“Unique” Issues in Programming

Problems in Generative NFT Coding: Technical Uniqueness Versus Aesthetic Uniqueness

The meeting place between code and aesthetics.

When you’re programmatically generating thousands of NFTs with varying and unique sets of traits, the end results can be surprising. Hopefully, many of the scenarios will have been foreseen by the artists and developers, but with many billions of combinations, some strangeness can slip through. Let’s look at a simple example.

Say you have a simple character with a face, body, arms, and a background. Nothing is outlined; it’s all just made with areas filled with colors. Well, right away, you can see some problems, right? For example, what if you used the same 10 colors as options for ALL of those areas? You could wind up with a generated graphic that has a red background, a red face, red arms, and a red body. In other words, a 100% red square or rectangle.

Is that unique? Well, sure.

Will anyone buy it? (Well, I’d say no, but the NFT world is really unusual. If you’re already a famous artist and you’re doing this as a statement about art or something, then the answer may be yes! But for the rest of us, it’s probably just going to look like an awful glitch.)