Dear Bankless Nation,

Artists and developers continue to drive innovation in the realm of digital art. From generative art and highly curated platforms to interesting display spaces and metaverses, digital creators are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Somnium Spaces, Worlds Beyond, Decentraland, and Cryptovoxels provide digital spaces where users can manipulate the space they purchase to be used in any number of ways. Now, the Artifex Project is combining curation with spaces to create a world of art concept new to the digital realm. Kaf brings us the details surrounding this project.

QQL continues the innovation, turning things around on the generative art side, allowing the collector to take the drivers seat in the creation of a piece of art, to be included in the collection once completed and minted. Pedro takes us behind the scenes on how this project started and how to participate.

DustyEye arrives this week with an announcement for a special event they are curating. Perchy gives us a warning about financial advice in Chippi Corner. And The Rug gives us the mostly credible news about sage wisdom from our elders.

Welcome to Decentralized Arts.

Contributors: BanklessDAO Writers Guild (Grendel, Kouros, Kaf, nonsensetwice, Frank America)

This is the official NFT newsletter of BanklessDAO. If you were a Premium Member of the Bankless Newsletter as of May 1st, 2021, you have been subscribed to this newsletter at launch. To unsubscribe, edit your settings here.

Artifex

Reinventing the way we collect art

By Kaf

Digital art began with simple computer graphics and has recently seen a creative explosion like never before.

We are facing a new market paradigm in digital art. Artists are capable today of creating worlds from scratch. The union of different arts such as music, 3D design, and painting intermingle and allow us to enjoy increasingly immersive inspiring experiences.

In the Artifex project, 100 of the best digital artists have come together to create a unique collection. The challenge was to create a metaphorical representation of themselves within the NFT space.

What is Artifex?

Artifex Project is a virtual platform for popular digital artists to auction their artwork in the form of exclusive NFTs.

Founded in 2020, New York City-based Artifex is partnering with artists and arts organizations to honor pioneering creatives in the burgeoning NFT space.

The Artifex Project features 100 epic NFT artists: 1/1 artwork, 3D sculptures, and immersive art experiences. Its mission is to find, retain and preserve the essence of fine digital art. The Artifex Project has worked with big names in the digital art sphere like FVCKRENDER and toomuchlag. Coldie, Dave Krugman, Bryan Brinkman, and Roger Kilimanjaro, to mention a few, are some of the most recent to join.

The project is a portrayal of the spirits that occupy the NFT universe, creating an artist's image of the realm within the metaverse. They are depicted as, among other things, ghostly apparitions and cybernetic humanoids.

Family Wave Room

How does it work?

The Artifex Project poses the following query: How do you perceive yourself in a piece of art? Each artist responds with a unique piece of her own art that is a depiction of themselves. This turns into the initial 1/1 NFT. Through Artifex, the character steps out of the original artwork into virtual 3D immortality.

Each original artwork is auctioned as 1/1 NFT. The NFTs feature an Artifex, or a 3D sculpture of each artist's work, created by art director DurkAtWork. The Artifex is a collection of 100 NFTs, 67 of which are available as limited editions. 

The limited-edition 3D sculptures come with a collector's goodie bag, accessible when you connect your web3 wallet through the interface. Goodie bags include:

• 3D .glb file

• Artifex video, available as an mp4

• Alternate skin avatar pfp, available as a jpeg

• Twitter banner, available as a jpeg

Each Artifex sculpture is accompanied by its own custom gallery room, via project partner RareRooms. These spaces are specifically designed for the project.

Raf Grassetti Room

Each gallery room can be accessed via a link on mobile, web, and VR. Each one allows the exhibition of 5 NFTs of works of art, as well as 5 3D NFTs. Once you own a room, you can showcase not only your Artifex pieces but also other NFTs you own through a simple interface.

Collaboration with TIMEPieces

Artifex @artifex_project

You knew Artifex was up to something. Now it’s “TIME” to share what 🧵👇

1:36 PM ∙ Dec 15, 2022

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94Likes26Retweets

TIMEPieces, TIME's web3 community initiative, has teamed up with Seva.Love and Artifex to launch a very special collection.

World-renowned medical author Deepak Chopra will release a collection of NFTs for the 25th anniversary of his best-selling book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. TIMEPieces x Deepak Chopra: The Seven Collection features 73 NFT artists who have created unique artwork inspired by the book's teachings and lessons.

The exclusive, limited-edition collection will drop in January at nft.time.com

The collection also includes access to 3D sculptures and full 3D environments created by Artifex based on each of the book's seven chapters.

“What an honor it is to add a 3D dimension and immersive display to this collection. Artifex hopes the release will resonate on a deep level with its collectors,” said Roger Dickerman, Artifex CEO.

Final thoughts

Some NFT projects offer exclusive benefits to their holders, while others simply do so for the artistic value behind the work. Artifex NFTs have both qualities.

Some of the artists that are part of the project are already internationally recognized and bringing them all together under the same concept is what positions Artifex as one of the most exclusive NFTs collections on the market.

Many said that with the advent of the digital book, the physical book would disappear. Today we see that both coexist in harmony. The same will happen with digital art. Traditional art will not disappear. The stone sculpture and the oil paintings will continue to have their market. Digital art will continue to exist and evolve alongside traditional art.

Digital art history is being written right now and Artifex wants to be a part of it, as the best example of what digital art can be.

The Rug

Turns Out Mom Was Right All Along

Brought to you by The Rug

After prolonged deliberation and great internal brooding, young David had to admit to himself that Mom was right all along. And as is the case with most of these things, that was always true. 

“In this moment of regret, David realized that if he had listened to his mother and sold a third of his holdings, his net worth would be double its current amount. "Think of all the crypto I could buy with that, now," David noted.” 

