Greg Oakford, co-founder of NFT Fest Australia, is your guide to the world of NFTs from the perspective of collectors and fans.
Seventeen years ago, Pindar Van Arman built a robot that, like him, painted on canvas with a brush.
Since then, he’s built multiple robots, each iteration boasting a more sophisticated artificial intelligence in an attempt to draw “more like what I draw”.
The term OG is often misused, but Van Aman certainly does when it comes to AI art.
He created his first crypto art project called bitPaintr in 2015 and minted his first Ethereum non-fungible token (NFT) in 2018 called “AI Imagines Portraits Painted by Robots” In super rare.
“2015 was really difficult because I had the challenge of trying to explain the technology in an emotional way. It elicited a visceral reaction where people were like, ‘Well, wait, these are not going to happen. Emotional robots,'” Van Ammann said.
“I got some hate mail back then, and people would say it was hard enough for an artist to make a living. Now, we have to compete with bots. There were a lot of obstacles back then.”
The Effectiveness of AI Art
For cynics who question the validity of AI art, van Ammann agrees with them to an extent, but draws a distinction between AI being labeled an artist and a creative.
“I agree with them that AI can’t make art. But AI is a tool that artists can use to make art. No one is really going to disagree with you when you put it in those terms. They might not like it, But it’s hard for them to disagree,” Van Ammann said.
“That’s where it gets controversial, it’s the middle ground I claim, and I know it’s true because I’ve seen it and I’ve programmed it; AI can’t be an artist. AI can be creative . Creativity is very similar to human creativity.”
It’s no surprise that people’s eyes glaze over when van Ammann explains his work.
“All the questioning and skepticism over the years told me that I was right because when artists in the art world say your work is weird, you know you’re on to something. I mean, artists are the most An avant-garde, most forward-looking group of people,” van Ammann said.
“For artists and art curators, if you don’t get something that you know is true, and for them, something is impossible, you just know the time hasn’t come and go for it.”
free trade
Van Ammann has often made pro-royalty statements in support of the sitting writers’ strike in the United States.
“I’m always at the center of the royalty debate because I support them 100 percent, I support them because they exist in the writing world and they definitely exist in the record world. Hollywood is on strike right now because screenwriters don’t get streaming anymore royalties. It’s seriously impacting their lives and now they’re being exploited. The whole Hollywood strike is about royalties from streaming services like Netflix,” van Ammann said.
Pointing to the difficulty of tracking royalties, van Ammann claimed that the ethereum network offers better means to guarantee “freedom of transaction.”
“It’s a new idea that an asset has to be 100% sovereign. If you own something, you have full control over it, you shouldn’t be forced to pay royalties. Tip guy,” Van Ammann said.
“I agree with freedom of exchange, which means that artists have the right to say, my artwork has royalties, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to buy it. No one forces you to buy it, which makes perfect sense to me. For some reason, I have a hard time explaining this to people. They say no, no, no, an asset is worthless unless it has no encumbrances. They may think it’s worthless, but it might be worthwhile to someone else .”
Significant sales
quick question and answer
Is there any particular emotion you want someone to feel when viewing your artwork?
“My goal with making AI art and the emotion I’m going for is for people not to know it’s AI art. To feel something and look at something without knowing that image was drawn by a robot. And then until later they don’t Realizing that it was drawn by a robot, and then that becomes part of the narrative. They can think twice and understand the story through that.”
Who has influenced your artistic career so far?
“I don’t want to answer here. I don’t want to answer because I’m friends with some of them now and I don’t want them to be satisfied knowing they’re my influencers lol.
If they found out, they would become intolerable, it’s absolutely true. That’s what I love about this space, I hang out with my big influencers and it’s really fun. love it. ”
Who is one of your famous collectors that makes you smile knowing they own one of your pieces?
“I have a collector and it’s unusual, and I really like how unusual this collector is because this collector is silent, has probably the largest collection of AI art in crypto, but has no social media presence . zero.
Ironically, the name of the collector is Blur, not the platform. Why Blur really makes me smile is because they are so serious about their collection, they don’t want to influence other people, they don’t want to imitate something and then have other people imitate it because they imitate it. I think it’s really sublime, the collection comes from the heart, they never advertise their bags, they collect like crazy. ”
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What’s your favorite NFT in your wallet, but not your own?
“The thing that gives me the greatest joy is my cypherpunk. I own the punk 7627. It’s actually a pretty obvious choice when I think about my collection. “
What Pindar listens to when making art:
“Lots of EDM music. Occasionally there’s Pink Floyd.”
What’s hot elsewhere in the NFT art market
Wind of Yawanawathe Brazilian indigenous Yawanawa and Refik Anadol Collection, fire. The price breached the 10 ETH floor earlier this week and has more than doubled in the past two weeks.
Other big sales include:
Only two fresh Squiggle mints left
The iconic Chromie Squiggles collection is nearly complete. On Aug. 30, founder Erick “Snowfro” Calderon tweeted that 66 new Squiggles will be available, with only 2 Squiggles left in the 10,000-model collection.
Snowfro distributed the 66 coins to a range of families, artists, collectors, institutions and friends, while announcing that Squiggle #9998 will be a special commemorative coin, more details to come soon, while #9999 is headed to Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Day 0 of Squiggles took place on November 28, 2020, and approximately 9,000 of the total collection were minted in the first two months after the initial minting. Snowfro decided to stash the remaining mints and has released them in various stages over the past few years as the popularity of his artwork continued to soar.
Tomorrowland NFT sales exceed $2 million
World-renowned EDM music festival Tomorrowland has over $2 million in NFT sales on Solana.
Tomorrowland superfans can get pre-sale tickets, attend secret shows, qualify for giveaways and enjoy exclusive tours of the festival grounds.
Tweets of the week:
This week’s Tweet is Justin Trimble’s commentary on Refik Anadol’s spectacular display at the New Vegas Sphere. This article from NFT Collector introduces Sphere for the first time.
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