MOTIF
Contemporary artworks
Variations on Anatolian motifs
and abstract forms.
Drawn by a contract on Ethereum. October 20.
An introductionsample
@someone thought you might enjoy Motif. Start with the pieces. If you apply I will read your application myself and consider you for First Chair. An introduction reserves nothing.
IThe collection
Every piece moves.
The more I played with these patterns, the more I wanted to explore them. I worked with two colors, a grid and a small set of marks, and kept finding more in them than I expected. Giving them movement let me work with time as well as shape.
I chose and refined every piece by hand.
After the reveal the work lives on Ethereum and renders from the contract, with or without this site.
Each piece in the collection has one cadence. This one is shown in several, so you can see the range.
IIThe artist
By magicburp.
Small marks on a grid, where I kept finding the patterns I grew up around in Türkiye. Drawn and animated by a contract on Ethereum, and nothing else. Minting October 20, 2026.
I grew up in Türkiye, and there were patterns on everything. The kilim under my feet, the çini on the wall, the cup my grandmother's coffee came in. I never thought about them; nobody does with the things they grow up around. I didn't begin Motif with them in mind. I started recognising them as I worked.
magicburp
IIIIf you want one.
There are at most 2,048, and there will never be a 2,049th. Each one is drawn by its contract on Ethereum, from the marks and the timing kept there, so it needs no file, no server and no one minding it.
The Ensemble is the list of people who can mint. Apply and you are on it, until the list closes on October 18.The list was sealed on October 18. First Chair is for people I choose myself. They are sure of one, at the price.
On the day, First Chair mints first. Then the list, in the order people arrive. After that, anyone can mint, until they are gone.
The price is 0.03 ETH.The price is 0.03 ETH. There is one price, whoever you are and whichever phase you mint in.
The times, in your own time too, are on the Collecting page.
Add to Google Calendar or download for Apple Calendar or Outlook
Collecting
October 20, 2026
0.03 ETH, one price for every phase.
First Chair
17:00 UTC
8:00 PM your time
Each First Chair wallet is sure of one piece, until 17:30 UTC.
The Ensemble
17:30 UTC
8:30 PM your time
For everyone in The Ensemble. In the order people arrive.
Public
19:00 UTC
10:00 PM your time
Whatever is left, open to everyone. Here or on OpenSea.
Two pieces per wallet through First Chair and The Ensemble, five in total with Public. The mint closes on October 22 at 17:00 UTC.The mint closed on October 22 at 17:00 UTC.
Add to Google Calendar or download for Apple Calendar or Outlook
A wallet that holds one of these at the seal on October 18 joins The Ensemble without applying.
The collections
CryptoPunks, Meebits, Autoglyphs, Hashmasks, Nouns, Loot, Terraforms, Checks (VV), Opepen, Blitmap, QQL, QQL Mint Pass, The Merge (Pak), PROOF Collective, PROOF Grails, Normies.
Art Blocks curated projects
Archetype, Chromie Squiggle, Construction Token, Elevated Deconstructions, Fidenza, Gazers, Quine, Ringers, Subscapes, Unigrids.
Every one of these was checked against its own contract on a fork of Ethereum before it could admit anyone. A place on the list is not a guaranteed mint.
If your wallet was in the snapshot, it is already in The Ensemble. No application is needed. The same goes for every wallet that holds at the seal block, the first Ethereum block on or after October 18, 00:00 UTC.
At the seal on October 18, wallets that hold the collections that made this kind of work join The Ensemble without applying. CryptoPunks, Meebits, Autoglyphs, Hashmasks, Nouns, Loot, Terraforms, Checks, Opepen, Blitmap, QQL and its mint passes, The Merge, PROOF Collective and PROOF Grails, and ten Art Blocks curated projects including Chromie Squiggle, Fidenza and Ringers, among others. Being in The Ensemble does not make you sure of one piece.
To be sure of one piece, you can claim a First Chair seat. Read the claim window, tiers and holding requirement on the First Chair page.
The first 100 First Chair claims are complete. Either way you can collect in The Ensemble on October 20 from 17:30 UTC, in the order people arrive.
The story
From playing with shapes to remembering home
Bir Türk çocukluğunun desenleri, Ethereum'da yeniden hayatta.
Motif started with me staring at Autoglyphs and wondering how a few symbols could do so much.
