Editorials
Art In The Age Of Post NFTism
Saturday, November 12th 2022
IN TOUCH, the international group exhibition hosted during Berlin Art Week, between 13th — 25th September 2022, empowered by @despace_berlin and @tezos. Featuring 35 works by 20 artists at the fore-front of the generative art movement on Tezos, curated by @thisaintanika and @micolmicolmicol.
“NFTism signifies that, beyond the smart contract, what constitutes an NFT is the community that has sprung up around the practice that unites the creators and collectors way beyond the notion of buying and selling digital art.”- Kenny Schachter, April 2021, Art critic and Curator
The experience reflected on the paradigmatic shift in the relationship between artists and collectors that has evolved so potently with art released via smart contracts on the blockchain. By bringing the energetic dynamism of this discourse to the fore, in a physical space, visitors were invited to partake in the generative worlds a new generation of creators are forging.
Post-NFTism now means that NFTs and thus the interest in digital art have become so commonplace that NFTs and digital art also want to be experienced in physical space. No matter how irritated one is by the three letters NFT, it can no longer be ignored that a new art world has emerged online that has more to offer than the old art world. Art Unplugged
Dekabinett | Despace
painting & meural made by @Dr_Revel_NFT
Berlin is a global artistic mecca with an urban landscape that is a gravitational epicentre of creativity and expressionism. The streets are alive with unrivalled radicalism, rebelliousness, and innovation that flourishes in an environment that celebrates the avant-garde.
IN TOUCH occurred in the dekabinett pop-up exhibition space, built to explore the ways in which art on the blockchain is changing the present and reimagining the future. The host community, despace berlin, propagates involvement in Web3 in Berlin, focusing on the Tezos ecosystem — created and curated by TZ Connect.
artwork by RossnerManuel
The Sold Out “Peripherally Involved” collection by @LindaDouniaR entailed a physical to digital to physical to digital and back again process that was used to create this stunning result. THE PARALLEL WINTERS by @ivonatau studies different metamorphosis directions of the same starting point in the latent space of a trained GAN model. The collection was a limited edition collection with open edition signed prints.
“Peripherally Involved” by @LindaDouniaR (left) | “THE PARALLEL WINTERS” by @ivonatau(right)
Randomness is crucial for encryption. For this reason, @Cloudflare makes extensive use of lava lamps to create the randomness necessary to encrypt data like your credit card information online. Silicon Graphics initially applied for the patent for the concept of lava lamps for encryption in 1996. I really like how the engineer depicted the extremely unpredictable. What other example that combines computer science and the zeitgeist comes to mind?- Manuel Rossner
Second Show
The second show was opened by a panel discussion on Contemporary Art vs. Crypto Art? This was Moderated by Anika Meier, featuring Sarah Friend (Artist), Manuel Rossner (Artist), Micol Ap (VerticalCrypto Art) and Diane Drubay (Tezos) discussing how the two art worlds merge together.
“Transposition” by @claudslr (left) [group show 2] | “Übergang Transition” by @andreasrau_eu(right) [group show 3]
“Transposition” by @claudslr works with artificial intelligence and the cyanotype printmaking process to create a photogram of an AI-generated wildflower. The cyanotype, largely used by botanist Anna Atkins in the 80s, is known for documenting plant species in a way that is true to organic form. By cyanotype printing plant species created by machine, “Transposition” documents the growing artificial herbarium blooming in the digital art ecosystem, and the artist’s own journey as a curator of this landscape.
Vibrato by @LorenBednar is part of new explorations into motion art, a Kaleidoscope with cleaner geometry.
Bewitched by density, lush plants and trees, Zancan defies the genealogy of LeWitt, Mohr, and Molnar with wild abandon that neglects any pretence of geometric post-minimalism as output.- ThisIsPaper
The “Ignis Et Sanguis” by @zancan algorithms offer a more figurative approach to generative art, working on the tensions between order and chaos, figuration and abstraction, decoration and symbolism, in a context where human civilizations are faced with the challenge of their impact on the living world.
“Ignis Et Sanguis” by @zancan (left)
Third Show
The “Non Berlin” by @ismahelios edition of 15, “Redols” by @carreras_anna collection (her genesis drop on @fxhash), “Übergang Transition” by @andreasrau_eu and “Take Wing” by @mwiederrecht sold out quickly as the exhibition gathered momentum.
“Redols” by @carreras_anna
The “Take Wing” collection, by @mwiederrecht, depicts hope, optimism, and thrilling excitement of a person taking off and soaring to new heights. The algorithm stems from an attempt to go back to art fundamentals and codify composition rules and painterly techniques into a generative form taking into account focal points, contrast, eye movement, and colour theory while still giving the algorithm freedom to explore random colour palettes, flow field movement, brush strokes, and other degrees of freedom.
“log is a dynamic token that generates a new output on a daily frequency forever. The series is created from three seperate tokens (‘log[-1]’, ‘log[0]’, ‘log[1]’) that can be combined to form a diptych or triptych.”- @rudxane1
“log[-1], log[0] & log[1]” by @rudxane1
Finissage
The last day of IN TOUCH — Art in the Age of Post-NFTism was celebrated with a finissage at the gallery🍷🥳
“{Compend-AI} series” by @agoriamusic
Agoria created a signed physical print of {Compend-AI} in a collection initiated with walls remnants ➰ “{Compend-AI} series” is @agoriamusic new body of work, which looks at immanence of the living into the code, capturing the human generative process.
“UNIT W” by @kimasendorf
“UNIT W” by @kimasendorf included a signed physical print, with the collection featuring a series of real time animations underpinned by an identical core algorithm but variations in color and direction of movement.