Collect this personal self-reflection as NFT on optimism.

QQL: Where The Collector Becomes The Artist

By Pedro

In order to draw more attention to digital art from the traditional art crowd, creative means of art generation should be explored. Traditional fine art collectors aren’t going to dive into the NFT space because of profile picture (pfp) projects or roadmaps. This is why it’s important to continue driving innovation in the world of generative art.

Autoglyphs set the groundwork by creating the first piece of generative art in the space. This idea was then taken further by Art Blocks, which managed to catch the attention of many kinds of art collectors worldwide. 

So far, generative art has been driven from the perspective of the artist: an artist creates their algorithm and then generates however many pieces from that algorithm for collectors to buy. But what if we flipped this script and allowed the collector to decide how the algorithm should generate the art? What if the collector, in essence, becomes the artist?

This is exactly what QQL has done, and so far, with over 100 ETH in volume, it’s safe to say the idea has been well-received. 

What Is QQL?

QQL is, essentially, a collection of 999 blank canvases where each collector generates the end result that will go on a given canvas, all while keeping the original art style of the co-founder, Tyler Hobbs, in place. 

The project was founded by two people:

• Tyler Hobbs: Most known in the space for being the creator of arguably one of the most influential generative art pieces to date: Fidenza. 

• Dandelion Wist Mane: A well-respected NFT art collector who also co-founded Archipelago, a marketplace for generative art. 

Inspiration for the project primarily came from two pieces of art, both from the Art Blocks collection:

• Fidenza 938 (AKA “God Mode”): this piece displays the extreme rarities that can be produced through the generative art algorithm, and

• Meridian 801: a piece that showcases a more carefully curated design.

Mint Passes

The project launched on September 28th, when 900 Mint Passes were sold through a dutch auction on Archipelago. Of the 999 total Mint Passes, 99 of them were reserved for the team to use for future partnerships and collaborations.

Once you have one of these passes, you can create a QQL piece at any point in the future–the passes don’t expire–and because there are only 999 Mint Passes in existence, there can only be 999 QQL pieces of art.

Although the website is completely free for anyone to use, only mint pass holders can actually mint the pieces they generate (1 official art piece per mint pass). The minter decides which piece should be included in the official QQL collection. 

How Does It Work

When visiting the site, you’ll be presented with a screen that looks like this:

On the left, you’ll see the different parameters you can play around with in order to produce an image, which will be displayed on the right side of the screen. Some of the parameters you can play with include color, structure, layout, and sizing. 

The intention is to allow the minter to create their own unique work, all while keeping under the original concept and style of Tyler Hobbs. You’re steering the piece, rather than taking complete control of it. When the Mint Pass holder decides on a piece they like, they can officially generate the piece and add it to the collection. The cool thing about this is that the mint pass holder's Ethereum wallet address gets added directly to the seed of the NFT. This makes it impossible for anyone to duplicate and copy the minted art piece because each wallet address is unique.

Another unique benefit for the minter is that they get a 2% royalty every time their QQL piece is re-sold on the open market.  

Closing Thoughts

As of today, there have only been 132 QQL pieces minted, with the collection sitting at a floor price of around 17.5 ETH. 

This means that there are still 867 pieces yet to be minted. If you want to be one of those 867 minters, you’ll have to purchase a Mint Pass, which is currently sitting at a floor price of 14.5 ETH. 

I think it’s going to be a very long time before all 999 pieces get minted, and it’s likely that in the future when supply reduces, Mint Passes are going to be worth quite a premium. I’m also interested to see how these Mint Passes get used over the years; I wonder if we’ll see individual Mint Pass holders collaborate with big-name NFT individuals, like XCOPY for example.

The space is still extremely young, but already, the world of generative art is striving ahead with innovation.

Chippi Corner

By Perchy

VOLPINI HOUSE MUSEUM

curated by DustyEye

digital animations by Mattia Sanarico

Renato Volpini’s historic studio based in Milan, finally opens up again to the public to narrate his life and the artist’s cosmic visions.

​​Renato Volpini (Naples, 10th of December 1934  - 3rd of February Milan 2017) after an informal career debut, began in the early ‘60s to paint alien-like creatures suspended in the cosmos.

Machinic forms of intelligence and visionary landscapes, decades ahead of the popular sci-fi imaginary.  The Maestro’s historic studio based in Milan re-opens with a new set-up, curated by DustyEye, to narrate the tale of Volpini’s life and art.

Renato Volpini’s House Museum also includes a selection of previously unpublished artworks, digitally animated by artist Mattia Sanarico.

To accompany your tour, art critic Vincenzo Bordoni prepared eight audio guides to retrace the life of the artist who dedicated his life researching Elsewhere.

The house also guests a collective exhibition featuring different artists including: Giorgio Finamore, Luca Ballestra, Mattia Sanarico, Lelrah, Waro, The Barboonist, Gerlanda di Francia, BITNB, ViperHaze, Paola Perusco, Vandalo, DustyEye.

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WEB: www.DustyEye.com
IG: @DustyEye_DE
TWITTER: @Dusty_Eye

Meme

A small joke contributed by The Rug.

PostScript & Acknowledgements

Decentralized Arts is written and produced by a small team of contributors who are passionate about art, both visual and written, and its growing place in crypto and NFTs. With each edition, we aim to bring you not only the most current and relevant news in the NFT space, but also explorations in what it means for our culture and societies for this market to continue to grow and expand. When everyone is an owner of art, we all gain a deeper appreciation for it.

If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please share it with someone who you think will appreciate the content. We also welcome suggestions via our feedback form.

With great appreciation for you, we thank you for reading and subscribing to Decentralized Arts.

Cordially,

Grendel, Kouros, Kaf, nonsensetwice, and Frank America