Floor is Rising Ep 8 - Ethereum Generative Art Projects
Framergence + Pulsquares - The mysterious pseudonymous Arihz
Primer: Join Sabretooth and Kizu as they discuss on-chain generative art projects, which is one branch of the entire universe of NFTs in the crypto space. On-chain art is the kind of art that is uniquely crypto native and tied to the blockchain as the medium in which it resides. Read on more to find out if being on or off-chain will become the main determinant of value in NFTs.
Framergence
Introduction
Emergence is made up of two separate mini-projects - Framergence and Pulsquares
Started on Mar 31
The founder is an anonymous Brazilian computer scientist who is quite familiar with fractals
Interesting that even though the founders of crypto projects are commonly anonymous, it is not so for NFT projects
When the project was launched, every single Framergence piece was released for free (excluding gas)
Some trouble during the claiming process resulted in some drama during the first few days that contributed to the viral spread of the project
The most well-known feature of the project is the deflationary burn feature
Has a feature in the smart contract where you can take N Framergences (up to a max of 9), burn them and receive N-1 new Framergences.
On-chain vs off-chain art
NFT can be divided into on-chain and off-chain art
Off-chain art is what most people think of as NFT, and these can be found on all the different platforms except on Art blocks
The artist uses some off-chain tools like Photoshop to Illustrator to draw or render their works of art, usually in the form of an image file or a movie file
Then these are hosted either on IPFS or a server and when an NFT is minted, it will point to that specific file
On-chain art is where the entire visual comes from the smart contract - essentially the smart contract draws the visual itself
There is no hosted image anywhere
On-chain generative art is a sociological phenomenon to preserve the NFT world to make it impenetrable to the traditional art world
The traditional artist is not able to enter this world without going through a huge learning curve
A lot of collectors of on-chain generative art are developers and on-chain generative art requires developer skillsets as well
In the crypto space, being a developer is generally a good bonus skillset
Since NFT is developed on the blockchain, coding skill is also being highly valued and valued way more than the traditional art world
How art style is tied to the medium
Style of art is tied to the medium
Going forward, we are going to see more of a tribal guarding of visual territory
A lot of artists will mind the visual cues and expressions that are native to their tribe
Now we are seeing more of the abstract kind of styles that are closely connected with the potential and the kind of native aesthetics or formats that are associated with the programmes used to mint NFT
In the past, if you only have MS paint and only a mouse without any kind of pen, your manual agility is restricted by how good you are with the mouse
"You couldn't really do anything because no one had a pen, right? You just had the mouse and you have to left-click and right-click and the way you drag that around on your canvas on the screen produces this kind of image that was very clumsy because you were controlling it with the mouse, and you didn't have a lot of fine motor control over that."
- Kizu
Hence the medium determines the kind of image that you can make - image-making is always going to be tied to the technology native to it
The style of Framergence is determined by the use of NFT and fractals and is closely tied to what the programs can produce
What makes art critically acclaimed
Traditionally, critically acclaimed art was always in tune with the technological innovations of its time, whether or not that entailed a self-awareness of the medium and pushing the envelope, and the artist making it embraced the kind of medium that was in question
Around the 1960s in New York, Allan Kaprow and his circle were making art that was against objecthood and wanted to make ephemeral performances called Happening
These were not theatrical performances, but consists of very banal actions like drinking water and walking around in circles but performed in front of an audience
But at that time, it was considered Avant grade and subversive
This is a good example where there wasn't a technological innovation going on but they were going against painting and sculpture as a medium of art, which is what everyone else was doing
Eventually, when it was shown in the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim, it gave validation to these forms of art that had a very different medium
In a way, NFT is going through the same trajectory as the Happening movement
The art resides in the smart contract and it would not have been possible without the blockchain.
Pulsquares
Pulsquares has an upgrading process where you can enhance an existing piece by burning another piece using the function burn-to-compose
The receiver piece will gain a unique trait called Constellation, and the burnt piece will be incorporated and live inside the receiver piece by orbiting around the frame
The burning function adds very little to the piece so it seems a bit disappointing regarding the burn-to-compose function
But from a smart contract perspective, there's not a lot of things you can do
Comparing off-chain generative and on-chain generative art projects, it can be seen that the former is more sophisticated than the latter because the computation power on-chain is much more limited
This is also symbolic of the larger crypto scene
If NFT is a representation of the crypto culture, then the most characteristic representation of crypto culture is the economics that crypto represents
Specifically Austrian economics because that branch of economics makes a big fuss about scarcity and deflation
Hence Pulsquares having a deflationary burning of NFT is a huge feature of this project
Interesting that the kind of art that is truly crypto native and specific to the medium is being squeezed because of the limited functionality of the blockchain
Perhaps in 3 to 5 years time, we can look back at this period and say that this is like the emergent period where the straightforward style of art is possible on-chain at that particular time
This is similar to how we look back at the early internet art and harken back to that golden era of what one could do with a very simple program
Will the main determinant of NFT art be whether it is on or off-chain?
Up to this stage in NFT history, generative art has proven to be a big seller
Originated by Autoglyphs, whose prices are skyrocketing now
The prices of such projects are going up 10x in such a short space of time
What took decades in the past is happening in a space of weeks or days
The thesis among NFT collectors is that the art form that is native to the medium (i.e. on-chain art) is going to stand the test of time
However, the market operates with a mind of its own, regardless of our opinions about it
This is the first art movement where there is a critical mass of audience and collectors on social media discussing and making opinions about where it is going
But whether the main determinant of the value of the NFT being on-chain or not is still an open question
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