The culmination of the PROOF OF {ART}WORK project, the Buddhabrot unveils a deeply mathematical entity that, for many, reflects a deeply spiritual being.

This particular realisation of the Buddhabrot is a paradoxically independent collaboration between three individuals: the discoverer, Melinda Green; the explorer, Daïm Aggott-Hönsch; and the painter, divergence. Until recently, their only connection was indirect, via their individual work on the mathematically governed system defined by Melinda some 30 years ago.

System in hand, divergence formalised the equations for proof of work, and set out to create a near-infinitely explorable rendering algorithm as revealed in the early PO{A}W pieces. Seeing these early works, Daïm immediately recognised that a Buddhabrot was the natural conclusion to the project—his exploration had independently led to a "granary" of seeds long gathered for his own purposes, but now put to work in support of curating this piece.

While an independent collaboration may seem an oxymoron, it highlights the beauty of computational art. Each collaborator is free to pursue their own path, guided only by the mathematics that aligns them.

Emerging from unconstrained composition of all possible PO{A}W seeds, a true Buddhabrot is an infinite being. Any rendering is merely an "opening of the shutter" to capture whatever "light" the random number generator emits—only at this final stage did the three collaborators join forces to aim the camera and curate the subset of seeds that you see here.

Token ID 0x9e352840237d2aa7dbecd0e7d22533778056f059ac899bbedd92b5e362088ca9 is the Ethereum transaction hash recording the binary representations of 8680 points on the complex plane, each with their real component in the range [-1.943,0.399]. Originating from these precise locations, the piece is comprised of 56,761,864 individual points, each positioned with a deterministic algorithm. The artwork, a 2D histogram, renders bin counts as pixel intensities with no additional post-processing—gradients arise from precise spacing of the points. Zooming renders histogram bins of finer resolution.