00 pieces of code-based artwork. Each artwork refers to a calendar and evolves dynamically with the changes of each day and lunar phase. “Gazers” uses the long-standing connection between humans and the moon as a marker of time, emphasizing the fleeting and urgent sense of the present moment, while prompting us to look up and reflect on the future – towards our own moon version.
Gazers #751, as shown in the static version above, was recently acquired by anonymous digital art collector Kanbas. During the solar eclipse visible in North America on April 8, 2024, Kanbas released a video showing Gazer #751 burning with a flickering halo (see tweet below). This is still a breathtaking sight and demonstrates how digital art on the blockchain can provide a dynamic experience that connects our digital and physical realities in a delightful way.
On the other hand, there is another interesting subset of digital items on the blockchain that are designed to be highly durable, making them almost eternal or immutable. The notable feature of these durable digital items is that as long as the underlying blockchain remains operational, they will continue to exist. This is because the basic data required to render these digital items is directly stored on the blockchain, so they have minimal external dependencies.
In some cases, such items may still rely on widely distributed databases or development tools, such as some generative art NFTs on Art Blocks. However, overall, the blockchain provides a comprehensive canvas for these items, where they have all the necessary resources to realize their intended expressions.
For Ethereum and similar smart contract blockchains, they do not point to media files hosted off-chain or externally, but only link to on-chain data, which is usually stored in smart contracts on the same blockchain. For Bitcoin, the data behind the ordinal is directly recorded as metadata in specific satoshi transactions. In this regard, all ordinals are almost immutable, unlike NFTs, which depend on the data they are linked to.
Nevertheless, what interests me conceptually about these on-chain digital items is the dimension of time – how they force us to consider the longevity of our digital experiences, which are often ephemeral. Our most Lindy blockchain-based digital items seem reasonable, for example, Bitcoin and Ethereum are expected to outlive people who are still alive today. They may hibernate but never die. Even if their owners lose their private keys, they will not disappear, they just become immovable. *Block unicorn note: The Lindy effect (also known as Lindy’s law) is a theory that the longer something has existed, the longer its future lifespan will be.
Considering this, I am indeed pondering the significance types we will assign to on-chain digital cultural items that can outlive our personal lives. What will their memories store as they have ownership and tradeability on the blockchain? How will their on-chain permanence relate to the off-chain cultural heritage over time?
Rutherford Chang’s “CENTS” (2024) is centered around the form of placing 10,000 cents on 10,000 satoshis, using ordinals as a medium to immutably connect the smallest units of both the US dollar and Bitcoin. Inspired by the discrepancy between the metal value (about 2.5 cents) and the face value (about 1 cent) of copper pennies minted in 1982 and earlier, the artist chose 10,000 out-of-circulation pennies and documented them. Then, their images were immutably inscribed on satoshis as ordinals, while the actual coins were melted and cast into a solid copper block.
Apart from commenting on the perception of material and non-material value in different contexts, “CENTS” is also a contemplation of the impact of time on value. Rutherford Chang himself had talked about collecting pennies as early as 2017. More importantly, the sense of history conveyed by “CENTS” gives it great weight. Although each penny had homogenized characteristics during manufacturing, they have now acquired unique traces of the passage of time in the hands of successive owners. Therefore, “CENTS” can be considered a generative artwork, as collector become.eth wrote in a tweet, “shaped by an algorithm worn by the world.”
Furthermore, the story of each penny does not end with its transformation into a digital artifact, as it will have a new history on the blockchain, where ownership and transaction of the object take place in the new digital and physical society. As enduring digital items that connect multiple times and economic backgrounds, “CENTS” undoubtedly has the potential to become a leading art collectible on Bitcoin and be seen as a valuable store of value in the future. “CENTS” is launched in collaboration with Inscribing Atlantis and Gamma on sovrn.art.
alignDRAW is an AI model for text-to-image generation established by Elman Mansimov and the development team in 2015, developed by Elman after completing his undergraduate computer science program at the University of Toronto. The model was published in a conference paper in 2016 and is widely regarded as the first text-to-image model that laid the foundation for today’s various easily accessible AI tools for image and video generation.
As these generative AI tools continue to transform image creation and our visual culture, alignDRAW serves as a milestone marking the beginning of this normalization shift. In light of this, Fellowship collaborated with Elman Mansimov to mint all 2,709 images created from the alignDRAW model as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain in 2023. Among them, 168 images were generated based on 21 unique text prompts, with sets of 8 images each, published in the 2016 paper. The other 2,541 images were generated based on 21 text prompts (15 of which are unique, and 6 matching the prompts in the paper), uploaded to the University of Toronto website in November 2015.
