Thursday, March 6 - Friday, March 7
'DAILY RARE' by SuperRare: Weekday 1/1 artwork releases with Osinachi and Botto
Friday, March 7
'ØBΞY ŦHΞ PRØMPT' by Modest: 2.69 ETH reserve auction for 1/1 "grandmaster token"
Dynamic art is on the brain today, and it's worth connecting a few thoughts.
This post by Eli Scheinman caught my eye. It asked a question: what one digital artwork are you showing to a room of digital art collectors. It's a fascinating question that sheds light on each reply's interests.
My interest is best representing digital art, its unique properties, and its potential for future. I'll limit my range of consideration to digital artworks with a tokenized component. My answer is 'THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE' by Beeple.
I want a hook, recognition, and depth that arrives at the unique capabilities of digital.
The hook in this case is the sheer impressiveness and tangible nature of Beeple's kinetic sculptures. You walk into a room with this in it and a combination of scale and motion (both of the sculpture itself and its contained imagery) are conversation starters.
The recognition is Beeple. He and Refik Anadol have made the greatest inroads into "traditional" art collecting (premise reminder: tokenized, digital art native). I view this as a good thing when it comes to leaning on one work to tell a story. The viewer may have starry eyes, they may see dollar signs, they may think it's exciting, they may think it's trash. I don't care. I want attention heading into the next part of the conversation.
Depth. Your conversation begins with the work's non-profit attachment and explorations of nature vs. tech and signal vs. noise. It continues into the physical vs. digital aspect. It arrives (finally) at what I want to discuss. Dynamic art.
With an obviously large creation budget, Beeple makes dynamic art accessible, allowing viewers to literally turn a signal-to-noise knob and introduce chaos or calm into their reality. They can also tap a 'choose violence' button and watch the world burn. You don't need to know anything about dynamic art to engage with its potential. That is important.
In my opinion, dynamic art is a glaringly obvious massive frontier in digital art. It suffers from a number of present afflictions that prevent a breakout: it's hard to execute, it's hard to display and share properly, and thus it's hard to comprehend.
Execution:
MrMerge acquired 'Spikes' by Pak today. It is part of a fascinating release with Async Art, a dynamic art platform that was ahead of its time and is no longer with us.
If you have a dynamic art vision, how do you bring it to life? Transient Labs' no-code Dynamic Art Engine is the first positive sign on this front in some time.
Display and Share:
When you get beyond custom builds, it's doubtful as to whether anyone would ever know your art is dynamic! Case and point: Async Art. Interact with "layers" or "masters" on an open marketplace, and you'd never know the hidden connections and possibilities at play. They would simply appear as static, separate images.
Rhynotic just showed us all the way. He recently acquired 'DOOM Party' by XCOPY and took matters into his own hands, launching DoomParty.art. Now you can interact with and change any aspect of the artwork (there are many) and even download the resulting images. This shows you every single thing that is possible on-chain without making you do anything but click buttons. Brilliant.
Comprehension:
With the above tool types in place, content and storytelling is unlocked. It is so much easier for an enthusiast to hold someone's hand through what makes dynamic art special.
What Does This All Mean?
While my intuition says that things like dynamic art (and for those who know me, 3D art!) are massive opportunities...
If I'm honest about where we stand today, work must be done to pave the way across the ability to create it, to display it, to share in its potential states, and to storytell on its behalf.
We are seeing progress. Great work all.
Today Reported:
Sales thresholds of 3 ETH+ Collection, 0.25 ETH+ 1/1, 0.7 ETH+ 1/1/X, and 0.25 ETH+ Edition
Under Threshold...
...but interesting to me are two sales for 0.451 and 0.451 WETH within the 1/1/50 'Traces' Collection by Kim Asendorf in collaboration with his wife Jana.
CATCH UP: The DAM Show
AlienQueen, Grida, and Alejandro Cartagena joined me for a strong art-centric dialogue, reviewing AQ's still live 'Love & Death' solo exhibition in Paris at Artverse, and diving into all recent AI agents, events, and releases with Alejandro. Here is the recording.
CATCH UP: 2-4 Minutes of Masquerade
This series exists to update the Sam Spratt Masquerade in progress
Episode 17 dives deeper into how Sam Spratt distributes his work, identifying two scenarios and tracing their impact.
Concrete ART.
The 63rd design of 2025 references the 'Concrete' Collection by Higgs and Diid and incorporates Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst and Refik Anadol.
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