Do electric memes dream of JPEGS?: an interview with Moxarra Gonzalez

Do electric memes dream of JPEGS?: an interview with Moxarra Gonzalez

Oliver Scialdone May 25, 2022 Artist Profiles

“GM JPEGS” by @moxarrarare (2021)

Do electric memes dream of JPEGS?: an interview with Moxarra Gonzalez

Oliver Scialdone
2 years ago

Moxarra Gonzalez by Dave Krugman

What counts as art?  It’s a question with no definitive answer that artists and theorists have wrestled with for centuries, yet somehow, the artistic establishment still claims to know the truth. Distinctions between art and not art, high art and low art, the valuable and the worthless, often reflect the tastes of the ruling class. Over time, as more and more artists embrace styles and subjects that the traditional artworld refuses to engage with, those styles and practices assimilate into the mainstream. Then, once something becomes too popular for the elite to ignore, the cultural canon appropriates it.

“This isn’t art,” is an accusation frequently leveled at crypto artists. And while there is a great variety of art minted as NFTs, from digitally rendered oil paintings to fine photography, Web3 has seen its share of distinct styles and movements completely unique to the digital space (some even predating Web3), from trash art to vaporwave to work that utilizes blockchain itself as part of the medium. Unsurprisingly, some of the most emblematic pieces of crypto art have traditional collectors rolling their eyes, especially those that incorporate memes or reflect the tastes of artists who’ve spent their lives online. Are memes art? Establishment art types might scoff at the idea, but I think a case is easy to make. Writing for Polygon back in 2018, Sam Greszes asserted that “Shitposting is an art, if history is any indication.” Even prior to this, I’ve heard underground artists, friends, acquaintances, myself even, voice the same take since at least 2013: memes are Dada1. Greszes makes astute comparisons, for example likening memes that rely on found imagery to Duchamp’s readymade art. The argument for the inclusion of memes and internet culture in artistic spaces is as old as internet culture itself. But most such artists are still, by all accounts, artworld outsiders.

Moxarra Gonzalez by Oveck

Mexican artist Moxarra Gonzalez studied art at The Autonomous University of Nuevo León in Monterrey, but his introduction to digital art didn’t come until he worked at a newspaper in his hometown, creating infographics and illustrations with rapid turnaround times. Through a Facebook ad in 2015, he found Dada.nyc, the now-emblematic collaborative platform where users communicate via digital drawings made in a simple interface. He quickly became involved in the community. Moxarra’s move into NFTs arrived when the platform began monetizing its digital artwork through the “Creeps and Weirdos” collection, and today he’s regarded as a crypto art OG, with work minted on SuperRare2 , MakersPlace, KnownOrgin, Foundation, and other platforms. “I come from skate MTV culture,” he told me when I spoke to him over a video call. He lit a cigarette as he settled in to speak to me. I noticed he looked like he should’ve had a lanky frame, but in fact appeared rather sturdy. His black tee, glasses, and ponytail wouldn’t be out of place at the Bushwick skate bar I head to for a beer after work when decide I need to doomscroll on a weeknight. “I like to draw a lot…I like music. I like punk. So I think that’s reflected in my work.” And those influences truly are unmistakable–much of his art references the aesthetics and touchstones of the 1980s, but uses that framework to address events of the present, be it global news, the crypto scene, or internet culture. The result is frequently anachronistic, retrofuturist, and fantastically sure of itself. 

Moxarra’s roots in punk and skate culture are evident in series like Non Fungible Tokens–ten cards stylized like Garbage Pail Kids that reference different aspects of the NFT space–and Surprise PFPoops, his take on PFPs. It’s the type of art that reminds me of when Heinz sold green and purple ketchup that my mom wouldn’t buy, no matter how much my brother and I begged3. But that’s the point. To be a little cheeky and juvenile, even gross. Nothing is so serious that there isn’t room for a swirly green piece of shit wearing weed glasses with a tab of acid on its tongue. Or even better, a joint hanging from the corner of the mouth of Hielos, specifically the bust of Hielos that’s become so familiar to fans of vaporwave via the cover of Floral Shoppe by Macintosh Plus. Plenty of Moxarra’s pieces have a vaporwave sensibility to them–even if they aren’t quite so overt as “Vapor Dave”–particularly in his GM series, which utilizes bright neon colors, bold lines, and flashing gifs. Characters featured in these works are mostly (but not always) pulled from 1980s pop culture, and if they’re not, they occupy the same visual niche. Moxarra told me that he usually draws a GM everyday, and likened the practice to when he needed to turn art around quickly for newspaper deadlines.

“GM Assholes” depicts a man whose manner of dress denotes a corporate ladder-climbing yuppie. Not explicitly Patrick Bateman, but not too far off.4 Except then he’s holding a smartphone; a speech bubble blooms from it as he’s about to tilt his glasses down. The bubble contains the Microsoft logo and the phrase Little Capitalist Assholes. “It just came naturally from my collection of ideas because I tend to mix all the pop references that I have immediately in my brain,” Moxarra told me. “So when I see something popping up in crypto culture, I try to connect it with my past references. So yeah, a lot of connections of what I saw when I was young and what I can do right now. And all the eighties, baby boomer, boom of Wall Street and all that stuff. It’s like, I mean right now with the crypto boom. So yeah, a lot of connections of what I saw when I was young and what I can do right now.”

