We’re very accustomed to portraits of people—we see them all the time. But can portraiture be extended to digital entities such as files, folders, programs, and information systems?

A good portrait, it is commonly believed, captures the inner world of its subject.

Enter The Machine is a collection of algorithmically generated portraits that capture the complex inner world of digital entities.

This series of work asserts that not only can portraiture be expanded to include digital entities, but doing so will give us new ways of seeing and understanding the digital world around us.

File portraits are made by a collection of steps that begin by transforming the file into binary code (0s and 1s), interpreting the binary data as pixels that contain color and position, manually transforming the algorithmically generated results to better express the nature of the digital entity, and finally deploying the visual portrait on the web.

Harkening back to the centuries-old tradition of subjects coming to an artist’s studio to have their portrait made, a portrait studio for digital entities is a contemporary version of the same model except it makes portraits of digital files, folders, programs, and information systems rather than people.

Similar to a traditional portrait studio, Enter The Machine Portrait Studio creates portraits of two kinds of subjects:

1. Culturally and historically significant, a.k.a “famous files”: Portraits of Famous Files
2. Personally meaningful to an individual or small group: Portraits of People’s Files

We’re all familiar with portraits of famous people—we see them all the time. They’re typically those who have had a significant cultural or historical impact on society. Similarly, the collection Portraits of Famous Files, are portraits of digital files that have had significant historical or cultural impact dating from the start of the digital age in the 1960s through the present day. For example:

• All files in Edward Snowden’s NSA Data Leak (2007)
• SETUP.EXE for AOL 3.0 (1995)
• Zelda for original Nintendo (1986)
• An Information Management Proposal, by Tim Berner’s Lee (1983)
• The code NASA wrote for the Apollo 11 mission (1968–1969)

Feel free to make a suggestion for the inclusion of a famous or view the full collection here.

Portraits of the People’s Files, on the other hand, are custom file portraits made from an individual’s or group’s personal files. They are not famous, culturally speaking, but they tend to hold personal significance for the group or individual. It is the digital equivalent of going to a portrait studio with those close to you, except instead of bringing people, you’d be bringing the digital files that are meaningful to you. Learn more about commissioning a file portrait.

Not yet, however Enter The Machine file portraits will be released as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain in the near future, making them available for purchase on NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea.

Sign up here for updates.

Start the process by reviewing the commission page. There’s a form to complete at the bottom.

File portraits start at .25 ETH (check current cost in USD here), however cost will vary based on demand, file size, number of files, and whether the portrait is animated and/or has custom sound design (like so). To get the cost for your file portrait you need to fill out the commission request form. There are two ways to pay.

Ethereum (preferred)
The total cost of the portrait is due up front, and the NFT will be sent to the wallet of the same address (no exceptions). Paying via Ethereum is preferred because:

1. The sender automatically becomes the recipient of the final work (an NFT), which eliminates the risk of incorrect asset delivery
2. Provides transparency around pricing for prospective and future commissioners
3. Avoids credit card fees

Credit card/PayPal/monthly installments
You can also pay via traditional payment methods via the artist’s online shop, shop.ericcorrielstudios.com. A custom product will be created that can be paid via traditional methods. Note that you will still need to fill out a commission request form and you will also need an Ethereum wallet address to receive the NFT. Note that paying by credit card will incur credit card fees.

First, please note the commission fee is just one of many factors the artist considers when accepting a commission, and it is by no means the deciding factor. As a general rule, the artist prefers to take on interesting commissions and does not automatically accept commissions offering higher fees. That said, there are economic realities the artist must consider, and as such, higher commission fees can sometimes help increase the chances of having one’s commission accepted.

The first thing to note is the minimum commission fee. After the minimum fee is met, commission fees should generally scale in relation to the complexity of the request:

• $: Static portrait, consisting of a single file, that is not animated and does not contain sound, like this or this
• $$: Animated portrait, consisting of a single or a few files, that does not contain sound, like so
• $$$: Animated portrait, consisting of a single or a few files, that does contain sound, like this or this
• $$$$: Animated portrait consist of many files that contains sound, like so

Naturally, each individual will have to decide what to offer based on what they want and their financial situation. Please bear in mind, there are no returns.

