DISTANCE// #4/10

Who will be the most Meowfool of the Meowfoolest?! 6 HaCKittieZ are fighting for the crown of madness! It is time for crowns to change their history: people, this is the crown of insanity we are talking about. So tell us, who is insaner than the insanest of collectors? Only the artists - the creators - would know, while crowning the one who is brave enough to play with the craziest possibilities of Async programmable art, on these 6 HaCKittieZ. Welcome to the feast of fools. HaCKittieZ is a collaboration of Hackatao, CryptoKitties and Async. The 6 KittieZ are a reinterpretation by Hackatao of the CryptoKitties’ classic elements, following their own style and getting inspiration from their own art pieces.

The minty freshness

2019 Blue Edition Bastet. Marking the artist’s latest mural on Stevenson Square, as part of the #OutHouseMCR project.

A digital original of Kevin Roose's New York Times column, "Buy This Column on the Blockchain!" Published 3/24/21.

Almost every year, we capture ourselves in a way that no photo or video is capable of: with a photoscan. If you dig through our archives, you'll find many of them and can see exactly how we change over time. Sam Gorski, Creator | I wanted to find the oldest scan of myself and put him side-by-side with Sam from the present. While it is hard to look at it and not miss the years past, at the same time, this gives me hope for the future by embracing and cherishing the change in my life. How would I have gotten this far without him? About This Piece | Sam on the left was captured in 2014, while Sam on the right was captured last week (2021). This work represents the personal, creative, and emotional journey in all of us, and the hope that ourselves tomorrow may be better than ourselves today.

The term “Fuku” refers to fortune or good luck. “Shiva” refers to the Hindu deity who represents strongly polar qualities, both severe and delicate. On a beach inspired by adventures on Phi Phi island in Thailand, three youths cavort. Two are representational figures and the third is psychologically rendered. A dynamic relationship ensues between the triad; a reciprocity of active and passive states. The boy on the right engages in maneuvers of evasion, defense, and is dressed in a speedo which reiterates the colors and symbolism of the caution tape on the left and upper right frame of the composition. In concurrent reaction the psychedelic figure shoots out a rocket powered paper airplane. The nude boy seated in the froth and sand approaches in passive repose, and is met with active attention but equal physical reserve by the psychedelic being. Perhaps the most naked figure is also the least representational. Looming large, dynamic, and active, it engages its companions playfully. Various symbols interject into the otherwise naturalistic scene, most notably a beach ball and two contaminated barrels nested in the sand. The upright barrel reads “FukuShima” in Kanji. The barrel laying down reads “Dharma”. To the left the scene is bounded by caution tape, reiterating the danger of the nuclear waste while also hosting alien archetypes, whose presence, as is the nature of these entities, runs up and just behind the consciousness of the psychedelic figure’s eggshell-like skull.