I kept looking at the individual marks, then stepping back to see the whole image. I wanted to play with that idea myself. Something wanted to come out from the depths of my mind. I did not know what I was going to do exactly. But let me get you in on an artist's secret. Most of the time, we don't know what the end result will look like. We usually just have a rough idea of what we want to make. Symbols on a grid. That was about as much of a plan as I had.
First, though, I had to figure out how the hell they did it.
I studied graphic design, but I didn't know how to build an engine. I showed Claude a few of my favorite Autoglyphs and asked how they worked. The answer was a soup of formulas. What now? In high school, I was usually drawing in my sketchbook when I should have been paying attention to math. But I understood enough to get excited.
Eventually, I had something I could open in a browser.
The first results were awful.
There was something there, though. A shape, a structure, a language. Enough to make me want to change something and look again.
Claude helped me write and revise the code. I tried different symbols, colors and patterns, saved what I liked, and kept asking for more ways to work with them. Some ideas took days to get right. Others took days to realize I didn't like them.
A small open circle and a heavy square can carry the same blue ink and still feel completely different. Put them next to each other, repeat them, change where one gives way to the other, and the whole image changes. I could spend a long time on something that small.
Eventually, I started taking things away. I removed seven color pairs and kept blue and cream, made the grid a firm rule, and narrowed the symbols down. As the pieces settled, I started recognizing something familiar.
I grew up in Türkiye, surrounded by patterns. On kilims, pottery, coffee cups. They were ordinary things in the house. I didn't grow up thinking of them as references for something I would make one day.
Years later, sitting at a screen and trying to make something new, I kept finding my way back to them. Colors, repeated patterns, shapes and movements. It took me a while to notice how much of what I was choosing had been around me all along.
I had followed patterns and designs from other places too, whatever caught my eye. But the things I grew up with kept shaping what felt right. Motif became a way of spending time with them again.
Giving the drawings movement made me look at them differently. Lighter symbols arrive first, then heavier ones follow. The pattern forms, stays for a while, and disappears before returning.
I spent months building the studio and returning to the pieces. Sometimes I'd open one I had saved weeks earlier and see exactly what it needed. Sometimes I'd wonder why I'd kept it. There were frustrating days, but seeing a piece finally come together made me want to open the studio the next morning. There were over 400 iterations of the base engine.
I got so obsessed that I literally made tens of thousands of pieces in the studio. And I am not joking when I say that when I closed my eyes, I started to see flashes of patterns. I wonder if the creators at Larva Labs experienced the same thing too.
I wanted the drawings and their motion to live on Ethereum, so they need nothing else to exist. As long as the chain is there, so do Motif pieces.
If you know me through Goblynz, Motif might seem like an unexpected turn. Goblynz came from a part of me I still love. This came from another. I want to keep being curious about what else I can make.
I hope you find some of the delight in this collection that kept bringing me back to the studio. Motif is my best work yet.
magicburpSeptember 2026
Gallery
Twelve from the collection.
Open one.
After the reveal, all 2,048 pieces will be here. I will also add still images and video downloads for printing and sharing.
An introduction
Someone in First Chair thought you might enjoy Motif.
Start with the pieces. If you apply I will read your application myself and consider you for First Chair. An introduction reserves nothing.
You have already applied, as applicant #4200. Add this introduction to the application you already have; you do not apply again and your number does not change.
The introduction is on your application. Nothing else is needed, and your number is still #4200.
Terms
Terms
The artworks
Each Motif is a contemporary artwork drawn and animated by its contract on Ethereum. Owning a token means owning that token.
The mint
The phases, times and window on the home page are the ones that apply. A guaranteed spot is guaranteed only for the phase and window it belongs to. No wallet can mint more than two Motifs through First Chair and The Ensemble, or more than five in total once Public opens. Your allowance is five pieces in total, here and on OpenSea together, counting what you collected earlier, in the order people arrive. Artist's proofs are mine and sit outside that. They are earned when the mint closes, one for every 41 pieces collectors minted, never more than 48. Every part of the contract has been run on test deployments before the real one. Its address will be here, verified on Etherscan, the day it is deployed.
Applications
Applications judged automated are not counted and are not on the list.
Royalty
Motif has a 5% creator royalty, paid to me. The contract uses ERC-721C transfer rules to support royalty enforcement on compatible marketplaces. Direct transfers between wallets are also possible.
Wallets and signatures
You sign a message to apply or claim. I will never ask for your private key or recovery phrase. Minting is a separate paid transaction that you confirm in your wallet.