“GM Assholes” by @moxarrarare (2021)

And Moxarra isn’t afraid to comment on the crypto scene, both in regard to insiders and outsiders. In “NFTEvil,” he addresses artists who hate NFTs using the format of the Old Man Yells at Cloud meme (memes really do make for effective communication in the arts), and in “HODL Please” he similarly uses the format of a meme, this time the Everything’s Fine dog, to poke fun at crypto evangelists who place a little too much faith in the coin. 

When we spoke, I asked Moxarra about the NFT space, and what he wanted to see change. He thinks that too many people are trying too hard to be seen. “All these little groups that have been like…they really want to identify with something. So that’s weird because when we started, we were anonymous. Most of the people thought that Moxarra was a girl.” In many ways, part of the point of crypto is anonymity—there’s a reason your public wallet address is a string of characters in lieu of your first and last name. Even when crypto artists have public facing identities, they frequently go by their social handles or nicknames (Moxarra is a nickname, after all). Some OGs do share their real names, and certainly some can be vocal. But on the whole, they’re still quieter than newcomers.

La Lagunilla Market by Dave Krugman

“They start in this world and they want to be famous like Picasso or, I don’t know Modigliani, or they look at the old school days of art, either the big people in crypto art like, I don’t know, XCOPY.” For Moxarra, it doesn’t matter who someone is, where they’re from, or what groups they belong to. The most important thing is the art and how he can connect to it. “Be anonymous, I think,” he said, in regards to crypto artists. He acknowledges his thoughts on the matter could be colored by the fact that when he first entered the space, no one knew who he was. No one knew who anyone was. “We didn’t really care if we got famous. I don’t really give a fuck if someone knows me or recognizes me on the street.” We discussed the positives and the negatives of the crypto art scene going mainstream; on one hand it brings legitimacy to the art and the artists; on the other hand, as when anything goes mainstream, it gets diluted into an afterimage of its former self, taken over by people who don’t understand what it meant in the first place. “Well, maybe the NFT scene will get established in a moment because we are seeing all these Christie’s and Sotheby’s auctions with NFTs. So more of the outsiders, they are getting to know NFT culture.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “But as we started this stuff, I don’t want to be mainstream now. I hope it goes mainstream, but I don’t want to be mainstream, you know?” The perspective was very punk of him, I thought.

“SOMNUS” by @moxarrarare (2021)

“It’s a common joke between the Mexican artists,” Moxarra said. “We are just doing silly little drawings that move5.” And the crypto art scene in Mexico is impressive, featuring not only Moxarra’s talent, but contemporaries like Ann Ahoy, Neurocolor, Criptocromo, Hola Lou, and Carlos Marcial. There is incredible community among these artists–Moxarra told me that it’s different to be around other artists, in a good way; he said that it was difficult to talk to his ex-wife about NFTs: “every time I talked to her about my funny little drawings that I was selling for magical internet money, she was like, what the fuck is that?” The thing about people who aren’t involved in the crypto art space? They don’t get it. Not all of Moxarra’s art, but a fair amount of it, requires the viewer to have the correct cultural background to understand it. The work of so many OGs and the people who followed in their wake will be dismissed by those who aren’t in the space, all because they don’t know where it came from. And that’s all too frequently the benchmark for what does and does not count as art; it has nothing to do with the merits of a piece, but the audience’s inability to understand. And it’s not as if the work is inaccessible in the way that bourgeois and aristocratic art is inaccessible to the people. In many ways, artists like Moxarra are more of the people than anyone in the mainstream. Who doesn’t know Pepe the Frog, or the Everything’s Fine Dog? Your boomer parents, maybe6. Even pieces that more specifically reference crypto or Web3 don’t take much research for a noob to understand, as long as that noob has media literacy skills7. A refusal to recognize crypto art as real and true art is, most frequently, willful. Artists like Moxarra are necessary. Artists who create with no concern for the tastes of the mainstream. He’s pushing art towards evolution. Moxarra is out here, making GMs and minting little poops, among those who continue to set a new standard. 
20

Oliver Scialdone

Oliver Scialdone is a queer writer and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They earned a dual-MFA from The New School, and their work can be found in Peach Mag, ImageOut Write, and elsewhere. They used to host the reading series Satellite Lit and they're the Associate Editor at SuperRare Magazine.

Art

Tech

Curators' Choice

Curated Conversations: Ayla El Moussa

Curated Conversations: Ayla El Moussa

Jun 14, 2023 /

SuperRare Labs Curatorial Editor Linda Dounia Rebeiz interviews Ayla El Moussa about how she draws inspiration from the Renaissance period, how she approaches nude portraiture, and her “Painted Muse” Series on SuperRare.

