The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange had just filed for bankruptcy, with its genius-boy CEO stepping down and millions of dollars disappearing from his company’s wallet in real time without any explanation. But hundreds of miles away from the din of urban financial panic, in an old cattle feed mill in the West Texas desert, dozens of creators of cryptocurrency culture bow their heads to a synchronized display of vibrating squiggles. I waved my hands together.
The wavy line is chrome squigglesArt Blocks’ second explosively successful generative NFT art project. To the delight and awe of barn dwellers, these normally static Squiggles of his were dancing for the first time in sync with the ear-splitting tunes of British DJ Jamie xx. rice field.
“Knekne!” the reveler next to me kept yelling, raising his hand toward the vibrating monitor and jumping in place. “Turn round, round round, round round, round round!”
“Pray in a twist!” cried his friend vaguely.
On November 11, 2022, 500 fans gathered in the small town of Marfa, Texas for Art Blocks’ second annual open house.
You might imagine the atmosphere of an event centered around . Non-fungible token— acquired an obsession in the last two years, fierce hater Likewise, it will be heavily influenced by the trends in the cryptocurrency market. nevertheless, FTX Armageddon It felt as far from the rally as big cities had happened in an era when news was delivered in covered wagons.
It’s not because NFT people feel immune to market volatility. According to event organizer Art Blocks, who is the founder of the Squiggles artist, Eric Calderon (aka Snowfro), that’s because the gathering and his NFT company have little to do with NFTs and even less with crypto.
“I have often said that I want Art Blocks to be used as a platform to transcend cryptocurrencies. There should be,” Calderon told me. “But we also want to transcend cryptography.”
As Calderon sees it, too many companies in the cryptocurrency ecosystem base their value propositions on the novelty of the underlying technology. jogging-But earn crypto! sweatshirt—But in the metaverse! a picture of a cat—But make them NFTs! The concept of a mediocre TV show —Produced by DAO!
He believes this obsession only temporarily obscures the flaws in the company’s products.
“Why are we betting companies on emerging technologies? Companies cannot survive on cryptocurrencies alone,” Calderon said. “They survive in culture, they survive in teams. We aim to be an adult company. This means creating an internal organizational culture. It’s a very difficult thing to do with cryptocurrencies, but we fought hard to isolate ourselves from it.
Art Blocks is a 40-employee company that continues to grow despite the devastating effects of the cryptocurrency bear market. It now boasts a full team of curators who carefully select and approve digital artists to debut their collections on the company’s wildly popular platform.
Calderon attributes Art Blocks’ lasting success to its refusal to indulge in the practices that became standard for most NFT projects at the height of the speculation bubble in early 2022.
“The worst mental health I’ve ever had was in October when Art Blocks went crazy,” he said. At the time, Art Blocks NFTs were selling for millions of dollars per piece. “People were like, ‘We need tokens, reward collectors, don’t care about collectors as long as they don’t spend tokens, watch what SuperRare is doing, what Bored Ape Yacht Club is doing. I was like, ‘Look at that.'”
Art Blocks has never offered tokens, exclusive perks, or other obscure gestures that often feel the fetishism of the Web3 principle of “utility” but are rarely realized.
Provided art and publicly accessible community spaces (both digital and physical) focused on art. I steadfastly resisted the temptation to offer something else.
If you consider Art Blocks to be an arts institution rather than a cryptocurrency or NFT company, nothing could prove this better than a three-day gathering in legendary arts mecca Marfa.
Founded in the 1880s, for nearly a century Marfa looked like any other neighboring town in the sparse Chihuahua desert. In the early 1970s, famed artist Donald Judd bought many of the town’s buildings and turned them into contextless “anti-museums” for massive concrete and metal installations and works by other artists. When it became internationally famous. In the decades that followed, Marfa’s artistic reputation and exotic isolation attracted thousands of disaffected citizens. Today, the town resembles a strange mix of Frontierland and Williamsburg, with barns, covered storefronts, art galleries, and matcha-serving coffee shops.
Art Blocks will open the Marfa gallery in 2021. unwelcomeand Art Blocks’ crypto-contaminated products as a notable departure from the city’s esteemed artistic tradition.
There was no such tension in Art Blocks’ presence in Marfa.
“I think they’re great for Marfa and I think they fit in very well with the scene,” said owner Rachel Bates. ruleA gallery down the street from Art Blocks told me. “I can’t think of anyone who said anything bad about them.”
Bates also dismissed the notion that the art collection medium alone (including a large amount of blockchain space) could determine the artistic legitimacy of a project.
“The whole history of art is the next big thing that’s not considered art for keychains of what ‘art’ is,” she said. For us, it’s almost natural that this will be one of the places people come and try this.”
Art Blocks projects are most distinctly different from traditional art in two ways. One is an NFT, created on the Ethereum blockchain and available for purchase by anyone with an internet connection.in another case they are driving forceArtists create computer code that sets the parameters for how their art block work will look. When cast, pieces are randomly generated within these parameters and displayed in their realized form for the first time.
“The NFT part is not too difficult to explain. Plutonium Fa pseudonym for an Art Blocks collector, talks about the hurdles he faces when discussing projects with outsiders.
Plutonium, along with two other Art Blocks collectors, curated the collection selected by the Art Blocks team to be shown at the Open House in November. perspective.
“I know it’s hard for traditional collectors and traditional artists to grasp the idea that writing code can produce essentially limitless output. decent,Another 1 perspective‘ Community Curator. “But in the best examples of generative art, art is code itself. It’s easy to be a painter. It’s hard to be a good painter. Generative He’s easy to be an artist. Be a good person. It’s hard to be.”
After a tequila-soaked weekend in Marfa, the loyal members of Art Blocks headed back to their home city, back to reality, and finally back to the world where they held their breath and turned their attention to their industry. bankruptcy, contagion, criminal liability, government investigationWhen waveMoreover waveof dismissal.
Winters in the Crypto kept getting colder. New Year did not bring relief.
However, for some reason, in the darkness, art blocks continue to dance. friendship braceletAn Art Blocks project conceptualized by Calderon and realized by French artist Alexis André, was initially released exclusively to Squiggles owners in late October. After the free-to-create billing period ended on Tuesday, the collection skyrocketed in value, and within hours he was the top collection on NFT marketplace OpenSea. The Friendship Bracelet has generated over 14,300 ETH in trading volume (approximately $20.3 million) at the time of writing.
This stands out in an otherwise dire market. NFT Trading Volume Plunges Incredibly 87% from the high in January last year.Good profile picture (PFP) NFT project once a sure bet I’m not sure.
Why isn’t Art Blocks suffering too? Calderon believes the answer is very simple.
“If [Art Blocks holders] “We bought a piece of art, put it on the wall, and the piece of art went down to zero, but they still have super fine art,” he said.
How many other NFT projects can say the same thing? Get rid of the speculative value, crypto marketing angle, and heavy-loading NFT acronyms. What’s really left? Art Blocks seems an anomaly when viewed as an NFT company. Things start to make more sense when you look at it as an art collective that happens to use blockchain technology.
A non-crypto company using Web3 technology as a tool to help them achieve their larger goals. entertainment, commercial, fashionor art — navigating a cryptocurrency bear market.
Art Blocks could indicate that a project born out of Web3 need not be defined solely in Web3. Increasingly, that approach is starting to look like crypto culture moving forward.
