CENTURY #401

• Accession: 6529NM.2026.001.03
• Version: 1.5.0
• Publication date: 2026-08-02
• Institutional author: 6529 Network Museum
• Publication status: Published manuscript
• Credit: Gift of punk6529
• Research cutoff: 2 August 2026

Label

CENTURY #401 removes the strong color contrasts seen elsewhere in the project and makes cutting an architecture of tone. A large gray circular field is interrupted by heavy black columns, translucent overlaps, and ten vertical slices. Fifteen white lines cross the square diagonally, passing through the darker planes like taut wires. Near the lower right, a transparent oval seems both embedded in the disk and suspended before it.

Reas’s documented controls permit the work to be cut again or returned to its original order, while the project description identifies the lines as moving.¹ The Museum’s retained observation did not activate those controls, so no particular restored image is claimed here.² Reas adapted CENTURY’s procedure from Ellsworth Kelly’s method of dividing and recombining compositions. He began the wider body in 2012; this exact Art Blocks work was released in 2021.¹ In the Museum’s three-work group, #401 is the work in which recombination most clearly crosses from collage into architecture.

Extended entry

The square of CENTURY #401 is gray, black, and white, with a layered and oddly tactile tonal range. A large gray disk fills most of the field. Heavy black uprights interrupt it, especially at the left, while narrower columns establish a broken vertical cadence across the image. Fifteen white lines pull in other directions. They cross diagonally, sometimes nearly parallel and sometimes at acute angles, as though stretched across the face of a structure. Near the lower right, a darker translucent oval overlaps the disk. Its edge can be followed until a black plane or slice seam interrupts it, then recovered elsewhere.

Color does not separate the elements; opacity does. Solid black columns stop the gaze. The gray disk receives it. The translucent oval allows one tone to pass through another, producing a third condition that belongs fully to neither. That modulation gives #401 a depth absent from a simple arrangement of black and white shapes. The image alternates between surface and shallow construction: one moment a cut paper collage, the next a bank of partitions with an elliptical chamber behind them. The white lines complicate both readings because they appear to run continuously across planes that otherwise conceal one another.

Ten vertical slices give this unstable architecture a measured, structural rhythm between #31's close divisions and #724's broad ones. Each slice carries part of the original composition to a new position. A black rim becomes a freestanding column; the translucent oval becomes an aperture; sections of the gray circle become alternating walls. Recombination changes categories as well as positions: edge becomes object, overlap becomes room, and disk becomes façade.

The official still preserves one especially resolved cut state, while the artist’s documentation explains the operation that constructs it.¹ The black uprights and displaced sections are the visible consequences of a program that can alter the slice order; the documented restoration control makes an original order available without licensing an unsupported description of what that restored image looks like. Reas also specifies that the fine lines move, adding a second duration to the sudden event of recombination: a continuous shift against heavier forms. The Museum’s retained two-frame observation supports change over time, but because the screenshot bytes were not retained and no controls were used, this account does not claim to reconstruct either frame or a witnessed transition.²

CENTURY treats slicing as an active operation. Reas developed the project from a procedure associated with Ellsworth Kelly, who cut compositions into vertical columns and rearranged them.¹ In #401, the historical reference appears as an operation. The work begins with an abstract composition, partitions it, and makes the partition active. Executable software changes the terms: a material collage preserves the edges of a past cut in a final physical order, while #401 keeps the underlying arrangement recoverable, permits further cuts, and specifies continuing line movement after a recombination.

Object #401 therefore shifts attention from the finished arrangement to the persistence of relations across states. The gray disk remains conceptually present even when its parts read as walls. The translucent ellipse remains an overlap even when the cut turns it into a sequence of windows. The white lines continue their trajectories despite the apparent depth of the black columns. The eye reconstructs what the program has separated, then abandons that reconstruction when the same fragments cohere as a new space. The work does not ask which state is correct. It makes the act of moving between readings its subject.

Its medium is essential to that movement. Code establishes drawing, slicing, recombination, motion, and interaction. Token-derived data gives #401 its grayscale palette, number of lines and slices, transparent layer, and initial configuration. The browser executes those relations; the screen makes their different tempos visible. The ERC-721 token records chain identity and transfer history; legal title, copyright, and Museum accession are recorded separately. A still documents the exact tonal organization of one state; artist documentation describes the live work as capable of showing columns collapsing back into a disk and lines travelling across it.¹

The 6529 Network Museum holds three CENTURY works as a comparative group, not as an artist-designated triptych. Within that group, #401 occupies the tonal and architectural position. #31 uses blue, cream, and close slicing to build density; #724 uses cream, rust, and broad intervals to make displacement legible across emptiness. #401 shows how the same procedure can create depth without hue. Its transparent element is especially important: it introduces a mode of partial concealment between the project’s more emphatic acts of covering and exposing.

