Examples of generative NFTs and measures to understand them.
Introduction
The rise of blockchain and digital ownership, particularly NFTs, has enabled a generation of artists to more securely protect and monetise their work. This has enabled artists new and old to come together on Web3 to display and sell non-fusible versions of their art through smart contracts, and collectors and speculators to buy and sell these digital works on the secondary market.
Since the growing popularity of NFT, the term generative art has become increasingly prevalent in prolific NFT collections such as Bored Apes, where it is algorithmically generated based on the rarity score of the features provided.
Generative artists have a dedicated NFT platform Art Blocks, where buyers upload the algorithms they use to mint their own NFT iterations on the Ethereum blockchain Art Blocks has generated hundreds of hundreds of millions in sales, and is a phenomenal mechanism for creators who until recently struggled to find ways to prevent their art from being copied.
Generative art is recorded on a blockchain with non-substitutional properties, so users, creators and code all enjoy a new level of complexity in which they engage in a kind of creative dialogue. By minting a generative art NFT, the buyer can instruct the code to generate a unique image, which then becomes the NFT.
Generative Art Genesis: 'AARON' by Harold Cohen
The modern application of generative art dates back to the 1960s, when artist Harold Cohen began exploring the concept, inspired by a graduate student working at the University of California, San Diego. Programmers at the time fed a punch-card based instruction system (FORTRAN) into a 'batch processing machine' and the computer generated new punch cards and printouts.
Cohen developed an artistic passion for this technology and began programming the computer to draw pictures. Then, in 1971, he perfected a system called AARON, which he exhibited as a special exhibit at the Autumn Joint Computer Conference in Las Vegas.
Despite its presentation at a technical conference, this exhibition marked a new departure for Cohen as an artist, programmer and researcher. This new structure was characterised by a total switch from painting as a profession to programming for painting. It was also the starting point for what would later become generative art, NFT, from which history was about to be made.
Comparison between Cohen's 1976 drawing of AARON (left) and the colourised version published in 1995. Image source: collection of the Computer History Museum, catalogue number 102627449, #102741168.
In a 1988 paper, Cohen wrote that AARON was best thought of as a research and extension tool rather than an all-encompassing finished product for others to use. However, after 15 years of development, AARON has evolved to the point where it can autonomously generate human freehand drawings.
NFT collections of generative art are often generated by layering PNG images. First, character features are selected and variations of each feature are placed on the final graphic with the same dimensions and relative positions. For example, to complete a collection consisting of 10,000 hippie dog NFTs, one of the characteristics must be sandals.
Profile image NFTs are often generated with a defined number of layers in various combinations, some of which are rare.
The designer can decide how many variations can be generated, for example, red is the rarest colour for sandals and blue is the most common. The same can be done for other features such as hair, eye colour, sunglasses, t-shirts, etc. Each layer is given a transparent background so that it can be neatly and coherently stacked within the image.
Many of NFT's popular projects were not one-off designs created by artists and tokenised as their own. Rather, they were also generated using an algorithmic engine to quickly create and release a clean collection of 10,000 NFTs.
For example, CryptoPunks all have unique attributes, but their creation is not influenced by the audience. In other words, the creative process did not necessarily take place on-chain.
CryptoPunks used generative art scripts to assemble the NFT collection, but the art itself was created off-chain and then only referenced via smart contracts.
On the other hand, there are several examples where the concept has been successfully applied at different levels. Here we highlight Autoglyphs and Art Blocks as two successful examples of generative art platforms being applied to NFTs and incorporating the buyer as part of the creative process by the mint.
Autoglyphs
Canadian software developers John Watkinson and Matt Hall founded a company called Larva Labs, which is responsible for NFT drops such as CryptoPunks, Autoglyphs and more recently Meebits.
'Autoglyphs' was an experiment in generative art and the first on-chain generative art deployed on Ethereum. Users had the opportunity to mint a total of 512 glyphs until the generator became inactive and could no longer mint new glyphs. Currently, the only way to obtain these rare generative art NFTs is to buy them from the seller of your choice on the secondary market.
Autoglyphs was arguably the first mechanism that not only created digital artwork, but also made its ownership completely self-contained!
According to DappRadar, Autoglyphs#376 is the most recent NFT sold for 248.16 ETH. Interestingly, these NFTs were initially available for anyone to mint by paying a gas price of 0.2 ETH The proceeds from the sale of Autoglyphs were donated to an organisation dedicated to renewable energy activities The sale of NFT collections can be used as a way to positively impact local communities Combining the sale of the NFT collection with specific organisations and groups with the potential to make a positive impact on the local community is a solid strategy to drive prices up and attract more attention in the process.
Art Blocks
Art Blocks is known as a unique NFT platform that not only exhibits and sells generative art, but also hosts generative codes and allows buyers to participate in the process. The final output is custom NFT artwork, which is completely unique due to the numerous random variables derived from the 'seed code'. The seed code derives variables such as colour, shape and other rarity features from its content, which determines the artistic output of the generative code.
Essentially, when a collector mints an NFT using Art Blocks, an Ethereum token is created that is recorded in the blockchain ledger and held in the collector's wallet address. As with other NFTs, the tokens generated are unique and will not corrupt.
In short, minting a generative art NFT on Art Blocks is the same as commissioning an on-demand custom artwork that harnesses the power of computation, plus the security of the Ethereum blockchain to prove the originality and authenticity of the work!
Art Blocks has several tiers of NFTs, some of which are fairly exclusive, as would be expected in the creative realm; Art Blocks' Curated Tier is the top tier of the platform for generative art NFTs. Artists selected for the Curated Tier are given the privilege of creating NFT drops that are officially included in the Art Blocks collection.
Projects selected for Curated Tier are the envy of generative art NFT artists due to their sleek design and popularity Many Curated Tier NFT projects were minted fairly cheaply when they were first released, but have since have increased in value considerably. The term 'artist who can't eat' may eventually become a relic of the past.
Chromie Squiggle was the first Curated Tier NFT on Art Blocks, created by anonymous founder SnowFro Chromie Squiggles used minted minted token seeds were used to determine properties such as gradient angle, colour and number of segments.
Artists already accepted into the Curated Tier can also create generative art NFT drops in the Playground Tier. These projects are not considered part of the official Art Blocks collection, but are nevertheless a popular section on their website.Playground Tier allows artists to develop their experimental NFT ideas for the collection and Artists dropping NFT collections on the Playground Tier must have already dropped a generative art NFT project on the Curated Tier.
Finally, Art Blocks has a Factory Tier, which offers the lowest barrier to entry and lowest cost for new artists. If an artist does not want to wait to be accepted into the Curated Tier, they can launch a generative art NFT collection in the Factory Tier; NFT projects in the Factory Tier may be less sophisticated than those in the more formal Curated Tier. While the NFT projects in the Factory Tier may be less sophisticated than those in the more formal Curated Tier, this is not by chance and they seem to be more committed to this concept. Whereas Factory Tier NFT exudes playfulness, spontaneity and artistic eccentricity.
Generative art provides joy to the NFT process
Blockchain and NFT have opened the door to recording and monetising artistic expression. It is therefore easy to understand the growing popularity of generative art as an accompanying creative vehicle - NFT drops and secondary marketplaces have become popular venues for collecting and viewing generative art in its various forms. The Tezos-based fxhash is another example of the growing popularity of generative art and