The Collective NFT, Kawaii SKULL, is the topic right now in WEB3. 10,000 skulls sold out in mid-February 2022.
We look forward to the release of the roadmap now. I will explain Kawaii SKULL and share my thoughts on its future prospects.
The pixel art has business potential to become a necessity for around the world. This evolution makes NFT art interesting!
I’ll show you a new vision, the Kawaii Future Skull, for art collectors, investors, creators, and everyone else.
Kawaii SKULL characteristics
1. Handmade NFT
Kawaii SKULL is a collective NFT created by only one person. The author painted 10,000 pieces of pixel art in 4 months.
The skulls are diverse because the author didn’t generate by programmed simple combinations. Therefore, there is an organic relationship.
GIFS COLLECTION is a NFT collection of re-edited skulls. It takes advantage of organic relationship. They created it to giveaway at event only.
2. Derivative NFT
Owners can also create derivative works only for digital items.
We often use the term CC0 in the NFT community. CC0 is a legal tool provided by the non-profit organization Creative Commons. Using it, you can renounce copyright and related rights.
This means that we can make derivatives/spin-offs/remixes without the author’s permission for commercial purposes.
In fact, the author has never renounced any rights using the CC0 tool. They tweet they will only give the license to the holders.
To everyone who has purchased Kawaii SKULL:
You can create derivative works of your own skulls. You can also sell NFTs by illustrating them, making it three-dimensional, etc. However, you can’t sell physical products. (Now physical product is also licensed.)
Let’s liven up “Kawaii SKULL” together
CC0 x NFT are at odds with each other. We must consider copyright and ownership separately to understand it. CC0 × NFT allows for open-ended value creation.
Therefore, Kawaii SKULL is not a finished product, but a continuous development.
The author understands this structure. The work and the concept of “Nen that becomes stronger after death.”
#SkullChallenge
The author used the above two characteristics for #SkullChallenge.
Fan Art Contest
#SkullChallenge is a contest for fan art of the theme skull. Both holders and supporters can take part.
The winner will receive a GIFS COLLECTION as an extra prize. This will motivate many works of art. Collaboration with other NFT projects will also proceed.
The more derivative works we produce, the greater a recognition and value of the original work. It will benefit the author and owner.
If there is your favorite work, you may develop it further on your own. You can also create physical items for personal use.
Hence, there is a wide variety of submissions.
Winning: Kawaii QR
In the 1st Skull Challenge, my derivative project “Kawaii QR” also won a prize.
Kawaii QR is a collective NFT that generates QR codes from the OpenSea URL and incorporates them into image data.
They evaluated the critique of the description. I philosophized about Kawaii SKULL with WEB3 and Zen.
The winning entry: #00013 Skulldemic
I simulated “Conway’s Game of Life” on the QR code. It represents the way repeated life and death enhance the aura of a skull.
Conway’s Game of Life is an algorithm that simulates artificial life. John Horton Conway, a British mathematician, invented it.
Some people believed skulls have the power to ward off evil. I prayed skulls will spread throughout the world, so that viruses and wars will be eliminated.
I have also generated a Kawaii QR and converted it to NFT using my skull.
In the first two chapters, I have explained the characteristics of the Kawaii SKULL. Now, let’s talk about the future.
The 3 Roadmaps
Kawaii SKULL is a 24 x 24 pixel art. It is handmade with a cell phone.
It’s amazing when viewed as a set, because it is non-generative art. That makes the GIFS COLLECTION so interesting.
I would like to talk about re-processing non-generative organic nature into generative art.
Re-Digitalization of Waves:
The NFT “Re-Digitalization of Waves” helps us understand that idea. It is a collective NFT created by Japanese media artist Yoichi Ochiai.
The sculpture floating in the center is “Borrowed Scenery and Materialized Waves.” This sculpture was inspired by Tibetan Buddhist Prayer Wheel and Borrowed Scenery.
Borrowed Scenery is the principle in traditional East Asian garden design. The material of the mirror is 3D printed as waves. The material is free from gravity and form because it holographically reflects the landscape onto the waves.
