You know what?
Art is hard.
What’s arguably harder though is making money from it.
Enter blockchain and the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies .
I’m Forkast’s Joel Flynn - And THIS is Moments in NFT History.
So we’ve talked about the Crypto Art Movement and mentioned its significance
to both the art world and the world of crypto.
Here is where generative art comes in - and we’ll get to what generative art is in a moment
First though we need to talk about one particular NFT creator that,
in the words of Sotheby’s, may have a case for “legendary status.”
So let’s talk about Erick Calderon, or Snowfro.
He’s an NFT collector in his own right,
and managed to claim some very rare zombie Cryptopunks when they were minted in 2017.
Those algorithmically generated pixel punks inspired him to look at what else
could be done with blockchain technologically and generative art,
and in the process making something completely new.
He told Loop News in January 2021
I came to the realization that the blockchain provides all of the tools to allow folks to
generate outputs without knowing the end result making for more fair distribution.
This led to the creation of Art Blocks; generative art,
curated but created randomly, on demand, on the Ethereum blockchain.
So, what are they?
Until you mint an Art Blocks NFT, it doesn’t
exist, and it’s created on the spot using an algorithm to randomly generate data.
But the data inputs are initially provided
by an artist creating a project using a set of variables.
After that project is closed, collectors can purchase an NFT of that work.
Essentially, in his words, “when a collector mints a work of art,
they are creating a new fresh set of variables that are stored on a token.”
What he’d created was the next step in something called generative art.
That dates back all the way to the 18th Century, when a German composer called Johann Philipp
Kirnberger created a Musical Dice Game as seen here on Austrian TV (POINT TO THE RIGHT),
where pre-composed phrases were put together based on the roll of a die.
The history of generative art is steeped in innovation, and the application of its
artistic principles to blockchain technology is a logical, yet hugely significant step for it.
As Snowfro told ArtNEWS in September 2021:
“Because Art Blocks forces the artist to accept EVERY SINGLE OUTPUT of the
algorithm as their signed piece, the artist has to go back and tweak the
algorithm until it’s perfect. They can’t just cherry pick the good outputs.”
But what Art Blocks did
created a whole new type of artist - one also part mathematician, and part coder.
Already, people have started talking about these new artists in hallowed terms.
People like Jeff Davis whose "Color Study" was a simple look into a conversation about colour.
Or Tyler Hobbs, whose "Fidenza" is considered by some to be the holy grail of Art Blocks pieces.
The proof is in the demand for these pieces, with collectors like Three Arrows
Capital and Vincent Van Dough already making huge acquisitions to the tune of millions of dollars.
Snowfro however is at the centre of all of this.
Partly as one of the most collectible artists himself, thanks to works like
Chromie Squiggle and Singularity, which are now among the most recognisible NFTs in the world.
Art Blocks wasn’t just challenging the idea of art though.
As Forbes said in September 2021, it’s’s also made us reconsider how we think about value.
They quoted Snowfro as saying that his vision is to transcend crypto,
“and community is essential to the experience.”
So essential in fact, that when Art Blocks started seeing sales worth tens of
millions of dollars in August that year, they started using Dutch auctions -
to put off people from flipping works for profit.
“It’s just not good. It’s not the future of Art Blocks, by any means,”
he was quoted by ARTnews as saying a month later.
This, for many, is perhaps one of the most significant parts about this whole movement.
One man's passion for generative art, for coding and blockchain have created the ultimate web3 art.
And that could be hanging on walls - in the real world or online - for a long time to come.