Curator picks

5001 artworks

Sotheby’s is pleased to present, Sebastião Salgado: Amazônia, the debut NFT collection from one of the world’s most celebrated living photographers. Masterfully crafted over the course of five months, Amazônia is composed of a collection of 5,000 unique photographs and Tree of Life, an original short video film with original audio as a 1/1. The collection spans more than a decade of Salgado’s visits through the Amazon. Among the 5,000 photographs there are 10 categories coupled with numerous traits representing the location, region, and villages Sebastião Salgado immortalized through these journeys. Amazônia is both a love letter to and a call to action to support the extraordinary beauty of the region's rainforest, rivers, mountains, and people. Primary sale and secondary royalties' proceeds are to benefit Institut Terra, a non-profit organization cofounded in 1998 by Sebastião Salgado and Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado.

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Operator

Human Unreadable

400 artworks

Art Blocks Curated

Art Blocks Collection: Curated Project Description: Human Unreadable (Privacy Collection - Lot 03) Human Unreadable is a three-act, embodied generative artwork hiding the human body in plain sight (on-chain). Bringing together choreography, code, blockchain, generative art, and cryptography, the work culminates in a live performance. Each output is driven by the motion data of its underlying unique, on-chain choreographic sequence. The sequences behind the first 100 minted works (mint #2 to #101) will be performed during the IRL premiere. The hosting art institution will be announced in 2023. A journey of slowly recovering the human unfolds as such: 1) reveal on Art Blocks, 2) uncover the choreographic score, and 3) final performance. After the reveal, the human is still unreadable, visible only through the results of movement on glass, obfuscated by code, rendered as a still image. In the next phase of the work, collectors get a glimpse at their underlying choreography by unlocking the secondary token—an on-chain choreographic score. In the final phase, the performance, life is breathed into the human movement that has been lying dormant inside the pieces. Human Unreadable brings flesh and viscerality into code and "vulnerability as a feature" into long-form generative art. What you don’t immediately see in the visual artwork outputs is the invisible potentiality of performance, inscripted on-chain and able to be brought to life by a dancer at any moment. Human Unreadable intentionally punctures the safety of modernist design and the idea of a universal voice, pushing the limits of human expression within rigid technical systems. With a focus on the body, the collection brings risk, chaos, confusion, and vulnerability to the reveal, everything that function-focused design systems normally prevent. Each piece is an invitation, a transparent layer through which the messy human experience can come into focus through the three phases of the work. This work is a continuation of the pivot away from modernism, clean lines, and the quietly gendered values therein, in favor of a more embodied and sensual approach to human-machine collaboration pioneered by early women in digital art. Human Unreadable's 6 distinct looks derive from the core materiality of Operator’s Privacy Collection: glass, light, x-ray and the human body. The transparent and illuminating nature of these materials reveal what is below the surface. What are you revealing when you reveal? Human Unreadable has roots in various histories such as computational choreography (Analivia Cordeiro, Jeanne Beaman), Merce Cunningham's Chance Dance, and the Experiments in Art and Technology movement. With Ti’s extensive background as an HCI technologist and multimedia artist and Catherine’s background as a choreographer and performance artist, Operator architected a bespoke team, 25+ individuals ranging from specialized engineers to dancers, who embarked on a 9 month process to realize the work. Operator's on-chain generative choreography method is the technical backbone of Human Unreadable—the process and open source tooling for which will be made available via white paper in 2023. Additional Information First Minter Benefits The first 100 minted pieces (mint #2 to #101) from the collection will be performed in the IRL premiere in an art institution. -Mint #2 to #101 will be counted as the first 100 mints. Mint #0 and #1 are artist mints held by Operator. -Hosting art institution will be announced in 2023. -Additionally, Privacy Key 00 holders will have one of their collected Human Unreadable sequences performed. Choreographic Score (secondary token) -The secondary token will be released at the end of June 2023. -The secondary token is a choreographic score that represents the unique choreography that generated the output minted on Art Blocks. For this reason, the Art Blocks token and the secondary token are bound together and cannot be transferred separately. -The underlying choreographic score visible through the secondary token can be performed by a choreographer or dancer at the collector's discretion. GPU Intensive Rendering / Live Preview This piece involves GPU intensive composition and rendering of programmatically drawn body parts, generative glass objects, x-ray shaders as well as motion paths. As a result the ‘live preview’ on your laptop or phone may look less detailed than the PNG on Art Blocks which is rendered by a high powered computer. Not to worry! Official Token-gated Prints Human Unreadable collectors will be able to purchase Operator official, signed, token-gated prints (on hand-selected materials) of their collected piece(s).