Fellowship designed a technical architecture that allows each image to be stored on-chain in its original byte format without alteration or enhancement. This was done progressively to take advantage of lower gas prices on Ethereum. By persistently and immutably storing alignDRAW images on the Ethereum blockchain, this approach affirms its historic role in leading the new era of human-computer collaboration that integrates science and art.
Another intriguing aspect of perceiving such on-chain digital items is how their creators work within the technical constraints of blockchain data storage. The artisticity underpinning these items lies in optimizing data to achieve the creator’s creative vision using each byte as elegantly as possible.
As described by data scientist and on-chain artwork artist Chainleft in an article, on-chain art is “an homage to the belief in eternity, where in the tiny we capture the infinite.” Indeed, from the bits and pieces of blockchain space, we may be able to sow the seeds of more extensive and enduring forms of digital culture.
Larva Labs’ Autoglyphs (2019) was initially an exploration of creating “completely stand-alone” artworks that could execute within the strict data storage limits of the Ethereum blockchain. The result is a highly optimized generative algorithm – entirely residing in the smart contract – that generates text patterns in ASCII format. This text pattern can then be individually transformed into an image based on instructions encoded in the smart contract.
This approach pays homage to early generative artists like Michael Noll, Ken Knowlton, and Sol LeWitt, whose works offered a perspective of artworks as systems rather than representative pieces of art. In turn, Autoglyphs, as a stand-alone native medium, used for creating, owning, and distributing digital art on the blockchain, has inspired many generative artists to continue pushing the boundaries of blockchain as an art medium. No wonder Autoglyphs has been likened to prehistoric cave paintings on the chain.
Curated, a fund that collects crypto art, also has a concise editorial article outlining the key features of Autoglyphs, which is a good starting point for understanding its visual output and its collectible value.
Furthering the concept of the canvas, we can also view the blockchain as a computer.
By computer, I don’t just mean a processing device that executes instructions within fixed parameters, but a broader concept that traces back to the early personal computer vision proposed by computer scientist J.C.R. Licklider during his work at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the early 1960s:
“Computers are destined to become interactive intellectual amplifiers for everyone worldwide.”
Here, two key concepts are worth emphasizing:
First, computers are not just information processors but intellectual amplifiers – platforms that enable more dynamic and simulation-based modes of thinking, which is what computation enables.
Second, computers are communication devices that empower us to coordinate with others in a larger network.
Let’s analyze them in detail as we explore how the computational possibilities offered by the blockchain shape digital culture.
Ethereum has been described as a “world computer” from early on. In this sense, Ethereum and other similar blockchains can be understood as decentralized computation platforms on which applications can be built and executed globally. This is achieved through the ability of these blockchains to deploy smart contracts that can execute complex functionalities beyond simple token transfers between accounts.
By executing smart contracts through Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) (or equivalent on other blockchains), which provides a general-purpose computation engine, the digital items established and controlled by these smart contracts can be designed to be composable. In other words, they can be combined or constructed in different ways to unlock new use cases, just as developers utilize application programming interfaces (APIs) to build more powerful software products.
Therefore, digital items on the blockchain represent not only dynamic software but also dynamically connectable items to other items or applications on-chain. This composability makes digital items on the blockchain greater than the sum of their individual parts – as building blocks that can generate broader, more appealing, and possibly unprecedented digital experiences.
After all, the components of digital culture rarely exist in isolation, even outside of cryptocurrency. A particular cultural item or concept’s persistence in the digital space is often because it is easily integrable with other elements or remixable to create derivative works, further sparking interest in the original item or concept. In fact, the rise of TikTok as an entertainment platform is attributed to how its tools simplify the process of video remixing, effectively turning videos into composable media and facilitating the network effect of creativity.
Returning to cryptocurrencies, I believe that composable digital items on the blockchain can serve as cultural amplifiers for digital culture. This is similar to what Licklider envisioned when he assumed computers could become “intellectual amplifiers” by enabling new modes of thinking, such as “dynamic simulation.” In this regard, on-chain composability can enhance the mixing process of creators and consumers while catalyzing new approaches to creating digital culture.
On one hand, the blockchain allows for more robust tracking of provenance, ownership, and transactions, providing a transparent and auditable record that can foster trust and accountability in the art world.
On the other hand, it also enables new forms of collaboration and participation, such as crowdfunding, fractional ownership, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). This opens up possibilities for artists and creators to engage directly with their audience, bypassing traditional gatekeepers and intermediaries.
Overall, the blockchain’s impact on digital culture extends beyond the realm of art and can reshape various industries, including music, gaming, publishing, and more. By leveraging the unique features of the blockchain, such as decentralization, immutability, and programmability, we can build a more inclusive, transparent, and participatory digital culture.