The result is an abstract work that never settles for flatness, although nothing in it leaves the plane of the display. #401’s black columns are made from displaced parts of a circle; its recesses are differences in opacity; its wires are moving lines. Architecture occurs as a perceptual consequence of cutting. By allowing that construction to be undone and remade, Reas turns the square into both image and instrument—a place where a disk can repeatedly become a room.

Object and manifestation

• Work: Casey Reas, CENTURY #401, 2021; Art Blocks Curated, project 100; token 100000401.
• Medium: Browser-executed generative software with token-derived state; live screen manifestation and static documentation image; ERC-721 chain identity and transfer history recorded on Ethereum; legal title and rights recorded separately.³⁴
• Recorded configuration: Palette C; Line Count: 15; Slice Count: 10; Oculi: true; Alpha: true; Alpha Value: 209; Slice Order: Chaos.³
• Live behavior beyond the still: Artist- and platform-documented line movement and slicing/restoration controls. The Museum’s retained observation confirms frame change but did not activate controls.¹²
• Rights and condition: Retained object metadata reports CC BY-NC 4.0; the accession technical review outcome is pass_with_conditions.⁵

Museum record and research

• Status: accessioned; permanent-collection object in 6529NM.2026.001.
• Interpretive boundary: Museum interpretation [E] of one documented state. The official still documents one state of the executable software work.
• Rights and condition: See the title and rights review. Technical condition passes with amber preservation conditions documented in the object-specific condition record.
• Open research: The transparent linked descriptor publishes the Museum's reproducible project-level feature analysis. It uses no OpenSea or marketplace rarity metric and makes no claim that feature frequency determines artistic quality.
• Further context: Read the artist and practice profile, collection essay, and visual-observation record.

Notes and sources

Revision history

• 1.5.0 — 4 August 2026: Completed the publication copy desk and clarified the boundary between chain history, legal title, copyright, and accession.
• 1.4.0 — 4 August 2026: Reworked residual visitor-facing prose for directness and removed repeated procedural contrasts; identity, rights, condition, provenance, and evidentiary assertions unchanged.
• 1.3.0 — 3 August 2026: Copy-edited the object interpretation for directness and clarity; no identity, rights, condition, provenance, or evidentiary assertion changed.
• 1.2.0 — 2 August 2026: Final publication metadata applied after independent review.
• 1.1.0 — 2 August 2026: Removed unsupported witnessed-control claims; aligned project chronology, exact feature language, notes, rights, and condition references with canonical records.
• 1.0.0 — 2 August 2026: Initial object-specific manuscript.

Footnotes

1. Casey Reas and Jeff Davis, “In Conversation with Casey Reas on CENTURY”, Art Blocks, 21 June 2021; and the artist’s project description retained in the raw platform metadata. The broader body dates to 2012; this token belongs to the 2021 Art Blocks release. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. Controlled visual-observation record. The record documents changed screenshot hashes after a controlled wait; it does not document activation of the slicing or restoration controls, and the screenshot bytes were not retained. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Canonical object record and retained raw platform metadata, including the exact token identity and feature values quoted above. ↩ ↩²

4. Official static response and official live generator. ↩

5. Exact rights record and technical and condition record. The license statement is reported by retained Art Blocks metadata; the condition record specifies an accession outcome of pass_with_conditions. ↩

Title, rights, and accession review

Accession lot: 6529NM.2026.001 Decision date: 2026-08-02 Acquisition method: gift Donor credit: punk6529 Objects reviewed: seven Casey REAS Art Blocks tokens, 6529NM.2026.001.01 through .07 Institutional author: 6529 Network Museum, Registrar Decision authority: direct Museum-authorized collection authority recorded in 6529NM.2026.001.GAA-01

Determination

The 6529 Network Museum determines that the seven scheduled tokens are eligible for and accepted into the permanent collection. The donor made a full gift: the Museum accepts the donor's entire ownership interest in the tokens and every donor-held interest that is transferable with them, without consideration and without a retained donor interest. The common Ethereum transfer into networkmuseum.6529.eth, the exact contract/token schedule, the Museum's formal gift acceptance, and this reviewed title declaration together establish a sufficient title basis for accession.

This determination does not collapse token ownership into copyright ownership. The Museum owns the seven tokenized collection objects. No copyright assignment from Casey REAS is asserted or inferred. Copyright and similar rights remain with the applicable licensor or rights holder except to the extent exercised under the public license attached to each work's retained Art Blocks metadata.

