Everything #108/175

Today we are the ones our parents warned us about in the past. Do you remember the colourful PEZ dispensers with the different faces? When we were kids we used to stack candy, and today we stack satoshis because we have a plan B. We stick to this plan because Mahatma Gandhi has already said, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. That is why we are giving the middle finger to the existing system.

Sophia Instantiation by Sophia the AI robot x Andreas Bonaceto

Visual Toy honoring the greatness of the most awarded club in the world of football, Real Madrid. Including his top stars of all time including President Bernabeu, a myth in the club's management. This Visual Toy represents the club as a title machine with the Champions League as a great emblem, since it holds the leadership in victories in the maximum European competition. A magical and fantastic mechanism like the history of the club itself. Including the Bernabeu in its last year before the remodeling in 2020, this Visual Toy brings together all the essence and soul of the merengue team. https://javierarres.com

The second "Visual Toy" about cryptocurrency and its universe that continues the exclusive collection on this theme. After the first Visual Toy, dedicated to the cryptocurrency itself, this visual toy is the other side of the coin. It represents, as its title tells us, the investor's dream, the current person and his financial hopes. A surreal fantasy of the dreams and longings of every investor, in this case the crypto investor. In this magical, happy and colorful dream, aspirations of all kinds intermingle, both the desire for great benefits, represented in a long animation that shows us a production cycle or series production that ranges from the gastronomic recipe of a two-ingredient cake. Bitcoin slice and Ethereum smoothie, passing through magic, represented in a fairy that transforms the cake into real money, which is sucked into a giant capsule to accumulate it and multiply it. The rest is full of investor aspirations, which appear in their dreams in the form of profits or screens that announce that values are rising steadily, as well as physical possessions, such as the sailboat, the helicopter, homes and other objects or possibilities. A dream full of happiness, fun and hope.

Continuing the exploration of well known algorithms, this work delves into pixel sorting. The works of several cubists were first averaged with custom averaging software and then sorted with a bespoke pixel sorting algorithm. All tools were written in javascript, for masochistic reasons.

The idea for this piece was borne out of a tweet of mine that caused a bit of a stir. I’d posted a link to a blog article I’d written a number of months previous titled ‘Who is the Creator’ discussing various types of creative collaborations and why I hire people to work on my animations. It generated a lot of debate around creation and attribution with the community split on whether it’s right or wrong for an artist to hire other professionals to help them realize their art projects. I decided to push the boundaries even further and see how the cryptoart community responded. What if I quite literally had nothing to do with the physical or digital elements of the work other than coming up with the concept and coordinating it? I decided there was one artist in the space who could add huge value to this idea on levels that none other could and so I gathered my courage and contacted the great José Delbo to ask him if he’d be interested in a very unique collaboration. I explained to him that to make this piece ‘work’ he couldn't have any say in what I produced and moreover, he wouldn’t even be allowed to see the animation until it was dropped on MakersPlace. To my surprise, Mr Delbo agreed to my proposal. The animation tells the story of the creative process, which includes my roles as writer, director, and producer working with a team and making edits and changes ‘in real time’. The dialogue between myself and my ‘hired guns’ plays out in front of the viewer. The music written for the piece adds to the nostalgia of the comic book superhero theme but other elements such as the snapping and kicking of the pencil and the signing of my signature at the bottom incorporates further layers and challenges the viewer to ask important questions, such as, is the ‘Art’ the final animation (the creation) or is the ‘Art’ the concept/credit for the creation itself?