400 artworks

Art Blocks Collection: Curated Project Description: Blind Spots is a series of abstract intimate portraits that distill human existence into two elements, the hidden essence of consciousness and the tangible shell of personality. These elements are represented in the form of a glass sculpture. The first element within the sculpture, akin to a black hole, is a shape that defines itself through the surrounding characteristics it draws in. This halo of characteristics, like a beautifully radiant glass cover, symbolizes the constructed personality. Casting light on these black shapes, shielded by the identities they exhibit, the algorithm invites us to question our perceptions of those we encounter. How deeply do we truly know the people in our lives? It challenges us to consider if changing the perspective could alter our perception of them, while also offering the opportunity to simulate such a change with the help of animation. Perhaps the nature of our identities is as varied as the angles from which they are viewed? Blind Spots serves as a depiction of my mental journey, transforming abstract thought patterns into a solidified artifact in the medium of generative art. The narrative is inspired by the diverse ways in which we perceive each other, a theme born from countless personal encounters. From a technical standpoint, it steps into uncharted territory for me, being the first artwork to emphasize high-resolution printing capabilities while maintaining real-time animation, a central element in my artwork. It is also my first on-chain project, prompting a restructure of the previous workflows. Visually inspired by Iittala - Kaleidoscope exhibition, which displayed a mesmerizing interplay of glass sculptures and light, Blind Spots features a gradient backdrop punctuated by black shapes that undulate under the influence of a transmission shader, mimicking the iridescent shimmer of pearls. The geometry of the glass cover is crafted through the algorithmic movement of two curves revolving around each other. To produce high-resolution images suitable for printing, a bucket rendering technique with overscan was developed. Articulated through two elements within each portrait, Blind Spots presents a visual metaphor for a human. This duality also echoes our presence on social media — carefully crafted showcases projecting a polished persona while concealing the authentic self. Together, the elements form a unique character from every point of view. Controls \[ click ] - toggle animation \[ s ] - save the current frame as an image URL parameters (see display notes) \[ ?animate ] - animation on by default \[ ?fill ] - responsive version to fill the browse \[ ?width=x ] - render image with x width \[ ?print ] - enable high-resolution mode (eg. ?print\&width=10000) \[ ?grainSamples=x ] - between 1 - 10 \[ ?refractSamples=x ] - between 1 - 5

300 artworks

Art Blocks Collection: Curated Project Description: Michael Kozlowski’s Bokeh brings together algorithmic artistry and the highest standards of physical craftsmanship to form sculpture, lighting, and digital works, each a unique meditation on light, form, and the quiet mystery of human perception. Crafted as twenty distinct pieces of sculptural lighting, each work comes with a complimentary digital artwork. These creations explore the fluid relationship between light, form, and space, responding to movement and perspective. They invite interaction, transforming both the room and the viewer’s experience with every glance.