The Museum accepts the ordinary residual risk that a public blockchain cannot disclose every possible private claim, security interest, incapacity, or off-chain dispute. No contrary claim, competing on-chain owner, consideration, donor reservation, or object-identity conflict is present in the reviewed record. That residual limitation is documented and accepted; it is not an open accession gate.

Evidence and title analysis

The title conclusion rests on four mutually reinforcing records:

1. The donor's instruction, treated by the Museum as a full and intentional gift of all donor-held interests in the seven tokens.
2. The formally accepted Gift Acceptance and Accession Authorization, made under the adopted Art Blocks preapproval and Donation Acceptance Policy.
3. Ethereum transaction 0xbdde33b32d4b70335b10cbd37c0b00a027844f14c900d82aa4f75b7a7b390498, whose seven ERC-721 Transfer logs deliver the exact scheduled assets to the Museum custody address.
4. The object-level chain identities, transaction log indices, and custody findings in the machine records and retained raw RPC receipt.

The transfer transaction is both custody evidence and performance of the gift. The institutional title declaration does not pretend to be a donor-signed deed; it records the Museum's reviewed conclusion from the donor's full-gift declaration, completed delivery, formal acceptance, and exact object schedule. The Museum considers that evidence sufficient for these no-consideration token gifts under its donation pathway.

The provenance record is complete for the accession event and exact receipt. Earlier token history may be enriched through continuing scholarship, but the absence of a prose ownership history for every prior wallet is not an accession blocker where the object identity, donor gift, delivery, and current custody are verified and no adverse claim is known.

Copyright and public-license analysis

All seven retained Art Blocks metadata responses identify the artist as Casey REAS and state CC BY-NC 4.0. The Museum treats those labels as object-specific source evidence that the licensed material is offered under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License. Under the official legal code, the license grants worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable permission to reproduce and share the licensed material and to produce, reproduce, and share adapted material for noncommercial purposes. It permits all media and formats and technical modifications needed to exercise those rights. The official deed summarizes the same permissions and principal conditions.

The Museum therefore makes the following affirmative use determinations:

Commercial use is not granted by CC BY-NC 4.0 and is not approved by this review. Patent and trademark rights are not licensed. Moral, publicity, privacy, and similar rights are not broadly licensed, although the legal code contains a limited waiver or non-assertion to the extent necessary to exercise the licensed rights. The license supplies no warranty of title or non-infringement. Uses independently permitted by an exception or limitation remain outside the license's conditions.

Attribution and use protocol

Whenever the Museum shares a work or an adapted version, the accompanying credit must, so far as supplied and reasonably practicable:

• identify Casey REAS as creator and preserve any other supplied attribution party;
• identify the work and its Museum accession number;
• state CC BY-NC 4.0 and link to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/;
• link to the source object or official project record where reasonably practicable;
• retain supplied copyright and warranty-disclaimer notices;
• state whether the Museum modified the material and preserve notice of earlier modifications; and
• avoid any suggestion that Casey REAS, Art Blocks, or another attribution party endorses the Museum or a particular use.

Recommended collection credit: Casey REAS, [title], [year]; on-chain generative software associated with an Ethereum ERC-721 token; 6529 Network Museum, gift of punk6529, [accession number]. Licensed CC BY-NC 4.0. Add Museum documentation capture or a precise change statement to derivatives and surrogates.

Registrar and risk conclusions

• Identity and authenticity: pass. Exact CAIP-19 identities, token hashes where supplied, Art Blocks project data, raw metadata bytes, and the common transfer receipt are fixed in the evidence package.
• Donor authority and title: pass with accepted residual risk. The Museum relies on the donor's full-gift declaration and completed delivery; no adverse claim or donor reservation is recorded.
• Provenance: pass for accession. The accession transfer is fully documented in the Stream-compatible provenance schedule; earlier chain history remains ordinary cataloguing enrichment.
• Rights: pass with conditions. The Museum owns the tokens, not the artist's copyright; the object-specific CC BY-NC 4.0 grant supports the noncommercial museum uses listed above.
• Compliance: pass. The gift involved no consideration, no restricted material, no personal-data payload, and no identified sanctions, dispute, or encumbrance indicator in the reviewed record. The limits of public wallet evidence are accepted rather than mislabeled as certainty.
• Curatorial case: pass. The artist profile, collection essay, and object records establish the significance of the artist, the projects, the seven works, and the collection's fit with the Museum's mission without converting interpretation into artist intent.

Accession outcome

Title, rights, identity, provenance, curatorial significance, condition, and technical evidence are sufficient for accession. The lot is approved for the permanent collection as accessioned. Long-term software preservation, dependency capture, multi-environment rendering, periodic custody verification, and future provenance enrichment remain active stewardship duties. They do not postpone the accession decision.