Subways

The Veins of Connection

The code was flowing differently this week. My fingers dancing across the keyboard between flights, something had shifted. Perhaps it was the altitude, or the strange liminal space of being suspended between places, but the patterns emerging on my screen felt more alive, more connected to something larger than pixels and parameters.

Pressed against the airplane window at 35,000 feet, I watched the world unfold below like a living map. Rivers carved their ancient paths, while human settlements grew organically into the landscape. Cities weren't imposed upon the earth—they were woven into it, their grids and neighborhoods creating a beautiful tension between order and natural flow.

What actually connects us? What has always connected us?

A Different Truth

This aerial view sparked something deeper. Online, the narrative feels so bleak—technology isolating us, social media fracturing our connections. We hide behind profile pictures, let algorithms speak for us, build digital walls higher than any physical fence.

But as I gazed down at the sprawling urban arteries below, a different truth emerged. The Roman Empire's power didn't flow solely from its legions—it flowed through its roads. Those stone pathways were the nervous system of civilization, carrying ideas, cultures, and dreams. Trade routes became idea routes. Physical connection enabled intellectual connection.

The Call of the Subway

As I returned to my code, working with Gemini to push beyond my usual love affair with natural curves, something clicked. Cities. That was the next evolution in my art. Not just organic spirals, but the places where human creativity takes root and spreads.

Cities aren't just collections of buildings. They're organisms of connection. That's when the subways called to me. These underground networks fascinate me—spaces where strangers are pressed together, yet worlds apart, all flowing toward different destinations.

Subways aren't the heartbeat of a city, but they are its veins and connective tissue.

They are the infrastructure that allows the real heart—us, the people—to flow freely through the urban body. Without these hidden arteries, the organism would weaken. In my code, I began to see it: the subway map as a living system, each line a different color pulsing with the rhythm of human movement.

A Metaphor for Everything

As I worked deeper, something even more profound emerged. Each subway system begins as dots—isolated stations, points of possibility. Then, slowly, these dots extend outward. Lines grow, seeking connection. When they finally touch, a network is born.

This isn't just transit infrastructure—it's a perfect metaphor for everything we build. No single person creates a subway line. It takes planners, engineers, workers, and passengers. Each person is a dot, each contribution a line, and only when these individual efforts connect does the whole system come alive.

The Etch A Sketch Problem

As I worked, a wave of nostalgia hit me, reminding me of childhood afternoons with an Etch A Sketch—that toy that could only draw in continuous, unbroken lines. In that moment, cities seemed easy to recreate. Just continuous lines, right?

The answer came swiftly and humbling: very hard. Cities aren't just continuous lines—they're layered complexity, three-dimensional puzzles. The nostalgic simplicity of childhood creativity met the unforgiving complexity of actual city planning, and my code struggled to bridge that gap.

We Are Builders

We are still connected, I realized, even in our digital age. We're connected by the infrastructure we build together—not just fiber optic cables, but the deeper architecture of civilization itself. The roads, the rails, the paths we create so that strangers can become neighbors, so that ideas can travel from mind to mind.

From my airplane window, I had seen the truth: we are builders of connections, creators of systems that allow human creativity to spread like morning light across the landscape. The veins run deep, older than the internet, stronger than any technology that might divide us.

Join the Signal

This art is a living system, and its future should be too. While the ultimate goal is to inscribe these ephemeral cityscapes as permanent digital artifacts on Bitcoin, the path to creation should be a collaborative one. Inspired by Gamma's Signals platform, this project will use community engagement to determine its final form. Your interest, your signals, will help decide the minting price and the future of the collection.

This isn't just about collecting art; it's about becoming part of the network that gives it value. Follow the journey and prepare to send your signal.