Minting royalty: how Hackatao is changing the face of PFPs

Minting royalty: how Hackatao is changing the face of PFPs

Oliver Scialdone Apr 14, 2022 Art

Q+K #4285 by Hackatao, part of their “Queens+Kings” project

Minting royalty: how Hackatao is changing the face of PFPs

Oliver Scialdone
2 years ago

A symbol of Web3

My most recent interaction with a PFP project was not online or in my crypto wallet, but the sliver of a glance from out the window of an Uber, right about where Bed-Stuy becomes Bushwick. Someone had painted an eight foot tall CryptoPunk on the side of a building, plastered it among the street art and graffiti so distinctive of that part of Brooklyn. Seeing such an unmistakable PFP out in the wild, basking in its blocky pixelated glory, drove a sense of displacement through me. I couldn’t quite identify why, but thirty minutes later, by the time my girlfriend buzzed me into her building, the feeling still lingered. I spent the next few days ruminating on it; so many pieces of art could be NFTs, but could just as easily be sculptures or prints, photographs or live music sets, books nestled between someone’s hands. Material. Tangible. But PFPs by utility are unique to the online space, a product not only of digital art, but of the culture of crypto. Seeing one outside the little circle of someone’s Twitter profile gave me the same sensation I imagine I’d have if I saw a rare Pokémon card mounted on the wall at the MoMA.
CryptoPunk #5822
Bored Ape #23
In that case, it makes sense that PFP projects have largely become the public face of NFTs–they are distinctly of their communities, the hallmark of the chronically crypto. Especially for Twitter users, CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Cool Cats, Doodles, mfers, and others are inescapable whether you’re a citizen of Web3 or not. Owning one is like an initiation into NFT culture, and when skeptics criticize NFTs, they often zero in on PFP projects. As NFTs continue to meld with the mainstream, PFPs have come to symbolize the technology and the medium. Even if you don’t know anything about the space, you’ve seen memes about Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton, you’ve watched influencers shill scammy PFP projects on Twitter and TikTok, you’ve met that one guy at that one party who won’t shut up about how much he paid for his PFP because he thinks spending power is a personality trait. And while PFPs can be very cool and fun, their value depends entirely on the project, and there’s too much out there to sift through. In truth, I think the skeptics have a point–the worst parts of the space are screeching at them through a megaphone, and I can’t blame them for covering their ears. While many PFP projects are developed in good faith with dedicated fan communities on Discord and Twitter, by way of how they often work (a template, layers, an algorithm), they’re also easy cash grabs for those with minimal creative skills and the resources to hype themselves up to buyers. Or, even worse, for those trying to scam noobs with unsubstantiated promises of profit. Using tools like Mintables, someone doesn’t need to know anything about blockchain or coding or even art. The market is oversaturated. NFT enthusiasts are getting bored. I’ve heard more than one educated commentator speculate that PFPs are heading for a market crash, and I’m inclined to agree. But then what is the future PFPs, a genre where form is so deeply entwined with function?