Data
When you apply or claim, I keep your X account ID, handle and account creation date, the wallets you use, your signed messages and the answers you submit. The site also records when the follow links are opened. Opening a link does not verify a follow.
The site records visits and interactions, including the pages opened, referral information, browser information, screen width and approximate country. A session identifier helps group those visits. Sign-in uses a session cookie, and some display preferences are saved in your browser.
To protect the site against automated requests, security checks process your connection's IP address. I also use public blockchain information to review applicant wallets, including their holdings, balance and activity.
The site uses external services to run these features. These include X for sign-in, Cloudflare for hosting and security, Supabase for data storage, and blockchain services such as Alchemy for wallet lookups. Wallet connections also use the provider you choose. Claim and application records may be backed up with Cloudflare.
I may also compare applicants' X accounts with follower lists from the project's accounts, to see how much interest there is in Motif. That is information for me and never a rule. It does not decide who can mint, and no application is refused because of it.
These records are used to run the applications and mint, protect the site and understand interest in the collection. They are not automatically deleted after mint. I do not sell this information.
For questions about your information, contact me at @magicburp on X.
Risk
Ethereum transactions are final. Check every address and amount before you sign.
The marks
The marks are cut from DejaVu Sans, a free face. Its license asks that its notice travel with the marks, so it is here, and at its own page.
The DejaVu Fonts license notice
Fonts are (c) Bitstream (see below). DejaVu changes are in public domain. Glyphs imported from Arev fonts are (c) Tavmjung Bah (see below)
Bitstream Vera Fonts Copyright
------------------------------
Copyright (c) 2003 by Bitstream, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Bitstream Vera is
a trademark of Bitstream, Inc.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of the fonts accompanying this license ("Fonts") and associated
documentation files (the "Font Software"), to reproduce and distribute the
Font Software, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, merge,
publish, distribute, and/or sell copies of the Font Software, and to permit
persons to whom the Font Software is furnished to do so, subject to the
following conditions:
The above copyright and trademark notices and this permission notice shall
be included in all copies of one or more of the Font Software typefaces.
The Font Software may be modified, altered, or added to, and in particular
the designs of glyphs or characters in the Fonts may be modified and
additional glyphs or characters may be added to the Fonts, only if the fonts
are renamed to names not containing either the words "Bitstream" or the word
"Vera".
This License becomes null and void to the extent applicable to Fonts or Font
Software that has been modified and is distributed under the "Bitstream
Vera" names.
The Font Software may be sold as part of a larger software package but no
copy of one or more of the Font Software typefaces may be sold by itself.
THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT, PATENT,
TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL BITSTREAM OR THE GNOME
FOUNDATION BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, INCLUDING
ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF
THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
FONT SOFTWARE.
Except as contained in this notice, the names of Gnome, the Gnome
Foundation, and Bitstream Inc., shall not be used in advertising or
otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Font Software
without prior written authorization from the Gnome Foundation or Bitstream
Inc., respectively. For further information, contact: fonts at gnome dot
org.
Arev Fonts Copyright
------------------------------
Copyright (c) 2006 by Tavmjong Bah. All Rights Reserved.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of the fonts accompanying this license ("Fonts") and
associated documentation files (the "Font Software"), to reproduce
and distribute the modifications to the Bitstream Vera Font Software,
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, merge, publish,
distribute, and/or sell copies of the Font Software, and to permit
persons to whom the Font Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:
The above copyright and trademark notices and this permission notice
shall be included in all copies of one or more of the Font Software
typefaces.
The Font Software may be modified, altered, or added to, and in
particular the designs of glyphs or characters in the Fonts may be
modified and additional glyphs or characters may be added to the
Fonts, only if the fonts are renamed to names not containing either
the words "Tavmjong Bah" or the word "Arev".
This License becomes null and void to the extent applicable to Fonts
or Font Software that has been modified and is distributed under the
"Tavmjong Bah Arev" names.
The Font Software may be sold as part of a larger software package but
no copy of one or more of the Font Software typefaces may be sold by
itself.
THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT
OF COPYRIGHT, PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL
TAVMJONG BAH BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE FONT SOFTWARE.
Except as contained in this notice, the name of Tavmjong Bah shall not
be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other
dealings in this Font Software without prior written authorization
from Tavmjong Bah. For further information, contact: tavmjong @ free
. fr.Changes
If something here changes, the change is dated on this page.
Contact
@magicburp on X.
Updated September 23, 2026.