A word of advice from the artist: it’s quite possible you may not like how the work turns out, so for everyone’s sake, don’t offer more than you can easily afford to part with. This is nothing if not an experiment, and not all experiments succeed.

When you commission an Enter The Machine work, you will be in direct contact with the studio and will get the following:

• Face time with the artist to discuss the commission and how to realize it
• Web-based file portrait, like this or this, deliverable as an NFT on Ethereum
• Official documentation of the work–like this for images or this for videos (file will download automatically)–which is permanently stored on the Arweave blockchain

• Have questions about how to display the artwork at home? See here.

What you do not get

One is, of course, free to choose any file(s) one likes, but generally speaking, the artist recommends selecting files that are personally significant or meaningful. A good rule of thumb is whether you could talk about why a file is important to you for at least one minute. Some examples may be a script or important paper you wrote, a book that never got published (or did!), a program you coded, a video you made, a site you built, a voice message you received, a photo of significance, etc.

A portrait can be created from literally any digital file or files. Currently, the only limitation is that the size of any individual file does not exceed 20MB. Note: compositions of multiple files, where each is less than 20 megabytes, do not pose a problem. Work is currently being done to increase the individual file maximum size.

There are two things you upload:

• Text description (why this file is important to you): If accepted, and upon your approval, some or all of this description will become publicly accessible and accompany the piece on the web and social platforms.
• File/screenshots: While not strictly required, providing screenshots is strongly recommended. If accepted, the supplied screenshots will become officially associated with the project, meaning they will be publicly accessible and shown with the portrait on the web, social media, and possibly other outlets. Commission requests that are not accompanied by screenshot(s) are unlikley to be accepted.
• Name: You will be asked to provide your name, initials, or an alias, which will appear online as the commissioner of the work.

The best way to get a sense of all this is to checkout the description and provided screenshots of this commission.

If your commission request is accepted
The screenshots you provided, or those you approve from the artist, will become associated with the project (see above).

Unless otherwise specified, Eric Corriel Studios does not keep the original file(s) that were uploaded once the portrait has been made. The original file(s) is/are permanently deleted. Only user-supplied screenshots of the original file(s) are stored for documentation and presentation purposes.

If your commission request is not accepted
Typically, the artist will keep uploaded files as potential commission requests that he can activate at any time. If you would like your uploaded file to be permanently deleted, please email etm@ericcorrielstudios.com with as much information as possible, including the exact name of the uploaded file.

Commissions are accepted based on a variety of factors, including current demand levels, digital diversity of the collection, personal connection with the file(s) being requested for portraiture, commission fee, and how the commission would fit in with the overall collection.

While the artist’s studio seeks to respond to all commission requests, unfortunately, this is not always possible. If you do not hear back from the studio within six weeks, it’s safe to assume your commission request cannot be accommodated at this time. Please bear in mind that all file portraits are created by the artist (one person), so resources are highly limited.

You can try resubmitting your request but if you do so, changing the nature of the request (files, descriptions, commission fee) is highly recommended.

The creation process is a combination of algorithmic and manual work, all of which is done in the artist’s studio in Brooklyn, NY.

The process varies based on the portrait but generally consists of approximately 25 steps. From beginning to end, depending on demand, the process can take 4-12 weeks. Here’s how it typically goes:

1. You Decide. The process begins by deciding on the digital entity that you would like a portrait of (file, folder, program, NFT, system, etc.) (see “What kind of file should I choose?”)
2. Request. Fill out the commission request form. Be sure to provide screenshots and discuss the significance of the file. The more details, the better.
3. Wait. Most commission requests, unfortunately, cannot be accommodated due to the labor-intensive nature of the creation process and the limited bandwidth of the artist. If you do not hear anything in six weeks, you can assume the request cannot be accommodated in its current form, and you are encouraged to submit a new request with a new file, description, or commission fee.
4. Pay. If your commission request is accepted, the artist’s studio will reach out via the contact info you supplied, and you will be asked to pay the commission fee upfront. Please note the fee is not refundable.
5. Upload. Once paid, you will be given a link to upload your file(s).
6. Write. As the commissioner of the work, you are asked to provide the description of the work that will appear on the website, marketplaces, and anywhere else the work may be presented. If you are not writing in English, please provide an English translation.
7. Meet. Schedule a 15-30 minute meeting over Zoom to discuss the commission with the artist. This is an opportunity to get to know the artist and talk about the personal significance of the file(s), as well as the criteria by which the portrait will be successful.
8. Wait. Work will begin once the artist’s studio has all the files and information it needs. This process can take anywhere between 4-12 weeks.
9. Receive. As the commissioner of the work, you will receive:
   • File portrait as an NFT on Ethereum (this requires an Ethereum wallet address)
   • Link to download PNG or MOV documentation
   • Square image/video for social media
   • Link to the portrait on v3.enterthemachine.io