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Tara Donovan

QWERTY

500 artworks

Pace Gallery, Art Blocks Curated

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Kim Asendorf

Cargo

1000 artworks

Art Blocks Curated

Art Blocks Collection: Curated Project Description: Cargo is a series of abstract paintings created with animated pixels that are constantly moving without ever repeating. It is painting new patterns on the fly in between macro and micro compositions with a duality of different rhythms and continuous synchronicity. The focus is alternately drawn to detail, then distracted by movement elsewhere and caught up in the overall picture. This rhythm turns the visual complexity into an active experience. ASDF: “My work should offer individual ways of interpretation, or even allow one to find some self in it. It wants to inspire some thoughts about dynamics and systemics and also just mesmerize the audience, capture them in a little fantasy, or just for a brief moment in a state of satisfaction.” Cargo is the latest work in Kim Asendorf’s ongoing work series of pixel pattern animations. Starting with monogrid in 2021, and Sabotage in 2022, both highly conceptual series, therefore visually very raw and unimaginable. Asendorf discovered various interesting details in these works, which eventually became fundamental in his artistic expression. Cargo is a real time WebGL software written in JavaScript and GLSL. At its core is a flip-flop render buffer, also known as feedback buffer. That means the animation is alternately rendered in two different frame buffers. This technique allows the usage of the previous frame of the animation as an asset in the current rendering, which allows for a series of reactive animation strategies. An initial image with variable structures and patterns is rendered and subsequently loaded into the frame buffer. A fragment shader is used to apply a set of animation algorithms that make the pixel move and a set of reset algorithms that constantly try to recreate the initial image. The final animation happens in selected containers and is always a combination of two algorithms, one from each set. By regularly animating and partially resetting the pixels, a wide range of movement patterns appear. Cargo is a responsive and pixel exact artwork and it will fill the screen on any display size, thus changing the total amount of used pixels accordingly. This results in the fact that the detail level in the artwork is changing depending on the dimensions. The overall structure is consistently stretching the x and y axis independently. Single containers scale along the dimensions and offer more pixels to render the patterns at a larger representation compared to a smaller representation. This behavior leads to a brilliance, perfect pixels, a crisp rendering with nothing like compression artifacts. This software includes the simplex noise JavaScript implementation by Jonas Wagner and the cellular noise GLSL code by Stefan Gustavson.

120 artworks

Art Blocks Collection: Curated Project Description: Ways of knowing... Ways of seeing… I can trace the origin of Pre-Process back to a Saturday afternoon in 2003 when I was sketching—first on paper, and then with code. I began by drawing circles, then connecting their center points, and then placing the circles in motion as coded animation. At that time, I was focused on ideas and not images—specifically, on dynamic systems and the ways a set of elements relate to each other within an imagined environment. I was working through questions about how to experience these systems and what might be an ideal (or interesting) way to engage with them. The ideas and code from this session later became the core of much of my subsequent work: including the foundation for the Process series of software, prints, and installations and the more recent Process Compendium works. Pre-Process pulls these origin points back into focus, develops them with what I’ve learned in the intervening years, and puts them on the blockchain to be archived. I consider the project a Rosetta Stone for my practice. It asks fundamental questions about the relationships between process and end result, including: Where is the aesthetic focus of a generative system? Is it deep within the code or within the picture the system creates? Ultimately, Pre-Process emphasizes experiencing the origin of the system and then transitioning with it as it seeks, but never finds, equilibrium. The system is built around Element 1, the first that I created for the Process series: Element 1: Form 1 + Behavior 1 + Behavior 2 + Behavior 3 + Behavior 4 Form 1: Circle Behavior 1: Move in a straight line Behavior 2: Constrain to surface Behavior 3: Change direction while touching another Element Behavior 4: Move away from an overlapping Element Pre-Process is the origin of a long journey that I’m still on. It continues to ask essential questions and to encourage me to explore possibilities. Through it, I came to realize that I was ultimately more a picture-maker than a conceptual artist, or, the way I like to think about it, I’m a “conceptual artist” with a small ‘c.’ I want the energy to be with the system (the ideas) and the surface (the picture) in equal measure. More directly, the work exists between the instructions, the performance and interpretation of the instructions, and the resulting images.

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