FLOOD #16/614

No Favour for you. Cold variation.

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 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?

Only the best

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

∾ 2160 x 2160 px, Video (46.5 MB)