The time it takes to complete a file portrait depends on the complexity of the request, whether it is animated, has custom sound, entails lots of files or large files, and current demand.

Generally speaking, portraits are completed within 4–12 weeks.

Yes, as long as the artist has access to the url.

There are currently two types of Enter The Machine file portraits: individual and group.

• Individual portraits: consist of only a single file. Examples:
  • SETUP32.EXE
  • bitcoin.pdf
  • the-declaration-of-independence-of-the-united-states-of-america-by-thomas-jefferson.txt
• Group portraits consist of multiple files. Examples:
  • snowden-archive: 474 files
  • Netscape Navigator 9.0.0.6.exe: 186 files
  • proposal.html: 5 files

To create a group portrait of a folder of files or an application, simply zip and submit the folder.

Yes. It’s a quick one-on-one to help the artist (Eric Corriel) get a sense of you, the relationship to your file, and your expectations for the portrait. Good portraits are built on good foundations, which only come with actually knowing the subject, hence a meeting.

It’s been less than 6 weeks since I submitted…
It’s understandable that, nowadays, waiting 6 weeks to get a response from an internet-based project seems overly long. Bear in mind that this is a small-time operation led by an independent artist and not a large corporation like we might be used to dealing with. Please continue waiting. Your patience is very much appreciated during this time.

It’s been more than 6 weeks…
If you still haven’t heard anything after six weeks, the recommended course of action is to submit a new commission request where either the files, descriptions, or commission fee is different from the original request.

There are two general reasons why a portrait request may not be accepted and several case-specific reasons.

General reasons
Firstly, it’s worth bearing in mind that most file portraits are created by just one person (the artist, Eric Corriel) so resources are highly limited and the majority of requests simply cannot be accommodated due to the nature of the process, which is not automated and requires a lot of individual attention.

The most likely reason a commission is not accepted has nothing to do with the commission; it’s just that the artist is fully booked.

Secondly, when deciding which commissions to accept, the artist is thinking about how the work resulting from the commission would fit into the existing collection and whether it offers the artist—and viewers—new aesthetic or conceptual perspectives compared to what has been done before.

Case-specific reasons
The first things the artist looks at when considering a commission are the provided screenshot images and the personal story that explains why the commission is being requested in the first place. The artist is looking for a combination of compelling files, screenshots, personal stories, ideas, etc., as well as diversity in terms of file types and geographic location of the commissioners.

The next factor that can play a role is total file size. Generally speaking, the larger the total file size of the commission, the more resource-intensive and time-consuming the creation process will be. As a general rule, the artist is more selective of commissions totaling more than 50 megabytes of data.

Lastly is the commission fee. The fee is just one of many factors the artist considers when deciding to accept a commission, and it is by no means the deciding factor. As a general rule, the artist prefers to take on interesting commissions and does not automatically accept commissions offering higher fees. That said, there are economic realities the artist must consider, and as such, higher commission fees can sometimes help increase the chances of having one’s commission request accepted.

What to do next
If you’re still interested in an Enter The Machine file portrait, the best thing to do is to review the content above, rethink your submission, and submit a new request.

In centuries past, portrait painters would, on occasion, revise a portrait upon the patron’s request. Enter The Machine portraits follow this tradition, and revision requests may be honored, though this would be solely at the artist’s discretion.

Unfortunately not. The buyer must acknowledge they are taking a risk when they commission work from an artist who has his own vision for how things should turn out. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.

Sure thing—you do you!

Enter The Machine file portraits, like so much digital art, are created at the outer edges of what the technology of the day can provide. To prepare for the eventuality that current technical standards may not be operable in the future, the documentation of each Enter The Machine work is preserved on the Arweave file storage blockchain, which is designed to store information for the next 200 years.