“Re-Digitalization of Waves“ is a re-digitalization of that sculpture using an old lens with a large blur and a digital camera.
In the “Study: Osaka Kansai International Art Festival” exhibition, they were further borrowed and re-materialized into mirror materials and painted works.
This is the space of reincarnation, which represents the digital nature that Yoichi Ochiai is researching at Tsukuba University.
So, what is the Kawaii “Future” Skull??
What is the future??
This is the essence of roadmaps.
1. Kawaii Future Skull
“Kawaii Future Skull” is a proposal for the Re-Generative Art Project.
It uses computer processing to generate a space with a bottom-up structure from a set of skulls.
A Visual Way to Explore the WEB3:
OpenSea is hard to search now. So they do not provide enough maps to travel the NFT universe. The same is true for Kawaii SKULL, which relies on that platform.
Music streaming services like Sporify have similar problems. In order to find a map in a universe as vast as music, we need a visual way to view both micro and macro.
The site musicmap, created by Belgian architect Kwinten Crauwels, gives us a hint to solve this problem.
In musicmap, the reconstruction also used a top-down method along the timeline.
However, since the amount of information in the skull is small, it is easy to extract the various parameters and process them bottom-up.
So we have the dataset that contains 10,000 images for training artificial intelligence. I have permission from the author to use Kawaii SKULL as a dataset.
Deep Learning Kawaii SKULL:
Deep learning offers many possibilities for Kawaii SKULL.
First, we can create new skulls using Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). It would increase the rarity of the original skulls while expanding the community. Because the author would not directly draw new skulls.
Next, we can also generate GIFS COLLECTION using AI technology. The author can focus on high-level adjustments, such as composition, instead of cumbersome data processing.
And finally, we can create an intuitive search tool that classifies each genre and creates topological space. We can create an official site as an ever-expanding map of the skull’s universe. That site also includes derivative works in a layered structure. We can develop a metaverse to visit like a library or shrine.
A Roadmap Connecting Past and Future:
In the Kawaii QR description, I wrote about Kawaii SKULL’s value referring to the German thinker Walter Benjamin.
“Kawaii SKULL has more cult value than exhibition value,”
The shaman does not have linear temporality. Historical memory in a straight line contains neither the present nor the future. It is only in a recursive temporality that creativity is born.
This is the philosophy of Zen. Infinite circularity is what I am trying to create through the process of regeneration.
In other words, giving life to the skull will be the new roadmap for Kawaii SKULL, connecting the past, present, and future.
2. Kawaii Wallet
Kawaii SKULL is contemporary art or crypto-art, but it also has a good sense of fashion. Therefore, I propose Kawaii Wallet as a crypto wallet. It will be the next generation designer wallet.
The current use of Kawaii SKULL is as PFP. We will build a naming system for cryptocurrency addresses like ENS on Kawaii SKULL.
ENS maps addresses to strings; Kawaii Wallet instead employs QR codes. Like Kawaii QR, the address is QR-coded and embedded in the image data of the Kawaii SKULL.
Eventually, we will create a wallet app that will automatically generate Kawaii QR. It will be widespread in the web3 as a daily necessity, not a temporary decoration.
3. Skull Totem
The skull will strengthen by bringing out physical items as well as digital space. The skull will incarnate a various media other than computer display, such as wood and fabric.
We could put names and QR codes on them to give traceability and value to individual NFTs. For e-commerce, we will create a payment system with Kawaii Wallet. We can also create your own hardware wallet.
The Design will be optimized for you. First, we generate them with Kawaii Future Skull. Then we use digital fabrication with 3D printer and laser cutter.
We create a skull as a totem that is cyber-physically computed and keeps on living.
Roadmap Tree Growing in the Land of WEB3:
Based on the three proposals, Kawaii Future Skull, Kawaii Wallet, and Skull Totem, here is the tree that will grow in the future.
Kawaii QR holds an important position in the tree.
In the last section, we will explain the characteristics of Kawaii QR.
