The series includes 9 animated GIFs, based on Underwood & Underwood’s stereoviews from the late 1890s, depicting iconic monuments and locals from Athens, Epidaurus, Mycenae, Corinth, Patras and Meteora. They are contemporary to H.G. Well’s novel The War of the Worlds (1898), where the Martian machines began their invasion in London. Had they managed to reach the south, these would be the landscapes they would witness. Drawn with blue ink and digitally composited, the Martian characters are based on the exquisite illustrations of Henrique Alvim Corrêa for a later edition of the novel.

Created in 2014, as a tongue-in-cheek take on archival materials and the concept of truth online, this series was first published and tokenized (minted as NFTs) in 7 editions each during March 2021 on the Tezos blockchain.

Memories are ever–forged and history is skewed. Information and commons run aplenty in the web yet the tools to classify and verify their authenticity remain elusive. The antique stereoviews of Underwood & Underwood, readily available through recent digitizations of dusty archives have been restored to their former glory through the evergreen medium of animated GIFs and red–cyan anaglyphs. However, comprehensive spectrographical analysis, has revealed omnipresent otherworldly creatures; from Mars! Henceforth, it shall be known that H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds” is based on Greece —not unlike all great pieces of literature up to date.

The NFTs were originally minted on hicetnunc.xyz, which is now defunct as of late 2021, but the NFT records remain accessible through several other platforms that emerged, such as the community-driven teia.art and the commercial-oriented objkt.com. The files attached to the NFTs are served through the decentralized IPFS storage protocol.

On occasion of the objkt4objkt community event on the hicetnunc.xyz platform, martians_anaglyph_athens.jpg a static anaglyph 3D version of martians_athens.gif was tokenized on March 27th 2021 at in 99 editions and distributed freely. The anaglyph versions of the other scenes remain unpublished as of this writing.

An interactive 3D version of a Martian tearing down the Olympieion was minted on April 3rd 2021 as martians-in-modelspace.glb, concluding the series.

The stereoviews were sourced from Wikimedia Commons, where they are available under a Public Domain license. The rapid alternation of the two frames, is meant to create the illusion of three-dimensional space, originally experienced through a stereoscope.