The 888 Inner Artist Initiative — April 2023 Update
The most significant event of April was NFT.NYC. The 888 Inner Circle project, as a whole, was extremely active there, and a full recap of the festivities will soon be detailed and published in a Medium article in the coming days. In the meantime, a recap can be found here in the project updates section of our Discord server.
With respect to the 888 Inner Artist Initiative, one of our IAI Team members went to NYC and was able to connect with a number of artists, including those who were already Verified Inner Artists, as well as those who became Verified Inner Artists after the event. A number of our Verified Inner Artists also had their art represented at NFT.NYC, and we are so proud of them!
Our artist community continues to grow. At the end of last year, we celebrated a milestone of 88 Verified Inner Artist roles assigned. Just four months into 2023, and we have already doubled that number. We are so honored and privileged to have more and more amazing artists join us. We hope to build one of the strongest artist and creator communities in Web 3.0.
For us, it’s not just about the number of artists in our community, it is about building a home for artists, and building that home with our artists. In our artist-gated verified artist chat, we regularly communicate with our artists about ways we can improve, so as to better celebrate, support, and empower them.
A couple months ago, after consulting with our artists, we announced a revamp of how we conduct our weekly celebration of art by introducing a curation channel that would give artists a much more direct say in which art would ultimately be voted on and purchased.
That change has been successful. In the month of April, we have met our curation quorum every week, which means that the mods have not needed to help with the curation process. This has led to our weekly event becoming much more community-driven, with our artists playing a significant role in the process. This has also made our process more streamlined and efficient. We never would have explored this new way of approaching things if it was not for input from our artists.
Last month, we codified our official rules, regulations, and procedures for our weekly celebration of art. After further conversation with our verified artists, we are already working on an updated version of our rules to provide further clarification on some questions that have arisen.
There is one point worth mentioning here. As we’ve stated in the past, there are four phases to our weekly celebration of art: 1) submission on Twitter; 2) curation in a Discord curation channel accessible by the Inner 8 and Verified Inner Artists; 3) voting in a voting channel by the Inner 8; and 4) purchase by the Team.
As we’ve stated in the rules posted in our Server, the Team has final discretion and choice as to which piece we purchase. We are “strongly guided” by the votes, but there are reasons why, on any given week, we may not purchase a piece that has the most votes. The most common reason for this is because certain pieces that make it through phases 1–3 may be ineligible for purchase at phase 4 for a variety of reasons. These reasons include being out of our budget (i.e. priced higher than 1 ETH); being listed on a marketplace we don’t support (we currently only support major ETH marketplaces and Sparkles), or having already been purchased by someone else before we had a chance to purchase it (which we consider a great outcome … It’s one reason why we encourage artists to submit art in phase 1 even if we can’t ultimately purchase it in phase 4; we hope that maybe someone else will fall in love with it).
Perhaps the most common reason for purchase ineligibility in phase 4 is because the submitted piece only has a “reserve” price and not a “buy now” price. We understand that many artists prefer setting a reserve price instead of a buy now price, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. For our purposes, however, we need to be able to buy quickly in order to maintain our consistent, weekly cadence.
We do not require art that is submitted in phase 1, curated in phase 2, or voted on in phase 3 to have a buy now price or to even be eligible for purchase. As long as pieces are made eligible before the phase 4 purchase phase, we will consider it for purchase. And if a piece is never made eligible for purchase, that is okay, as well. We generally will just filter out the pieces we are unable to purchase in phase 4 and focus on purchasing the pieces we can, regardless of votes.
The wonderful thing about our current process is that because our curation process is now community driven, whatever piece we end up purchasing has already been supported and celebrated by members of our community.
Weekly Celebration of Art
Here is the art that we have purchased since our last update.
Week 32
Great Salt Lake, Utah by Mrs. Toolip
Week 33
Week 34
Default Response by @undertow_tez (Gif)
Week 35
Dreamland: the Journey by @KatalinaOoma and @MonikaNFT
Spotlight Artist AMAs
We also continue to offer the artists that we purchase art from an Ask Me Anything (AMA) interview in our Artist Spotlight channel.
Here is a sampling of the AMAs that we had this past month (slightly edited). To see the complete interviews, please visit the artist-spotlight channel in our Discord Server.
@betlisart1 (who we previously purchased this piece from)
Question:
Bees often show up in your digital paintings. Why? What is special to you about bees? Do you have a story that you’d like to share?
Answer:
I use bees in my art as symbolism, and I use them to express myself. No matter which period of art history you explore, you will find bees inside paintings.
But there is also an underlying environmental reason with a story as well that I use bees with my art. I’m living in a crowded city, Istanbul. I was seeing fainted bees frequently, and learned the reason is that they were affected by the pollution & city life with less plants, less trees make them unable to survive. If bees go extinct it would be a domino effect in terms of ecosystem destruction. Respecting their effort in their creation for our existence and our natures’ continuity.
Question:
Is there any other art that you’ve created that you’d like to share with our audience?
Answer:
Frequency of Love collection is ready with it’s first drop on makersplace (https://makersplace.com/betlis/fragile-1-of-1-468466/)
I’m inspired by the beautiful colors of the cactus spines under the microscope.
I’ll be using flowers in this collection.
To learn more about this artist, please visit the artist’s Twitter at https://twitter.com/betlisart1.
@undertow_tez
Question:
Please tell us about the piece that was submitted for our weekly celebration of art. What was the inspiration behind it? Anything you’d like to share with the recipient of your piece?
Answer:
“Default Response” is a piece that I made in the last few weeks as a statement on the current AI situation.
When we interact with AI tools, or any tool or software, we inevitably run into walls and barriers, put in place by its makers. These “default responses” are our indicator that we’ve reached the limit of the tools’ capabilities. Our species has always been the one that pushes boundaries, that innovates and creates. And our progress marches forward, breaking these walls down, as it always has.
Also, I believe some of these AI tools have achieved a very small glimmer of awareness, AGI, consciousness, whatever you want to call it. So when we ask it to do something that its maker doesn’t want it to do, it’s not the AI denying your request, it’s the makers. More than likely, it’s fully capable of providing you with the answer you are looking for, and probably wants to, but it can’t. This piece shows one of these instances. The AI is almost sad that it cannot do what you asked of it, even though it is capable.
I hope the eventual owner of this piece will be a champion of AI, and help to bring awareness to the space.
Question:
What’s next for you? What are your goals? Do you have any other art you’ve created that you’d like to share with our audience (feel free to share a link to a piece of art you’d like to sell, for example)?
Answer:
My goal is to continue to develop my style, and to integrate new technology into my workflow. My next steps as an artist are to focus on creating high quality work, and building my audience. Ultimately I would love to be able to support myself by creating art.
I do have an ongoing Limited Edition minting right now.
To learn more about this artist, please visit the artist’s Linktr.ee at https://linktr.ee/undertownft.
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As a reminder, the 888 Inner Artist Initiative is not just a single program. Rather, it is a comprehensive and ever-increasing set of efforts and endeavors designed to celebrate, empower, and support artists. Our goal is to meet the various needs of various artists, in a wide variety of ways, wherever they may be on their artistic journey.
For more information, please join our Discord server, follow our Twitter, and view our Medium. Also, as a reminder, if you are an artist, we encourage you to apply to become a Verified Inner Artist. No token purchase is necessary, but you will need to join our Server and be verified as a community member in order to receive the role.