Hacking the PFP Formula

“Flood” by Hackatao
Q+K avatars are inspired by Hackatao’s art
When considering form and function, one of the most interesting PFP projects in recent memory is one that rarely appears on lists of PFP projects to know–probably because it isn’t exactly a PFP project. Hackatao, the OG NFT duo, completed the first drop of their “Queens+Kings” project in December 2021. When I spoke to Hackatao over a call, they described “Queens+Kings” as not so much a PFP project, but rather an “exploration of PFP projects.” This description is apt; the idea is to subvert the act of collecting, to blur the lines between collector and artist. They explained to me that demand for a Hackatao avatar project first surfaced in June of 2021 among their audience on Discord, around the time they partnered with Christie’s to bring “Hack of a Bear” to life. As collectors of PFPs themselves, they found the idea intriguing, but alongside their audience, they were sometimes frustrated with the randomization of traits found in all generative PFP projects, the fact that you buy the NFT and you don’t have any say in the design of your avatar. Of course, with most PFP projects a collector can choose an avatar with traits they like. But what happens when no specific combination turns your head? As Hackatao put it, “they wouldn’t necessarily be, let’s say, characteristic of them or like a newer image of them as collectors.” The point of a PFP is to express yourself to an online community, and they wanted to take the possibilities of expression even further than an immutable image. Thus, “Queens+Kings” was born in partnership with NFT Studios and Sotheby’s. To them, “Queens+Kings” is “a very natural evolution of the avatars. It made perfect sense that one would be able to have the avatar and build it as it best represents them.”
Screenshot from my initial hack
Second screenshot from my initial hack
The collector experience begins as it would for most PFPs–users mint their avatars after connecting their wallets to the “Queens+Kings” website or by going to OpenSea (whitelisted users were able to mint multiple avatars during the genesis drop). Each avatar has a set of traits with design inspiration taken from Hackatao’s art. But after that, if collectors want the full experience “Queens+Kings” has to offer, they can (and should) hack their avatars. Hacking means that a collector can mint their avatar’s traits, separating the traits from the avatar like the clothes from a doll. If someone chooses to remove all of an avatar’s traits, they’re left simply with a blank template, a gray silhouette waiting for adornment. This allows them to buy, sell and transfer traits to customize their avatars. Some traits are more common than others, and users can see which percentage of “Queens+Kings” avatars possess particular ones. In that sense, the avatars derive value entirely from which traits are attached to them. The concept of trait rarity isn’t new to the PFP game, but the gamification of trait rarity is. Depending on which traits an avatar starts with and which traits the avatar’s owner chooses in the process of hacking, someone could end up with an avatar worth more than where they began. That said, Hackatao shared with me that some more common traits are also very aesthetically popular; the Hackatao community isn’t only in it for the ETH, but rather the experience of creating. You could say they know how to party like royals. The first time I spoke to Hackatao about “Queens+Kings” was last year while working on a story about the first 100 tokens minted on SuperRare. This time around, Hackatao offered to provide me with a “Queens+Kings” avatar for the purpose of this article–they expressed strongly that they wanted someone writing about the project to experience it. If it wasn’t already obvious, PFPs aren’t really my scene. At worst they represent everything that kept me away from NFTs before I found my little niche in the space, and at best, I don’t understand the appeal in the same way that collecting baseball cards or sneakers doesn’t really speak to me. I hoped that maybe, Hackatao could change my mind.
Hacking on video
My first avatar, “Q+K #4285,” came with a set of traits, each varying in rarity. The components that make up an avatar–power, crown, hair, eyes, mouth, beard, face, dress, body, and background–can all be swapped out, and each variation of a trait is named (#4285’s original mouth is called “two teeth 2”). Hackatao later sent me “Q+K #4273” so that I could hack them together, minting their traits and mixing them between avatars. Once traits are minted, they can also be sent or sold, and the project’s page on OpenSea even features some avatar and trait bundles available for primary sale. I decided to call the original “Q+K #4285” Hamlet and the original “Q+K #4273” Emo. Hamlet had flowing seafoam green locks and a beard to match, blue almond-shaped eyes and long lashes. Their golden crown and epaulets, the background like the wallpaper of an old mansion, gave them the appearance of classic European royalty. Emo, on the other hand, boasted a black crown, pastel violet hair (Manic Panic’s Velvet Violet, in my imagination), winged eyeliner, big, round brown eyes, and a black t-shirt with a skull, all on a pixelated camouflage background. Hair dye wasn’t accessible to me in 2010, but otherwise, Emo was the spitting image of me at the age of fifteen. I almost wanted to leave them as they were, but I thought that if I hacked both avatars, I could maybe give myself something else I didn’t have access to in 2010.
Q+K #4285 by Hackatao, before the hack.
Q+K #4273 by Hackatao, before the hack.
The avatars themselves are ungendered. Andorogynous. Able to adapt with the avatar’s owner, their tastes, their feelings. This, according to Hackatao, is entirely by design. Even the title of the project was intended to be read with a similar lens–the phrase, after all, is most typically represented the other way around: kings and queens. “Sometimes people forget that Hackatao is two people, and that one of those people is a woman,” they told me. Thinking of my avatars as blank canvases for not only aesthetics, but gender too, added another layer to my experience. Full disclosure: I’m a transgender person. One of those they/them-using, HRT-taking, Leslie Feinberg-idolizing types. And while trans people in both my home country and across the globe face far more pressing issues than representation in PFPs, I still felt a spark of giddiness while transplanting a bushy green beard (from Hamlet) onto an avatar with features typically coded as feminine (Emo). In fact, while working on this article, I showed the avatars to a colleague and, half-joking told her, “they’re a queer couple.”
#4273 after I gave them #4285’s beard and eyes

The future of the self

“Queens+Kings” allows collectors to become whoever they want online. And in contrast with off-chain PFP options that allow users to customize their avatars – like the Picrew PFPs popular among TikTok users – the fact that “Queens+Kings” requires traits to be bought or transfered in order to apply them to an avatar encourages engagement and community building. Does this mean projects like “Queens+Kings” are the future of PFPs? One thing remains true: if PFPs are going to survive, they need to evolve. Hackatao’s innovation represents just one direction for the genre. With clever engineering and creative thought, more possibilities may come to fruition–animation, audio, equipable 3D figures that translate into the metaverse with full bodies and motion. As Web3 protocols are more widely adopted, cross-project and cross-platform experiences could even become accessible. For now, Hackatao is taking a strong step in the right direction, even gearing up for an exhibition of “Queens+Kings” this spring (as laid out in the project’s roadmap). And indeed, the traditional art world has finally begun to pay attention to PFPs. In February 2022, Sotheby’s New York was slated to host its first evening sale entirely centered on NFTs, auctioning a lot of 104 CryptoPunks with an estimated combined worth of up to $30 million. That is until the seller, 0x650d, tweeted, now infamously: “nvm, decided to hodl.”
CryptoPunks, of course, are different from other projects. Originally available for free in 2017, long before NFTs (and PFP projects specifically) became what they are now, CryptoPunks have amassed incredible monetary value because of their historical value, because they essentially proved the efficacy of NFTs. And while plenty of PFPs are sure to fizzle out (collector WhaleShark famously predicted that 99.99% of NFT projects are going to fail), I certainly see longevity for “Queens+Kings,” especially considering the content of the project, the position that Hackatao holds in the space, and the community that supports it. I found myself hesitant to re-mint my “Queens+Kings” avatars, rendering my changes fixed, but my anxiety around permanence runs contrary to the purpose of the project. The royals are intended to be hacked, minted, and re-minted over and over again. “Queens+Kings” avatars allow collectors to become artists – not once, but as many times as they want. They don’t even need to acquire other avatars if they want to change how they represent themselves online. All they need to do is hack. Today, April 14th, 2022, is the fourth anniversary of Hackatao’s first drop on SuperRare.
20

