She Caught a Unicorn (Blue) #54/125

More than 15 years ago, Tor onion services were brought to digital life. An ecosystem of onions has been blooming ever since. To commemorate this landmark in the history of privacy, we collaborated with @ixshells to create a one-of-a-kind digital artifact: a generative art piece derived using the private key of the very first onion service, duskgytldkxiuqc6.onion. This auction benefits the Tor Project, the nonprofit protecting your human right to privacy. 1020*1280 / 60fps / .mp4 / RSA1024

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?

The Rabble on the TV.

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.

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Beware of the CryptoBots.