merv

The collector known as merv keeps a picture of a smiling face and a bright green hand caught inside a burning ring, with a smaller figure standing beside it.² The public profile for this collection carries the account name mervkim and links an account whose chosen display name is merv.³ The picture is The Glowing Hand, from Dream Capsules, the series in which Obvious presented each image as a dream or a nightmare imagined by a machine.⁴ Its Artist field credits Obvious, and its traits mark it as a Nightmare, record its feeling as Fearful and place its rarity at Legendary.² The format is listed as mp4, so the work itself is a moving image, and the description here comes from the still image supplied with it rather than from the animation.² The attached dream text tells of a dark room, a menacing puppet and a power in the dreamer's hand that destroys the puppet, then fades and leaves the dreamer alone and afraid.² BD5D recorded blue or green rims on other capsules it examined, so the fiery rim in this still sets this nightmare apart from those examples.⁵

The dated record of how the capsule arrived is plain. The wallet received The Glowing Hand on 29 January 2022, three days after Dream Capsules first appeared on the BrainDrops contract.^6,5 That transfer documents receipt and nothing more, so it cannot show whether the capsule was bought, chosen or sent by someone else.⁶ The next receipt among the works shown here came on 18 September 2023, the day ClownVamp's Detective Jack: The Cold Case was released, when Listen, Kid arrived.^7,8 A third followed on 3 November 2023, when Hand Of Fate reached the same wallet.⁹ Among these three works, the history opens with a nightmare in early 2022 and resumes with two stills in late 2023, although the long interval reflects only the evidence supplied here and does not prove that nothing arrived in between.^6,7,9 Each date records when a work came into the wallet, and none of them records an acquisition decision.^6,7,9

Listen, Kid credits ClownVamp in its Artist field, and its traits file it under Memories, assign it to a team called The Rangers and name Casper Cats as its main character.¹⁰ Unlike the capsule, it is a still PNG in portrait orientation.¹⁰ The image shows an older figure in a pale cowboy hat and a pink shirt standing against a flat pink-orange sky.¹⁰ In the case note, Casper draws Jack aside under a starry desert night to explain that the pilots called the SkyGirls watch from above while the Rangers work on the ground.¹⁰ The picture shows no stars, and its warm flat sky sits at odds with the night described in the note, so text and image seem to hold the same man at different hours.¹⁰ The wider story places Jack Crimson in 1961, searching for his fiancée Tiffany Abbington after she vanishes on the eve of his proposal, and invites holders to help with his file.¹¹ BD5D describes the edition's palette as flat mid-century illustration in pinks, teals and ochres, and connects another Rangers figure to a hideout under a pink sky, which places Casper within a cast spread across many owners.⁸

Hand Of Fate belongs to Life In West America, and its Artist field names Roope Rainisto.¹² The series imagines America from a distance, through its landscape, its ideals and the lives of the people who live there, borrowing the appearance of photographs.¹³ This image is a crowded interior, with several figures seated close together beneath walls hung with pictures, while one hand reaches into the middle of the group.¹² Its traits give the Form as Square and the Orientation as Landscape, and the file is a still JPEG.¹² BD5D observes that the series recalls the warm colour and soft grain of mid-century film, and that its titles work as oblique captions hinting at stories they never tell.¹⁴ Here the title turns a single reaching gesture into a question of fate, though the picture never reveals what the hand is reaching for.¹² Placed beside The Glowing Hand, it puts a second hand at the centre of an image, one lit and fighting in a nightmare and the other open in a crowded room.^2,12

These three works sit inside a much wider spread of BrainDrops projects in this wallet.¹⁵ Dream Capsules forms the deepest part of the holdings, with more capsules present than works from any other single project.¹⁵ Around them are early releases such as Genesis, podGANs, Brain Loops, DreamScapes and Fake Feelings, alongside later editions including Deep Journeys, ELEMENTS, Materia Mania, Metalands, Mappings, Views and Paradise Lost.¹⁵ Most projects appear through a single work, while Brain Loops, Deep Journeys, ELEMENTS and Materia Mania each appear more than once.¹⁵ The result is broad rather than narrow, touching much of the catalogue while its weight rests on Obvious's dreams.¹⁵

Seen side by side, the three works pull in different directions. One is a nightmare that moves, and the other two are stills built around invented histories of the American West and of a cold case from 1961.^2,13,11 The case note for Listen, Kid speaks of a night full of stars, yet its picture keeps only the flat glow of a pink-orange sky behind a pale hat.¹⁰ The still from The Glowing Hand keeps its own small mystery, a smaller figure standing just beside the burning rim while the bright green hand glows inside it.²