Oliver Scialdone

Oliver Scialdone is a queer writer and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They earned a dual-MFA from The New School, and their work can be found in Peach Mag, ImageOut Write, and elsewhere. They used to host the reading series Satellite Lit and they're the Associate Editor at SuperRare Magazine.

Art

Tech

Curators' Choice

Curated Conversations: Ayla El Moussa

Curated Conversations: Ayla El Moussa

Jun 14, 2023 /

SuperRare Labs Curatorial Editor Linda Dounia Rebeiz interviews Ayla El Moussa about how she draws inspiration from the Renaissance period, how she approaches nude portraiture, and her “Painted Muse” Series on SuperRare.

Art that sucks

Art that sucks

Oliver Scialdone Apr 7, 2022 The Good, The Bad, & The Rare

Art that sucks

Oliver Scialdone
2 years ago

Art that sucks is a series in which we bring attention to the worst parts of the space. We don’t encourage you to see out these projects.

The World Health Organization estimates that over 6 million people have died of COVID world-wide–the virus has taken a tangible toll on everyone. But like most things real and serious, a base mistrust of authority and a genuine dose of healthy skepticism in the populous have been manipulated into conspiracy theories by fringe politicians, and social media platforms with hyper-personalized algorithms operated by tech giants have contributed to the reasonable doubt to tin hat pipeline. COVID conspiracy theories are still everywhere, even after three years of doing this thing, and interacting with them is just a regular part of being a person with an online presence. But when I saw a request to promote this project sitting in the SuperRare Editorial email, I still found myself asking what the fuck?

Enter COVID BAD PEOPLE.

Screenshot from COVID BAD PEOPLE

At first I thought this had to be a scam, or maybe someone was just trolling us. The website (which I won’t be linking to) describes the project as “COVID BONDS: Repackaging the debt to society incurred by the perpetrators of COVID fraud and commodifying that debt as an asset.” The “bonds” are NFTs–each is essentially a trading card featuring a public figure the project’s creator believes is behind the fictitious COVID conspiracy. Some of them are exactly what you expect, and a few feature art that is alarmingly racist (so also, exactly what you would expect). As of writing, the website states that there will be 1000 NFTs in all–a ticker shows that 12 have been minted, but OpenSea only lists 4 owners.

“COVID Bonds” from the project

The purveyor of this project links to his Instagram at the bottom of the project page–his name is Jay Revelle and he describes himself as an “Individualist, non-conformist Mindset hacker/matrix deprogrammer.” He posts wannabe self-help content and graphics with phrases like “Being lazy is greedy” and “Why lying is communistic.” Revelle thinks of the project as “the world’s ONLY such commemorative NFT bond certificate. Their DEBTS to society can now become your ASSET.” I’m convinced he’s serious.

Screenshot from COVID BAD PEOPLE

Oh, and did I mention? There are plans for a DAO and a token. It’s tempting, but I don’t think I’ll be buying in.

20

Oliver Scialdone

Oliver Scialdone is a queer writer and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They earned a dual-MFA from The New School, and their work can be found in Peach Mag, ImageOut Write, and elsewhere. They used to host the reading series Satellite Lit and they're the Associate Editor at SuperRare Magazine.

Art

Tech

Curators' Choice

Curated Conversations: Ayla El Moussa

Curated Conversations: Ayla El Moussa

Jun 14, 2023 /

SuperRare Labs Curatorial Editor Linda Dounia Rebeiz interviews Ayla El Moussa about how she draws inspiration from the Renaissance period, how she approaches nude portraiture, and her “Painted Muse” Series on SuperRare.

