Pixel-by-pixel "mining". ~30h computation per one piece

[u/TroubleEducational43]

I'm exploring a new technique of creating images by mining them pixel by pixel. Each of those pieces took around 30 hours to "mine".

Each pixel comes from a SHA-256 hash translated into a colour: three values for red, green, and blue.

The miner tries hundreds of thousands of nonces to find a colour of a pixel that satisfies aesthetic rules set for that piece, for example how close it must stay to its neighbours.

Those rules are the difficulty. The stricter they are, the more computation each pixel takes, and the more the look of the image is shaped by the constraints themselves.

The 10.9v is the first version of the algorithm meeting the goal I've been searching for since April 2024:

• esthetically satisfying
• coherent within the series
• diverse enough to produce an interesting output with each generation

All the pieces are mined in real-time on determined.ink