The NFT boom saw several iconic onchain generative collections emerge, which today are cornerstones to the art movement: Autoglyphs, Fidenzas, Ringers, CryptoPunks, and many others. Amidst the current “bear market” sentiment, there have been exciting developments gaining momentum around generative art:
- In August 2021, Ringers #879 became one of the most expensive NFTs sold at 1,800 ETH ($5.9 million). In August 2023, the same NFT sold for $6.2m in the Sotheby’s Grails: Part II auction.
- In October this year, the MoMA acquired Refik Anadol’s “Unsupervised” piece, which became part of the museum’s permanent collection after being displayed for over a year. The work uses an ML model trained on the publicly available data of MoMA’s collection and incorporates site-specific input to affect the continuously shifting imagery and sound.
Generative art may have garnered over $1bn in sales onchain alone, but as a medium, it significantly predates that. In 1969, Vera Molnar created her infamous piece “Interruptions”, and she is considered one of the most critical forebears to the upcoming generation of digital artists. Alongside the revolution in personal computing came a new generation of artists well-known today: John Maeda, Casey Reas, and Ben Fry. Processing made generative art accessible to anyone with a computer, and we’re excited to see generative AI continue this trend today (e.g., long-form generative AI art featured on Emprops.ai).
Fxhash has been a cultural leader in onchain generative art since its launch in November 2021, and we are thrilled to back the bootstrapped team in their $5m seed round. The team capitalised on the criticisms of Ethereum for its energy consumption and inaccessible gas fees when they launched Fxhash on Tezos, and quickly became home to the Tezos generative art community. Earlier this year, Ethereum 2.0 upgraded the Ethereum blockchain from a proof-of-work consensus model to proof-of-stake, dramatically decreasing the energy consumption of the blockchain. Fxhash’s imminent 2.0 launch on Ethereum will take advantage of this and already has an exciting launch calendar coming together.
There are two aspects to onchain generative art that will change how we engage with content: the concept of emergence and the hyper-personalisation of the 1/1/X standard within a collection.
Previously, artists ran a script to create a series of unique artworks and curated their favourites. Now, when a collector purchases a work via a smart contract, the algorithm generates a work previously unseen by both the artist and collector. This interaction brings the collector into the creation process in a novel way. Fxhash has doubled down on bringing collectors into the creation process with tools such as fx(params), enabling minters to edit artist-enabled collection parameters.
By moving from a handful of curated artworks to a system that creates 100–1000 unique pieces, collectors have unique artwork that is part of a broader cohesive collection. This change creates a collective experience around the art and a collaboration between the artist and collector around their co-created artworks. This personalisation of art consumption echoes the broader technological and cultural trend of personalisation in how we interact with social media and commerce.
The new role of a minter as a co-creator creates new business model opportunities for the art. The owner of the generative system can operate as an IP owner who subleases their models to artists. The IP owner becomes a curator for the collection, comprised of pieces created by other artists allowed to create art with the system. E.g. The Universal Rayhatcher collection on fxhash:
At Fabric, we believe in the commerce potential unlocked with generative media. We support ideas for future use cases leveraging a customer’s wallet inventory in generating unique objects (digital or physically redeemable) which are cohesive within a broader collection:
- A customer can purchase collectables where their wallet inventory uniquely generates features/aspects of the object
- A fan’s unique history and involvement with a creator generates an object unique to their interactions within a collection.
Today, there are emerging examples of the proliferation of generative systems beyond art to other media forms, particularly fashion. Coperni’s “The Wolf and the Lamb” Sept ’23 campaign is a generative work with multiple scenarios randomly selected by a host machine. The piece runs continuously for six months in real-time on the Epic Games Unreal Engine and is streamed live on Coperni’s YouTube channel. 9dcc, Tribute Brand and Draup are fashion brands that have all leveraged generative systems in their design whilst generative artists launch their collections on platforms, such as Anna Lucia’s upcoming collection on Fxhash.
We are thrilled to be backing Fxhash in its first-ever funding round to accelerate the adoption of generative art and design the future of generative media. Our friends at 1kx (lead), Union Square Ventures and the Bright Opportunities DAO join us in this round.