Under the microscope: What Bayneko’s viral art experiment teaches us about security and community on the blockchain

Under the microscope: What Bayneko’s viral art experiment teaches us about security and community on the blockchain

Oliver Scialdone Feb 25, 2022 Art

“FEVERDREAM” by Bayneko

Under the microscope: What Bayneko’s viral art experiment teaches us about security and community on the blockchain

Oliver Scialdone
2 years ago

An Infection Unleashed

On January 31st, 2022, I noticed something in my Tezos wallet that didn’t belong there: SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. Of course it wasn’t actually COVID, but rather an NFT. The image depicted cells under a microscope, pink and purple and mesmerizing, a horizontal bar of negative color in the middle, a banner flashing the name of the virus at me and declaring I had contracted the κ variant. As a child of Web1 who sat through internet stranger danger lectures and whose prior job calming panicked Apple users at the Genius Bar made me forever weary of what one wrong click could do, I wanted to exercise a degree of caution around the receipt of an unsolicited NFT from someone I didn’t know. But curiosity got the better of me. I can’t say why, but instead of following the Tezos address to uncover the sender’s identity, I took to Twitter, the hub of all things NFT. 

“SARS-COV-2κ” by Bayneko

Immediately, I realized I wasn’t the only person who received the cryptic airdrop. My feed was flooded with Tweets from tens of thousands of people–as a matter of fact, nearly 100,000. Anyone whose wallet held an NFT from Hic et Nunc (essentially the entire Tezos userbase) woke up to a virtual viral infection “in an act symbolic of the invasive and ubiquitous nature of the virus and its psychological effects,” as the token’s description on Objkt read. It turned out the massive airdrop, the largest performed on any blockchain to date, was orchestrated by Bayneko, an artist whose body of work features mesmerizing glitch art depicting cells under microscopes. His experiment proved divisive, with reactions ranging from fascination to fear. Some people used Twitter to express anger at the unsolicited drop, warning others not to touch the token. Others went as far as recalling what happened in December 2021 when rapper Waka Flocka Flame publicly asked OpenSea to investigate after interacting with an NFT airdropped to him from an unknown address drained the equivalent $19k from his Ethereum wallet. It isn’t an unfounded fear; malicious smart contracts exist, and while I’ve seen little discussion of them on Tezos, as the blockchain grows in popularity, it’s only a matter of time before they begin to invade. 

Of course, many recipients of Bayneko’s “SARS-CoV-2” recognized that the token came not only from an artist, but a known member of the Tezos community. As fears eased, artists and collectors decided to participate in the game. Bayneko graciously spoke to me over Twitter DM, and his enthusiasm for the project was infectious. Thoughtful and with a clear sense of intellectual curiosity, I imagined him hunched over a microscope, laser-focused on a sample trapped between the glass panes of a slide. He shared with me that he expected a negative reaction to the project. “I am a bit surprised there weren’t more people angry that I symbolically gave them COVID.” Instead, Bayneko’s Twitter feed and DMs were full of people thanking him, people who understood what the drop said about blockchain and community, and who wanted to engage in the experiment and the conversation. “I’m also not surprised there were some who experienced fear. There was an element of danger to the demonstration.”

“playful knights” by Bayneko

One very serious point Bayneko demonstrated was that the 100,000 wallets symbolically infected with COVID were also susceptible to other kinds of infection–spam, phishing scams, and tokens with smart contracts designed to cause harm. Specifically, he showed how easy it would be to execute attacks like that on Tezos, a blockchain with low enough gas fees to make such an undertaking feasible. Ultimately, this is what compelled him to pursue the “SARS-CoV-2” experiment. He didn’t care if a few people were angry with him because “if even ONE person sees this and thinks twice about interacting with an anonymously submitted NFT in the future, it will be worth it. The personal cost (financial or otherwise) didn’t matter at that point.” And there was, of course, a personal cost: 1,623 XTZ, or just under $6,000 as of writing. Not a small sum by any means, but certainly less than many collectors pay for art. And while scammers and spammers do call other blockchains home, Tezos users could be susceptible to them on a massive scale because the cost of each transaction is so low. Such an undertaking would be near impossible on Ethereum, where gas fees are higher and over 70 million users have wallets. “In the case of an anonymous token,” he said, “it may be best to leave it alone. But the marketplaces need to adapt.” Users have called for marketplaces to initiate protections and for wallets to allow users to decline unsolicited drops. It’s even possible in the future that defenses may be built into blockchains themselves. But for now? If you have a wallet, utilize discretion. 

Communal Catharsis

Bayneko, who is “fascinated with diseases and other destructive natural processes,” recognized that COVID and the blockchain act as perfect analogies for one another. “I was a bit worried that some people may take the art as political,” he acknowledged. But as he goes on to explain, SARS-CoV-2, like all viruses, is very much an apolitical presence. “The virus does not discriminate, it is simply doing what its genetic code dictates.” It is this comparison he drew between the virus and the blockchain; both simply behave as they are programmed, and while human beings cannot control if they contract or spread a virus, they can make decisions that influence the likelihood of those events occurring. Similarly, we cannot control what the blockchain wants to do as it’s programmed to respond in particular ways to specific commands, but we can make decisions that affect the outcome of actions on the blockchain. 

