It's Raining Gucci #34/485

This piece represents the creation of a new "Visual Toy", a term created by me to encompass my unique and exclusive GIF-Arts. The latter, "Crypto Toy Coin" is the only and first in the cryptocurrency theme. In it I represent the fast-paced world of finance in the virtual environment, the Internet with its universe of colors and infinite visual impact, an optimistic and exciting future, a world of possibilities that opens before us. These "Visual Toys" invite you to imagine, that is their function, that is the game. The ultimate goal is that you imagine, that it is you who gives it meaning. There are no good or bad answers, just the projection of each one. I've only created the trigger, the piece where you can project your imagination and let it fly.

A figure, Alex, stands mostly naked in the midst of a physical and psychological maelstrom. He is clad only in nostalgic 80’s era socks, on a tenuous island between active waters and a variety of shark denizens. Sharks on the right side of the image are all beached, including a shark with a quartz crystal snout, an orange shark wrapped in a life buoy, and a shark further in the distance wearing an 80’s style shirt with the number “88”. On the left side is the largest shark, wearing bright glossy red lipstick and brandishing prominent teeth with braces. She is cordoned off from the figure by a roped float divider, and within her thought bubble is a warning symbol. Behind the figure, hovering in the air, are Grey aliens emerging from the distance, out of a series of elliptical UFO shaped interdimensional membranes. The Greys take on the visual form of spermazoa ostensibly impregnating the interdimensional thresholds. As is typical, these Greys inhabit a zone just behind the unconscious topology of Alex’s dissociative mind. Though Alex’s bottom half is representative, his top half mutates into a psychological cornucopia. In a manner akin to “Auto-Erotic Sphinx”, a predecessor work, the figure has self suctioned—an act of sensual infatuation, enjoyment, and exploration. Upward exists the figure’s primary conscious eye, adorned with a revolutionary beret emblazoned with a Bitcoin badge. The figure’s summit features the nose of a fighter jet facing off against video game Bullet Bills, one of whom is marked by a communist North Korean star. A cropped section of a UFO observes the contest. Alex’s mind branches both left and right. To the left is more singular embodied consciousness, manifesting two eyes and a Ganesh trunk grasping crayons. The right branch dissociates upward diagonally, emerging into an array of eyes, faces, teeth, tail, a unicorn horn, and much more—all of which participate in expressing his unconscious being; a democracy of psychic factions representing thought impressions and associations. All illumination and darkness– fernal, infernal, high consciousness and corporeal underbelly–reside in this realm. In the distance are relatively languid, light clouds, and against the firmament hovers a colossal distant eye peering over the scene and far beyond. This painting possesses underlying genetic traits with previous works such as “Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys”, “Dionysus”, and “Fuku-Shiva”. The work serves also as a nod to an earlier period of art inspiration during late teens and early twenties— born out of the nakedness, vulnerability, curiosity, and wonder inherent to coming of age and all subsequent psychedelic revelation.

"El imán humilla al hierro. Es una teoría sobre el amor. Magnets humiliate iron. It's a theory about love." --Marco Denevi

A young figure caught in a moment of distraction, aware only ephemerally of his unconscious being, as it engages in psychological and psychedelic layer spaces. His right arm casually cradles a moray eel; the figure is comfortable but not truly aware of the potentials for danger in such negligence. His shirt reads “Bello” in Pokemon style font, harkening back to a childhood straddling the millennial threshold. To his right side, out of the unconscious deep, shrouded alien heads propagate as a fractal totem, each new iteration a more sophisticated rendering of emotional masking over the cold mystery of the greys. As the scion of the Budgie-Sattva, the young man, in his distraction, is also simultaneously aware of higher levels of self discovery. To his left a psychological topology sets beneath the oracle side of an 8 ball ,hovering; its message a purest concept of acceptance. The “Scion” lettering is in 80’s HeMan style bold declaration. The lower right side of the painting is like a hybrid of melon, feathers, and seeds. The crystals in the background bring light; conducted, refracted, reflected, and dispersed, to balance the dark shadow of the figure’s physical body. The aura of the scion succeeds in layers to point, with a finger, and the crown chakra, toward a center of a mandala existing as nigh pure application of strokes, in essence painterly abstraction, but also revealing hints of the Aura of migraine, and the bi-hemispherical nature of the brain–noting concerns of the possibility of inherited mental disease. Yet the flourish of chakra as it sets against that center is robust, active, coherent, and reveling against all fear. Fundamentally, the piece speaks to the activation of one’s potential to begin to “Know Thyself”, and find greater awareness out of the enigmas of the mind–as an inculcated seed given to the rich soil of one’s own birthright.

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?