To be shown in their internet-native format, Enter The Machine works requires a host of technologies working together:

“Client-side” technology requirements (i.e., what a viewer needs to see the work):

• Broadband internet
• Web browser that supports JavaScript ECMAScript 2023, CSS 3, and HTML5

“Server-side” technology (what’s needed to serve the work)

• Enterprise-grade, object-based storage capable of storing hundreds of millions of files, which in this case is Amazon’s S3 storage service
• Enterprise-grade content delivery network (CDN) to serve millions of files efficiently across the world, which in this case is Amazon’s Cloudfront CDN service
• Storage platform to host necessary HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files that glue the appropriate tiles together to form the portrait at a particular zoom level, which in this case is the decentralized Arweave file storage blockchain

While the artist’s studio will do what it can to mitigate future incompatibilities, the buyer must nonetheless accept some risk when owning technology-based art with known external dependencies that it may not display as intended in the future—conditions that widely apply to most forms of digital art.

Enter The Machine 3.0 works support varying levels of interactivity depending on their technical foundation. The best way to see what interactivity a particular work supports is to consult the Interactivity section of the work. Below is the current list of possible interactions that apply to most works.

Play/pause audio (for those that have audio)

• Desktop: sound icon if viewing on v3.enterthemachine.io or s key
• Touch devices: sound icon if viewing on v3.enterthemachine.io or tap and hold for two seconds
• Note: sound is muted by default by all web browsers and can only be unmuted by initiating the actions above

Stop/restart animation (for those that are animated)

• Desktop: spacebar
• Touch devices: tap and hold for two seconds

Zoom

• Desktop: use a mouse/touchpad that supports or simulates mouse-wheel functionality
• Touch devices: pinch and zoom
• Note: if the portrait is animated, it needs to be stopped before it can be zoomed

Pan

• Desktop: click, hold, and drag
• Touch devices: tap, hold, and drag
• Note: if the portrait is animated, it needs to be stopped before it can be panned

Rotate

• Desktop: Opt (Mac)/Alt (Windows) + click, hold, and drag
• Note: if the portrait is animated, it needs to be stopped before it can be rotated

Fullscreen

• Desktop: f key (note: does not work on all 3rd-party platforms, such as OpenSea)
• Touch devices: not available

Despite appearances, Enter The Machine works are neither strictly images nor videos. Rather, they are complex webpages consisting of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and hundreds of thousands of small image files, all working together to produce what looks like a single image or animation.

Enter The Machine file portraits are built on technology similar to Google Maps. Each portrait consists of hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of 256-pixel x 256-pixel tiles that are swapped in and out depending on which section of the portrait is being viewed and at what zoom level.

This allows Enter The Machine works to be:

• Responsive: display well across all devices, from mobile to billboard-size screens, in any orientation (portrait, square, or landscape)
• Interactive: user can zoom, pan, and rotate
• Dynamic: works can be programmed to incorporate randomness and respond differently to user-driven events
• Scalable: the portraits themselves can be of any size, from 100 pixels wide to hundreds of thousands
• High resolution: portraits can be zoomed in without sacrificing integrity
• Support future display devices: portraits are created at very high resolutions to help them adapt to future, higher-resolution devices. Additional layers of resolution can be added to support future devices.
• Lightweight: as internet-native artworks, Enter The Machine works are designed to load piecemeal to accommodate varying bandwidth and Internet congestion conditions. As such, a naturally occurring element of visual randomness gets introduced as the loading pattern is slightly different each time.
• Accessible: all Enter The Machine works contain textual descriptions accessible to screen readers and other assistive devices

It is well known among conservators of digital art that preserving complex digital works in their original form over significant periods of time is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Digital artists make work using cutting-edge hardware and software that, several years hence, may very well be relegated to the technological trash bin of history, thereby rendering the work unviewable in its native format should the original components stop functioning.

Whether this will happen to Enter The Machine works 10, 20, or 30 years hence is anyone’s guess. Still, to mitigate against this possibility, documentation (in the form of PNG and MOV files) for each work is stored on the Arweave file storage blockchain, which is designed to preserve files for the next 200 years. Image example here, video example here (file will download automatically).

The easiest way to find the documentation for a particular work is to find the “Digital Preservation” section of each work. In the event the internet-native works no longer display, the onchain documentation can be used in its place.