“light bleed” by Bayneko

To reflect this, an integral component of “SARS-CoV-2” was community participation. In the description of each variant on Objkt, Bayneko presented choices to recipients: “WIll you cure yourself of SARS-CoV-2 by burning this viral token in an act of communal catharsis? Will you choose to infect others? Or, will you risk the consequences of superinfection with an increasing viral load? Life is a terminal condition. Act appropriately.” Bayneko described himself to me as a storyteller and said the project allowed him to “realize this fantastic caricature of myself–a mad scientist of sorts.” And truly, another driving force behind the experiment was scientific curiosity. What would happen if he sent an NFT to everyone? How would people react? The Tezos blockchain specifically proved an “ideal laboratory” to test it out. Not only did the low cost of sending tokens enable the experiment to happen, but also the low cost of burning them. As of yesterday, Bayneko said that 2,050 copies of “SARS-CoV-2” had been burned. “That’s a fascinating number to me in terms of raw blockchain engagement. Historically, it’s very hard to incentivize people to burn an NFT. It seems they’d much rather keep it.”

Similarly, a previous experiment by the artist KOLM involved sending a mass airdrop with instructions for recipients to burn the tokens. Simply entitled “please burn this work,” the black square on an off-white background was sent to 443 wallets; as of writing, 120 have been burned. And while the KOLM experiment was smaller, the artist similarly chose to execute it on Tezos. To overcome the challenge that Bayneko described–incentivizing people to burn NFTs–the choice of blockchain was important. I told him that it seemed his audience saw value, not in the monetary worth of the NFTs, but rather in the experience of participating in the game and in the Tezos community. He agreed. And really, it made sense to me. NFTs on Tezos tend to have lower price points–1 XTZ has never risen above $9 and typically hovers around $4, and it’s common for artists to price work anywhere from 1 to 20 XTZ. The “SARS-CoV-2” variants all fetch around 0.5 to 1.5 XTZ on secondary. The low cost of participation, the accessibility of it, drives community engagement. And while NFT communities on the whole are often tight-knit and creator-driven, these qualities are especially amplified on Tezos, with its smaller and highly dedicated base of users, producing the ideal community conditions for projects of this nature to thrive. 

“please burn this work” by KOLM

Not only did people burn “SARS-CoV-2,” but others collected all ten variants in the spirit of seeing what happened. Some even minted their own variants of “SARS-CoV-2” and tweeted them at Bayneko in appreciation, an unexpected but flattering turn of events for him. “The Tezos community has the most active artists because of the low fees,” he told me. “The community is so unique and wonderful. The fact that so many people reacted positively to my experiment is a testament to the unique and welcoming perspective of the artists.” And the community was rewarded for their participation, each person in different ways depending on the choices they made. Whether they simply had fun engaging or were drawn to think about the purpose of “SARS-CoV-2,” they reaped something. But those who collected all ten of Bayneko’s variants received an NFT: “FEVERDREAM.”  

“FEVERDREAM” is the key to continuing participation in the game. Bayneko’s goal moving forward is to hold weekly drops and foster an audience. “I want people to know when to expect a result from their decisions. It’s not just about audience engagement, there is a responsibility for the artist to engage as well.” He said it’s very possible that “FEVERDREAM” could evolve into a narrative driven by the holders, discussing the ever changing relationship between artist and audience, the way that blockchain has allowed that relationship to be reciprocal in a brand new way. As he put it, in this emerging space where the participants are drawing the maps and writing the rules, artists have become the ones “collecting collectors.”

“FEVERDREAM” by Bayneko

“And you know what?” Bayneko reasoned. “The currency isn’t Tezos or Ethereum. The currency is your attention as a viewer. I want that. I need that for my art to be meaningful.”

Since writing, Bayneko has released “KILLSWITCH,” another installment in the narrative. Holders of more than one edition of “KILLSWITCH” were rewarded with an NFT, “LEVIATHAN.” Collectors who burned “KILLSWITCH” were rewarded with “INSIDIOMA.”

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Oliver Scialdone

Oliver Scialdone is a queer writer and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They earned a dual-MFA from The New School, and their work can be found in Peach Mag, ImageOut Write, and elsewhere. They used to host the reading series Satellite Lit and they're the Associate Editor at SuperRare Magazine.

Art

Tech

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Curated Conversations: Ayla El Moussa

Curated Conversations: Ayla El Moussa

Jun 14, 2023 /

SuperRare Labs Curatorial Editor Linda Dounia Rebeiz interviews Ayla El Moussa about how she draws inspiration from the Renaissance period, how she approaches nude portraiture, and her “Painted Muse” Series on SuperRare.

A Cybernetic Revolution: Nathan Copeland’s BCI Artwork

A Cybernetic Revolution: Nathan Copeland’s BCI Artwork

Oliver Scialdone Feb 3, 2022 Artist Profiles

“BCI Cat – 01 – Calico“

A Cybernetic Revolution: Nathan Copeland’s BCI Artwork

Oliver Scialdone
2 years ago

In 2004, Nathan Copeland became paralyzed from the chest down following a car accident. In 2015, inspired partially by the robots and cyborgs he loved in video games and anime, Copeland agreed to have four micro-electro arrays implanted in his brain – two in the motor cortex and two in the sensory cortex – as part of a brain computer interface study at the University of Pittsburgh. Brain computer interface, or BCI, refers to a computer system that translates brain signals into commands and then relays those commands to a device. In Copeland’s case, this meant he could now control a robotic arm and once again feel some sensation.

