Life is ephemeral, Blockchain is eternal.​​​​​​​

The Beginning.
In early 2021, driven by the birth of my first child and the coming of the second, I decided to work on something deeply personal where I could express my feelings, hopes & dread about being a father. So was born the Whalphabet.

Absurdity.
First of all, to be able to understand the Whalphabet, I need to introduce myself by telling you some random facts about me… I’m Elie Kupsc, Art Director and Illustrator based in Switzerland, travelling around between Geneva and Basel. I’m passionate about philosophy, science, art and most forms of culture. When i was a kid, I spent 3 years sailing across the globe with my parents. Design wise, I love to explore all kind of mediums, as each of them opens new doors; from hand-crafted, to computer or code to even artificial intelligence driven creations. On a more personal level, I was always fascinated by the absurdity of human existence in the infinity of space and time. Even more by the profound intangibility of human consciousness. As Socrates said: « I know that I know nothing. » Before I became a father, I coped well with this, as I had quite a nihilistic (but positive) view about life. I thought that even if life was preposterous it was insanely precious and beautiful. I always said to myself « Let’s make the most of it, as everything could end in the blink of an eye ». …Now that we sort of met, you’ll be able to understand a bit more about the Whalphabet.

Dread.
After the birth of my first child, everything changed, but mostly one part. From that day on, I was terrified to die and leave my family alone. Facing this incomprehension, I fell into a state of helplessness, depression and permanent dread. Not knowing how to handle this existential crisis, I was looking for a way out. It was a pretty shitty time for me. And then, one beautiful day, my wife said to me that whatever happens, our son would not be alone, as he soon will have a sister. At first, I was relieved to know that if something would happen to me, they would have each other. But very soon after, I felt even more pressure and fear of leaving them both fatherless. But this time around, I had to find a way to cope with this and not stay in that state of permanent dread. I had to leave them some kind of fragments of me, something deeply intimate but abstract enough so that only they would be able to fully comprehend it. Something at the same time  inalterable but ever evolving as my unconditional love for them. What shape could that « legacy » take? A collection of artworks, a poem, a hand crafted typography? I knew it wasn’t enough, I wanted it to be able to with-stand the alteration of time but at the time something that would grow and stay with them forever. That’s where the blockchain and NFTs came in. It was for me the perfect solution to create something that combined everything that I wanted to do for them and that would persist thought time.

Fragments of Me-mories. 
The project first began as a vast mess where I tried to put in every artwork and every single thing I had to say to them. It was clumsy frustrating and had absolutely no sense. So I decided to take it the other way around and let it come to me naturally. There was no roadmap apart from the fact that I wanted the project to be a 36-part “alphabet” as a seed phrase of an uncrackable password. Almost every night for the past year, I worked in a kind of flow, where I tried to put a little bit of me inside each letter. Sometimes quite literally, sometimes more abstractly. Each and every piece of this collection made me dive deep back into my memories and feelings to translate some emotions that I needed to share with my children.

Relief.
Immediately after finising the last letter on 02.02.2022, I began the process of minting them as NFTs. A month later, as the whole collection was now completely uploaded on the blockchain I felt an unbelievable surge of peace and harmony. Finally I knew that whatever would happen, a little part of me would stay with them forever. Each part, scattered around the globe across and the blockchain, as some kind of intricate puzzle ever evolving with every transaction. A chess like Black and White collection of 36 unique letters and numbers bearing all my love and memories. That’s the shape that took the Whalphabet;

A creation to overcome the existential dread of dying too soon as a Parent.