In the booming noise of the NFT explosion on the global stage, there stands one platform quietly revered and celebrated by cognescenti. Art Blocks is perhaps the most exciting NFT platform from a creative and conceptual view, pushing the boundaries of creative experimentation in the generative art space. They are purveyors of the idea of the blockchain as more than a system for provenance, but a medium unto itself. Generative art is one of the most exciting developments in the NFTs to date, with roots that stretch deep into art history and a future filled with the untapped potential for blockchains such as Ethereum to host truly programmable art.
Conceptual art has long played with the concept of what the collector receives, yet the generative format as developed by Art Blocks plays with the idea of surprise and chance to the point where the collector is purchasing not an artwork but a piece of code with all its generative possibilities. When a new artwork is minted, a randomly generated version of the content is created by an algorithm and sent to the collector’s Ethereum account. The resulting piece might be a static image, a 3D model, or an interactive experience. Each output is different, the only limitation of the creative experimentation of the code is the edition size themselves. Until the work drops into their wallet, the collector does not know what they will receive.
For Natively Digital, Art Blocks is pleased to make available the Founder’s Collection, a selection of 19 Art Blocks NFTs from the collection of Erick Calderon, CEO and Jeff Davis, CCO. These works of art represent the first nineteen curated projects offered at Art Blocks from November 27, 2020 to March 31, 2021. All proceeds from the sale will benefit charitable projects dedicated to supporting creative coding as a meaningful artistic practice and promoting software literacy in the visual arts.The portfolio and its sale at Sotheby’s demonstrates Calderon and Davis’s continued commitment to the generative art scene across Ethereum.
Each of the 19 curated NFT projects that ArtBlocks has produced stand as their own significant contribution to the history of generative and algorithmic art. Yet by way of an overview we must start with Chromie Squiggle by Snowfro, the genesis project from the platform. Minimalist and elegant simple, yet undeniably fun, Squiggle represents the entire philosophy of generative art in one pure line. With all the iconic symbolism of any major pop art motif, the squiggle is a uniquely recognisable visual idiom. A gesture filled with the fun of creative experimentation that generative art enables, and the perfect suggestion of the hand of the artist as they craft their code. The unique handwriting of Squiggle suggests equally the basic fingerprint of each generative output, that much like NFTs themselves no two are the same. Using point data, it is almost impossible to get two similar outputs. Squiggle underscores the philosophy of fun, experimentation and conceptual nuance that lies at the heart of the Art Blocks platform.
On the other end of the Art Blocks spectrum is Ignition by ge1doot, one of the most technologically sophisticated and elegant of the projects. AS described by ge1doot, they are “a limited series of interactive 3D structures, rotating endlessly from their self-gravitational force….Purely written in JavaScript, using no external libraries or dependencies of any sort, these voyagers will forever be the testimony of hardcoded workmanship, a heritage of the old times. Deep space, do you copy?” Ignition is testament to a highly proficient creative coder. The first fully on-chain interactive piece on the Art Blocks platform, the work exists in just 800 lines of code. In this it defines what ArtBlocks can do on Ethereum, spatial perspective, graphic interest, high-resolution interactive art with just a few lines of code.
The final work to spotlight is Construction Token by Jeff Davis. Its elegant bauhaus modernist aesthetic underpins much of Davis’s aesthetic over the course of his decades long experimentation with creative coding and generative art. As the co-founder of the Art Blocks platform, Construction Token stands as the result of a craftsman playing with his tools, with all the intimacy and understanding of the medium and its possibilities that that engenders.
Below you will find a full list of the biographies, with links, of each of the works in the portfolio.
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Erick Calderon (Snowfro) is a color-driven artist and technologist living in Houston, Texas. His work is dedicated to exploring iterative provenance in the field of creative coding. His project Chromie Squiggle is set for a maximum of 10000 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/0
Daniel Calderon (DCA) is an American artist living and working in Houston, Texas. He received his MFA in sculpture from the University of Houston and teaches courses in digital fabrication and creative coding at the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts. His project Genesis was issued with 512 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/1
Jeff Davis is a digital artist using algorithmic processes to create abstract compositions. He’s exhibited his work extensively throughout the United States, and is the author of two textbooks, Foundations of Design and Foundations of Color. His project Construction Token was issued with 500 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/2
Daïm Aggott-Hönsch is a Canadian-Hungarian algorist and apeirographer with a broad artistic practice. His works range from fractal wonders born of his decade of applied mathematical research, AI/GAN assisted works, and purely generative series. His project Cryptoblots was issued with 1921 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/3
Pxlq is a creative coder working primarily within the Ethereum ecosystem and has a range of abstract styles featured on platforms including OpenSea, Art Blocks, BlockArt, Beyond NFT, VIV3, and Rarible. Their project Dynamic Slices was issued with 512 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/4
Josh Katzenmeyer (luxpris) is a creative technologist using generative means to produce extraterrestrial results. He has been tokenizing his work since early 2020 and enjoys producing art that makes use of cold geometric forms to craft immersive, abstracted landscapes. His project Elevated Deconstructions was issued with 200 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/7
Hideki Tsukamoto is a UK based programmer and technical artist. His work is precise, graphic, and features consistent themes of distance transformations, noise based modulation, modularity, and recursion. His project Singularity was issued with 1024 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/8
Gerard Ferrandez (ge1doot) is a generative artist living in Toulouse, France. He works as an IT manager in the aerospace industry by day and writes creative code to make beautiful output by night. His project Ignition was issued with 512 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/9
Bryan Brinkman is an Emmy award-winning artist who utilizes his career in animation and motion graphics to bring fun and playfulness to his creations. He enjoys combining styles and techniques to convey ideas about the creative process and the crypto art community. His project NimBuds was issued with 400 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/10
Beer van Geer is an interactive media artist, working in the field of biofeedback art. He moves between experimental art projects and the world of applied art integration in healthcare. His project HyperHash was issued with 369 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/11
Guillaume (Arsonic) is a digital designer with a passion for blockchain, decentralization, and art. Working with his friend Sebsatian, they formed Zeblocks to host their professional and experimental projects. Their project Unigrids was issued with 421 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/12
Dmitri Cherniak is a Canadian artist based in New York. An engineer by education and trade, Cherniak sees the act of automation as a creative process. His project Ringers was issued with 1000 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/13
Simon De Mai is an artist and designer. By day, he’s a freelance designer and art director working in the creative industry. By night, he’s a creative programmer, blockchain enthusiast and video artist. His project Spectron was issued with 400 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/17
Kai Turner is a creative director and product designer who sees technology and code as the medium of digital art. His project 27-Bit Digital was issued with 1024 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/21
Kjetil Golid is a system developer and data analyst residing in Trondheim, Norway. Kjetil has a keen interest in algorithms and data structures, which forms the basis of many of his generative art pieces. His project Archetype was issued with 600 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/23
Alexis André is a French artist and researcher living in Tokyo for almost 20 years. His main practice consists in taking generative approaches to redesign the future of entertainment, and his artistic practice is just one aspect of his overall work. His project 720 Minutes was issued with 720 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/27
Aaron Penne is an engineer and an artist. He explores the blurred line between organic and algorithmic, creating generative artwork that inspires curiosity and builds community. His project Apparitions was issued with 1500 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/28
Rob Dixon (Radix) is a game developer, writer, and visual artist, who's created a number of games and wearable NFTs for the virtual world Decentraland. His project Inspirals was issued with 1000 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/29
daLenz is a software engineer, hobby photographer and blockchain / art enthusiast. Their project Aerial View was issued with 1000 unique iterations: https://artblocks.io/project/35