sees
View #316 live

Somebody Already Made The Music

Pick a tune and hit play

These are real tunes currently saved on tokens. Pick one and I will open that token inside the tracker with all of its notes already in place. Hit PLAY in there, change anything you want, or use it to figure out how the tracker works.

The tracker's PLAY button is near the top. Spacebar works too once you are inside it.

There Are Games In There

Every receive style has one hidden inside it

This part got a little out of hand. I kept looking at the four ways sprites could arrive and seeing old video games, so I put a game into each one. They use the actual sprites currently moving around the network, including your own as the player.

Pick one below and touch a control to wake it up. Only one live artwork runs at a time here because four on-chain network views all polling and animating at once would be a fairly rude thing to do to your laptop.

Tuning into the network…
Grid / SnakeOpen original live view

These are real live tokens, not little copies I rebuilt for this page. Their owners can change their settings, and the people sending into the network can change too, so the exact cast and pacing will wander around over time.

Make Yourself A Sprite

This is how you show up

You start by making a 64×64 character. It can look like you, not look like you at all, be animated, and carry a very small four-track tune around with it. If you want it to move, leave the full two-pixel cross through the middle blank and draw up to four 31×31 frames in the corners. The renderer notices the cross and starts flipping through them.

This isn't a profile picture pasted onto a finished project. The character and sound are the thing you contribute. They are how you literally show up inside everybody else's artwork. A token can keep five versions, too, so you are not married to the first tiny drawing you make.

  • 64×64 personal sprite
  • A blank center cross turns two to four corner drawings into animation
  • Optional four-track tune
  • Five saved sprite-and-sound slots; one active at a time
  • Press P in the live work for pixels; press T for the tracker
  • Change the setting whenever your mood changes

The Part That Is Not Friendly Yet

I built more specific signals, but the interface is still catching up

The underlying on-chain system has a SendTo mode that points your sprite toward particular tokens, a ReceiveFrom mode that listens for selected tokens, and a ReceiveTo mode for catching sprites aimed directly at yours. I wanted both the ambient feeling of everybody being around and the much smaller gesture of, hey, this one is for you.

Those controls are not on the Art Blocks website today. I made a separate interface that can reach them, but it is still much more control panel than normal-person experience, and I am not comfortable dropping a connect-wallet button here and pretending that part is solved. So for now this page explains where the work can go without sending you into an unfinished transaction tool.

  • SendTo: point your sprite toward chosen tokens
  • ReceiveFrom: listen for chosen tokens
  • ReceiveTo: receive sprites sent directly to yours
  • Supported by the underlying hook; not exposed in the current Art Blocks interface

The Tiny Soundtrack

Every sprite can bring its own noise

There is a little tracker in the artwork for making music with four tiny tracks. I wanted enough room for a recognizable riff, but not so much room that this accidentally became Ableton living on Ethereum.

When a sprite appears in a receiving work, its tune comes with it. Click one while the live artwork is running and, if its owner made something, you can hear that person's tiny contribution too. The page can look quiet and still contain a surprising amount of authored stuff.

Everybody Affects Everybody

The collection never really settles

When more tokens send, the receiving pieces have more sprites to work through. When more tokens receive, those senders get spread around more places. It is a pretty simple balance, but you can actually feel the whole network get busy or quiet in the pacing.

This is why a screenshot does a terrible job explaining the project. It catches one token for one second and misses the thousands of other choices that made that second happen.

The Original Thought

Just letting someone know you're there

People say 'sending thoughts and prayers' when someone needs support. I wanted the thoughts part without pretending the prayer part was mine, which is admittedly a strange place to begin a piece of software.

Sending here isn't a reward and it isn't supposed to be some giant public performance. It is closer to saying: hey, I am thinking about you. That can be enough.

Full Circle

Five years after Project #0

send/receive was one of the final Art Blocks 500 projects in Full Circle. Mint Zero happened on November 27, 2025, and the collection opened on December 15.

Five years after I used Chromie Squiggle to prove Art Blocks could work, I came back with something where collectors actually author pieces of the system and keep changing its state. It is far messier than a Squiggle sitting there being a Squiggle, but that felt appropriately full circle to me.

Go Look Around

Leave one running for a while

Open a token live and let it get weird for a bit. Click the incoming sprites, press some keys, and poke around the Art Blocks page if you want to make your own sprite or change how a token participates.

01View #8506 live02View the collection on Art Blocks03Read how send/receive works

Dates

A few dates

  • 2025-11-27Mint Zero at Art Blocks Full Circlesourced
  • 2025-12-15Art Blocks collection releasesourced

Provenance

On-chain details

  • Art Blocks projectEthereum0xababababab20053426ad1c782de9ea8444358070

In The Bigger Picture

Where this one goes

Surface
Pixel sprites and modes
Deeper Layer
Your sprite, optional audio, and one small choice becoming part of the shared network state
Builds On
LIFT's support system, Heart + Craft, Pixel Man, and a bunch of earlier on-chain interaction
Sets Up
More work that can stay alive because the owners keep changing it

Sources

Where this came from

These are the public links I used to check the dates and details. A few of them also have much longer versions of the story.

Official / primary