While all code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and supporting files (mp3, mp4, etc.) are stored onchain (on the Arweave file storage blockchain), the millions of 256x256 image tiles that comprise each file portrait are stored on S3, which is Amazon’s centralized storage solution.

The two main bottlenecks to storing millions of files onchain are 1) the time it takes to upload them, and 2) indexing them.

The tooling required to upload millions of files to existing cloud storage infrastructure, such as Amazon’s S3 service, is quite advanced and supports multi-threaded, parallelized uploading. Tools like s5cmd can upload millions of files in hours. The tooling to upload to decentralized storage is primitive by comparison. Currently, most decentralized storage services can only handle serialized uploading (one file at a time), which would require days or weeks for Enter The Machine works, which is not practical at present.

Regarding indexing, which refers to quickly finding and serving files, most decentralized storage platforms are nowhere near as efficient at serving folders containing millions of files as centralized alternatives that have had decades to scale up to such demands and can now do so effortlessly.

Until comparable tooling exists for decentralized storage, the millions of files that comprise Enter The Machine works will continue to be stored on centralized storage solutions such as Amazon’s S3. However, if and when comparable tooling becomes available for decentralized storage, it will technically be possible for Enter The Machine works to migrate and become fully decentralized.

Technically, yes, since the contract by which the NFTs are issued allows for upgrades. However, in practice, the artist only modifies portraits to either fix bugs or add functionality.

Understandably this type of arrangement might not suit all collectors, but hey, DaVinci was adding layers to the Mona Lisa for twenty years after he first painted it so maybe continuing to work on a piece after its initial release isn’t a bad strategy after all!

Yes. The algorithm that creates the file portrait is deterministic, meaning given the same input (data contents of the file) it will produce the same output. However, if any of the data changes, even just slightly (imagine two Word documents that contain identical text except for one word), the resulting portraits will be visually different.

Never say never, but I very strongly believe it is not possible to reconstruct the original file from the visual portrait for the following reasons:

• Data is not perfectly preserved in visual form due to the fact that pixels representing some data overlap other pixels representing other data
• There aren’t definitive visual markers denoting the first and last pieces of data, which means many, many possible combination of start, end, and middle points would need to be tried to reconstruct the data in the correct order. While this may be feasible for small portraits, it would not feasible be for large portraits.
• The most significant reason: There is an intermediary, manually-derived “color correction” layer between the algorithmically generated work and the final work, which effectively severs the direct connection between the data and its visual representation. There is a human muddling around in the loop, so to speak.

Enter The Machine works are meant to be displayed on digital screens in portrait orientation. There are two main ways of getting the work onto a digital screen.

1. Upload static assets (PNG or MOV files)
Probably the easiest way to go, provided one has a digital screen meant for displaying artwork (such as a Meural), is to load the .mov or .png documentation file onto the device. These files are available to download via the “Digital Preservation” section of any work, like so.

Pros: Easy to implement

Cons:

• Depending on the screen’s resolution, the image may not be as sharp as it is natively. Pixelation would be more pronounced with videos than with images.
• If the screen’s aspect ratio and orientation do not match the image’s—9:16 (portrait orientation)—the work will likely either be letterboxed or cropped.

2. Native web format
If one has a digital screen with a web browser that can display URLs, then one could show Enter The Machine works by pointing their device to the following URL: https://v3.enterthemachine.io/collections/portraits-of-famous-files/embed/1

Notes

• Replace embed/1 in the URL above with embed/{portrait_id}, which is most easily found in the display URL of the portrait. For example, the {portrait_id} of https://v3.enter-the-machine.io/collection/portraits-of-famous-files/019-ransomware-wannacry-2-0 is 19.
• Depending on the collection, you may also need to replace portraits-of-famous-files with portraits-of-peoples-files.

Pros: Best image quality, aspect-ratio agnostic

Cons: May not be supported by non-industry standard browsers that may be found on TVs or other display devices (anything that isn’t the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, or Edge)

3. Prints
The studio is currently exploring different types of print solutions. If you are interested in a print, please fill out this form.

The studio is currently exploring different types of print solutions. If you are interested in a print, please fill out this form.

• File portraits are slow to render and animate on Apple Vision Pro, Vision OS 2.0