Crawlers by Slava Rybin | Daily × OpenSea

them. And I always fascinated, like, I just like to see him move. And I was also thinking about visual programming and some kind of character to represent to live inside the nodes. Because I work in touch designer a lot, I work with these kind of connections of nodes and operators. And and I just, Spider could be like the perfect, perfect mascot. So to say for this network thing, because he is what he is doing, he is connecting links and working around the links. And yeah, I think that's how it come up came up. Okay. And I tried to do it and I did the first prototype in half a day. And it already started getting some responses. So I came back a couple months later and finished this because I didn't want to let it go. Because I think it's a good mark. Yeah, for sure. So I went straight to the project, but I actually would love for you to share a little bit more of who is Slava Riven and how did you like, how did you get into programming? How did you get into art? How did you end up in this world of doing creative things? Tell us a little bit about your journey where it started, how you did you go to university for this? And then what has been your professional experience working in the field of creative experiments and arts? And that's a big question. So take all the time that you need. Yeah, I can talk quite long about this. So I will focus on the things. But I want to start, I think remembering now and reflecting on this, I remember that I think it started with my first computer game, maybe, or even phone game. I remember we had this black and white phones and somehow I managed to connect to computer and then find this gif, which is actually just one pin G file that is stacked frames on top. And I could edit this and it would show like an animation on the phone. I think it's like one of the first memories of this kind of joyful hacking or something. And then I would go, I was like by 3D max pirate because that's only we had. And I was maybe like 12 years old or something. And I was trying to learn 3D and then I played with game maker. And then I stumbled upon after effects and just started doing visual effects for fun. And I've been doing this like foi hobby for some time. Then I moved out of this. I tried to be like movie director or something. Well, I didn't really go. And then I went study graphic design in Moscow in in health for to branch university. We got like really great masters from all over the world. And I chose graphic design because it was kind of very broad thing. And I thought I can go from here anywhere because if I choose other other kind of specializations is to narrow. And while studying graphic design, I at some point I rediscovered programming and web programming. And then processing. And then I started doing like generative graphics and some simple systems and some more complicated systems like genetic shader compilation. It was my first like big project on this. And I just fell in love and I couldn't get so much joy of the kind of activity. And it was and also after this I also from my university finals I get into neural networks and I would study like how VGG or object recognition models work and how we can use it to generate images. So it was before the before the Delhi before the stable diffusion. Wow. And it was like neural textures into this. And I think it was really cool because it looks like something real. But your brain cannot grasp what is it, what you are looking at. And I got into this as well. And it was kind of my base. So out of university then I went to Radu Good Design Studio. And it's a big multimedia studio that works with the like projection mappings. Some like car launches, so different kind of events. And also like generative stuff. They a lot of like festival work they do. And I did quite some like art and festival project with them. Also some commercials ones. And it was like a lot of learning. And I started learning touch designer there. And we had like some some winning festival works on this time. And I think the dialogue was my favorite one. It was in Glow Saint-Gene China. And it was two pillars with real-time solar, neural solar automata systems that communicate and evolve forever. And one is trying to not be like the other and they kind of dance forever. And this project got me even more excited about distributed systems like solar automata, emergent system, complex systems like this. Yeah. And okay. And then I went freelance because I felt the projects getting a bit boring and I stopped learning. So I went to freelance and I went to Bali and kind of started my digital nomad lifestyle. And I've been working like freelance with the Balinese installations with some other people but always working like with someone with some project with some commission not doing something of my own. And that period I met Orkan and we became quite good friends. And I was working in his studio and like preparing the installation like patches and AI rendering systems. A lot of stuff. And I think I also learned quite a lot this time. And I got into the NFT kind of world a little bit, at least having a feeling of it and getting a little bit to know how it works and so on. And yeah. And it's just I felt like it's time I'm getting older and I have felt to do so everything come up for this to happen. Yeah. That's it. I mean, it's so encouraging to to hear somebody who has been building experience experimenting to have found a project, a breakthrough project. I can say that somehow this is your breakthrough project because the I mean, honestly it's really hard to be seen in the internet. It's hard to have somebody pay attention to the things that we create as artists. I know. I've been doing my Instagram for seven years. It is so hard. And it is a beautiful moment when you do get this kind of response. And you know, it's not about, oh, I want to create content and to go viral. It's you have ideas. You have these things these, you know, I call them demons in our heads. Like I want like this is something that I want to do. And it's always looking out. It's crawling in the back of our minds as artists. And I'm talking from my artist side here like, and you just feel you have to do this. You have to do this. And you know, I love that you mentioned at the beginning that you were doubtful. Can you talk talk us through a little bit about that? And you know, this is I know this is personal but I think it's very interesting to to have people hear that as artists, we're always doubting ourselves. And how did you what was the breakthrough for you personally that you thought, you know what, there's something here I need to share this. What changed in your experiments that you thought, oh, this works. Yeah. So actually I was hesitant about that specific video that went viral. Because I've seen some imperfections and I think it's not like good enough to post, you know, but it was like small details that nobody really like pay attention and it doesn't matter. And and actually for this project, I think there was a special moment when I got this first spider that before before it went viral like on X. But it was kind of viral for me at the time in Instagram. And it was my first spider that I did a half a day. And then I didn't I posted it on X, but didn't post it on Instagram. And then one day I was I was going to Bangkok. And in the morning, I find a dead spider in my kitchen. The spider that I saw day before and he had like two legs on one side and three legs on another one. And I was thinking, oh, poor guy, I hope he can survive. And then I come next then he is dead. Just like on the floor, he couldn't catch anyone without the legs, you know. And I felt like so kind of touched by this. And I thought life is short. And and I felt like I want to post this because I had this idea, I want to post like step by step all my work like from past to currant. And then I like I cannot do it. I just want to post this. Yeah. And and then it went like viral in Instagram. And and actually after I posted, I go to supermarket and then I put some stuff in my backpack. And then I pull my hand out and I have like a giant spider. When I'm saying big, they're really big. And he's just crawling my hand. Yeah. After I post this the same day I found the dead one. And I'm like I'm on the on the supermarket like check out and like what to do. And I just rotate and blow him away. And he falls on the flowers stand right inside the flower. So I think that was kind of the moments that made me feel like I need to do this. You need to do this. I love how you know we've been chatting so much. I love how you you have this let you you're intuitive and you and you're obsessive which I absolutely fucking adore like an obsessive artist that's that's why you know there's commitment to to their craft and their practice. I there's so many layers of the work that first let's let's go in incrementals that first post we're talking as if everybody knows what that post was but can you tell us what exactly was that you posted and and where the project was at that stage because it's evolved from there it's it's gone so many more things but let's start at the minimum a viable product what was that first thing that you did? Yeah the the first thing was just a playing spider kind of looking box black box and and just joints and lines and I tried to implement the fabric IK just because I come out of it I found this simple and and somehow it worked really well and it was just just a spider that is crawling around the black screen nothing else and I did a couple more and that point I felt like it's good but I don't feel like there's a lot of room for variation and for like for collection or something yeah and and it went stale maybe for a couple months I I didn't come back to it and then somehow I was working on this next after this because I thought I want not on the despite I want the centipede I want because they all owe my house you know and for centipede I need like a spine so I started like getting into the spine mechanics and like angular physics and everything and and I got this first warm running around my screen real time so I could like interact with the pointer with him and I felt like wow this is this is really nice this works and and I think from there I eventually came to this idea of the crawler inside the browser yeah as it's the easiest it's like natural thing for NFT and yeah and it's like a good first step maybe later you could do like the desktop ones you know yeah yeah let me let me interrupt you there for those who are listening in do visit a slab