Copeland recalled that 2016 or 2017 is when he and the research team began to experiment with using his BCI system to control a cursor on a computer. These experiments included playing video games like “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” and “Final Fantasy XIV,” but they also included drawing. “That was just like the pretty obvious way to, kind of judge control,” he said. “I had a clear goal in mind, so it was good for them to be able to evaluate if it was working in the way I was intending to.” Most of his early pieces are comprised of lines, squiggles, and geometric shapes, but over the course of several months, after practice and repetition, he developed more and more control over the cursor and his artwork became more ambitious. In March of 2020, when the University of Pittsburgh facilities closed with the arrival of COVID, he took home a less powerful but portable version of the system used at the lab. In March of 2021, he uploaded a video to YouTube titled, “Using BCI to Draw a Cat!” Then, Copeland minted “BCI Cat – 01 – The Calico” on OpenSea. It sold for 2.5 ETH. 

NFTs gave him a degree of autonomy over his art that the traditional market could never allow. “I mean, obviously there was a draw of the huge, like, explosion of it and everyone’s making money and all that, but it’s really the fact that I can do it all by myself. Like, I can make the art and I can, just, I can post it and manage the auctions.” Even then, it took about eight months between minting “The Calico” and selling it. The offer came after he showed the piece during a presentation, demonstrating what he could do with BCI.  

“On the Farm“

New Pathways

Copeland, who describes himself as someone who didn’t draw before his accident, has since minted six NFTs. He works primarily in the program Tux Paint–comparable to Microsoft Paint and Kid Pix–because its controls are the most compatible with the way he is able to move a cursor using his BCI system. The artwork itself has a nostalgic quality about it, reminiscent of a childhood spent in the Y2K era and earlier. And while plenty of art inspired by vintage technology exists, Copeland’s work is entirely unique, as its aesthetic is a product of the technology necessary to create it rather than an intentional callback. This feels fitting—Paint and similar programs were staples of early creative software tools, a glimmer of what the future would bring. Similarly, BCI, the technology used to make the art, and blockchain, the technology used to distribute it, are both still in their infancies. Copeland acknowledges that, “I like jumping on the cutting-edge stuff when I can.” 

“Starry Night“

BCI has actually seen some utilization as a creative medium in the last decades, though unlike Copeland’s work, many of these pieces are interactive installations, performance pieces, or pieces that incorporate recordings of brain data. Fewer artists are using implants to paint, and even fewer are minting NFTs. He does think that, as BCI systems become commercially available, we’ll see more BCI art. The main goal of BCI is to improve accessibility, and, “if you loved to play games or draw before you had some catastrophic change in your life that let you not be able to, of course that’s what you’re gonna do as soon as you can have that kind of ability.” He states that as of right now, the technology does have limits, but told SuperRare that, “if one of those limited uses is something you loved doing, then that can make the hugest difference in your life. I’m sure as soon as people that need or just want this kind of stuff, like, it’s going to be used for all kinds of stuff like that.”  

Now, Copeland is excited to continue minting NFTs, with plans for more additions to his “BCI Cat” series and a new series called “BC Eyes,” which features eyes painted with strong textural detail, demonstrating how far his mastery of the BCI system has come. When the lab at the University of Pittsburgh reopened, he stopped creating art, just for a while, as participation in the study occupies much of his time. But he said that recently, he’s felt inspiration returning. He wants to make a living from his art, and although he considers himself fortunate to live with family, he also shared that, because the accident took place just after he turned eighteen and before he was able to find a long-term job, he doesn’t qualify for disability payments. “I was like, maybe I can buy a house one day. I get to draw my silly little drawings and someone else might find value in it.” While he sees that NFTs have the potential to change his life, he’s also in it because he wants to be. 

“BCI Fourth Meal“ by Nathan Copeland

I’m hoping I can just keep doing this for as long as I can. Even if NFTs never blew up and I never knew about them, I would still, like, I’d just be making dumb drawings just because.

— Nathan Copeland

20

Oliver Scialdone

Oliver Scialdone is a queer writer and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. They earned a dual-MFA from The New School, and their work can be found in Peach Mag, ImageOut Write, and elsewhere. They used to host the reading series Satellite Lit and they're the Associate Editor at SuperRare Magazine.

Art

Tech

Curators' Choice

Curated Conversations: Ayla El Moussa

Curated Conversations: Ayla El Moussa

Jun 14, 2023 /

SuperRare Labs Curatorial Editor Linda Dounia Rebeiz interviews Ayla El Moussa about how she draws inspiration from the Renaissance period, how she approaches nude portraiture, and her “Painted Muse” Series on SuperRare.