The 4 elements of Kawaii QR
The 3 elements of QR
The QR code has a wonderful design with firmitas, utilitas, and venustas.
The founding principle of architecture, as described by the Roman writer and engineer Vitruvius, were firmitas, utilitas, venustas, which can be translated as solidity, usefulness, and beauty.
Solidity:
A special ratio that is not included in letters is 1:1:3:1:1. By placing three patterns created with this ratio in a corner, humans and machines can read the overall structure from any angle.
Usefulness:
The Japanese automotive company DENSO WAVE, the developer of the QR Code, has made the QR Code technology available for free licensing.
It is very compatible with WEB3, because one QR code is all that is needed for a variety of services.
Beauty:
You can add a design and still use it, because the error detection/correction code is already in there.
It is important to note that “beauty” here refers to design. So this means optimizing for comfortable use.
Thus, QR codes bring together science, engineering, and design.
Kawaii QR is an attempt to add artistic emotion to QR.
Kawaii Emolution
The emotion of Kawaii has the power of revolution.
Yuval Noah Harari, Israeli historian, claims that all large-scale human cooperation systems — including religions, political structures, trade networks, and legal institutions — owe their emergence to cognitive capacity for fiction.
I believe that the next revolutionary fiction is emotion. In fact, the community that shared the emotion began to gain influence as DAOs.
Japan is one of the world’s leading countries that has nurtured aesthetic sensibilities for thousands of years.
So I combined with the emotion of Kawaii and QR codes. Kawaii QR contains solidity, usefulness, beauty, and emotion.
The Circle from the Earth’s Perspective
It is further broken down into eight elements: Code, Architecture, Environment, Pray, Kawaii, Aura, Life, and Medium.
I mapped each of the elements into a recursive loop. This is a circular diagram with a different perspective of the Roadmap Tree.
It represents the concept of Kawaii QR.
The previous roadmap tree, shown in the previous chapter, had a linear temporality. This diagram shows that tree from the perspective of the earth. It is a circle with no center, or everywhere is the center.
The following are the eight elements of Kawaii QR.
1.Code:
Address encoding is important in WEB3, because the address, not the account, became the endpoint.
Creative coding well uses address encoding because the address has a unique initial value.
2.Architecture:
Pixel is the minimum unit that makes up Kawaii QR image. Manipulating pixel scale creates meta-scale properties.
I use it to design the space of pixel art. It forms the behavior of the skulls that inhabit the QR architecture.
3.Environment:
When Kawaii Wallet spreads, I will contribute to the ecosystem by creating a practical Kawaii QR there.
4.Pray:
You can use the Kawaii QR as a charm to pray when Kawaii Future Skull allows people to visit skulls.
I build a shrine for the skulls. You can pray to them.
5.Kawaii:
The context of Japanese aesthetic sensibility is a great source of ideas.
We will also work on #SkullChallenge based on diverse ideas. This will be a great way to build up the Kawaii SKULL community.
6.Aura:
I visualize skull’s aura, inspired by the halo of a Buddhist statue. The author indescribably put their emotional aura into skulls.
7.Life:
I will work on artificial life research to give life to skulls.
Artificial Life, abbreviated ALife, is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry.
The goal of ALife research is not optimization for human help like artificial intelligence, but open-ended evolution with more diverse answers.
8.Media:
Skull objects place value on information, not resolution, while I work with a variety of materials and devices as media art. I blur boundaries between media and objects. Non-discrimination is a Buddhist virtue.
I create an ecosystem in which information is exchanged across intelligence, including displays, reading devices, and people.
Conclusion
First, I analyzed the current status of Kawaii SKULL and presented a roadmap tree for the future. Then I found the potential for Kawaii QR, a derivative work, to contribute to the community. Finally, I connected the concept of Kawaii QR with the roadmap of Kawaii SKULL.
Kawaii SKULL has many holders who have been waiting for the next step since they sold it out. It would be my pleasure if they like this.
Kawaii SKULL will evolve further.
I will be happy if those who share this get Kawaii QR.
Let’s create our future!!
