NFTs are constantly evolving and finding new meaningful uses beyond the digital world. Erick Calderon is confident that generative minting can achieve this objective in the most attractive way possible. Taking over the stage at Outer Edge LA, the Founder of Art Blocks and Creator of Chromie Squiggles discusses the concept of 1of1ofx which allows an algorithm to seemingly produce unlimited output, thus boosting the power and impact of generative minting. He also presents different kinds of generative art that could highly benefit from this strategy, helping in the mass adoption of digital art and ownership.
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Empowering 1of1 With Erick Calderon | Outer Edge LA
I'm going to let that ride, but after I introduce this next speaker, I'm going to need you to really give it up. The next speaker that I have the pleasure of introducing is an OG among OGs. This is an OG CryptoPunk, an OG art collector, the Founder of Art Blocks, and the creator of Chromie Squiggles. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to be googling so that you can appreciate and understand the wisdom that's about to be imparted to you. He's going to be stepping up to the stage to talk to you about generative minting. Google it. This guy right here is ahead of his time. He's your favorite artist’s favorite artist. That's fair to say in the Web3 space. Without further ado, I want all of you to help me bring to the stage the one and only Snowfro.
Thank you. That was amazing. I appreciate you. My name is Eric Calderon. I'm the Founder of a platform called Art Blocks and the creator of an NFT project called the Chromie Squiggle. I'm a person that's dedicated entirely to both the medium of generative art in general and also to finding meaningful use cases for NFT technology outside of the space that we're in. We can do that through the magic of generative minting and the magic of generative art. That's what I'm going to spend some time talking to you guys about.
First, I want to thank Outer Edge for letting me come and speak to you guys and share some of these crazy thoughts that are going through my head about NFTs, generative art, manufacturing processes, and what it looks like for this technology to reach mass adoption. I also want to say thank you to everybody that's in the audience that wants to hear me ramble about these things. I'm very excited about these things. It's not always that I get to share my thoughts here, so thank you.
1of1ofx
We're going to talk about what 1 of 1 of X means. 1 of 1 of X is a term that I coined in one of my first tweets after launching Art Blocks. It was this concept that instead of 1 of 1, you have the 1 of 1 out of a set. We're going to talk about how 1 of 1 of X works. I'm going to share some inspiration on how I got started in the NFT space and discuss some use cases for the technology.
Those use cases are going to range from fine art, which we've seen with Art Blocks because there is a wonderful demonstration with Art Blocks of how technology and blockchain can intersect to create fine art, and then also something as simple as a generative receipt. It is the idea that there can be an NFT that has value that is not based on scarcity. I know. That's a crazy thing to think about, but it can happen. I swear to God, if we don't figure that out or if somebody doesn't put out an NFT that has value without scarcity, we're all in big trouble. The next few years are about thinking through this technology in ways that we're not thinking about it. I'm willing to dedicate my time to it, and I encourage other people to do the same.
1 of 1 of X refers to a unique item or a one-of-a-kind and denotes the uniqueness of an individual item. This is 1 of 1. It is connected intrinsically by code to a larger set or collection of X. 1 of 1 of X is the core premise by which Art Blocks and other generative art platforms operate. We use blockchain technology to elevate 1 of 1 of X through the value proposition of digital art ownership.
I do want to say that there is a lot of stuff happening in the world. There's a lot of weird turmoil, etc. Something that has not changed no matter what the value of NFTs are is that we can still prove ownership of a digital asset. It's important not to forget that. Every now and then, I have to remind everybody that a few years ago, we were struggling with how to prove ownership of something digital. We can still do that. That has not changed. All the other things, the cycles, and whatever, sometimes obfuscate the beauty of the technology that we're operating on.
Chromie Squiggles
I'm going to start by talking about the Chromie Squiggle. This is an NFT project that I created. I'm going to simplify it by saying that in November 2020, I uploaded 30 lines of drawing code to the Ethereum blockchain one time. Since then, it has consistently served over 9,700 individual Chromie Squiggles. I haven't gone back to the code. I had to do one thing at one time.
If you think about it, there's no way that I could have accomplished creating 10,000 Chromie Squiggles, or if I would've been able to make 10,000 Chromie Squiggles, it wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable as it was during this time. This is the power of 1 of 1 of X. This demonstrates the value of what it means for someone to create an algorithm that creates a family, and then that family generates seemingly unlimited outputs.
There are almost 3,000 individuals that own Chromie Squiggles. We're at 2,800. I would love to see 3,000 by the end of 2023. That would be fantastic. It’s my dream. All are part of the same family. All are unique. They're all made from code that was put on chain a few years ago. They were $20 at the time of mint. They were intended to be a democratized artwork where a buyer had the same odds of minting a rare one as anybody else. They have far exceeded my expectations as it has progressed.
It also feels a little bit of a sweet spot. This is something that we've been exploring with this concept of 1 of 1 of X and 1 of 1 of X manufacturing where even though there are so many different Chromie Squiggles, they're all 100% unique. When you see a Chromie Squiggle, you know exactly that it's a Chromie Squiggle. There are other things that do that like CryptoPunks and a lot of PFP projects. It’s where you clearly belong to a family, but yours is an individual thing. Yours is one that makes you unique to the broader group.
The Chromie Squiggle proves and demonstrates the absolute power of 1 of 1 of X as a concept. I'm really proud to share that here, in Los Angeles, sometime in June 2023, I'll get to mint Chromie Squiggle number 9,999 directly to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for their private and permanent collection. Those are super exciting stuff there.
This is how it works. The artist or the creative produces an algorithm that is deterministic and uploads it to the Ethereum blockchain. Deterministic means that every time the algorithm runs, it produces the same output. This is a core principle of generative art, especially 1 of 1 of X. A collector then executes a purchase transaction which generates a unique output, and it's experienced by both the collector and the artist at the same time. The result is a self-sovereign asset. It's one of those hills that I will probably die on that Art Blocks, NFTs, or Art Blocks ecosystem NFTs are self-sovereign assets and NFT mostly or fully on chain and immutably internalized on the Ethereum blockchain.
With our Art Blocks specifically, the experience culminates ownership of art for the sake of art itself with beautiful subsequent dialogue, which is important for generative art, about the artwork living with digital art and buying, selling, and valuation processes that are catalyzed with the NFT space. Art Blocks and other generative art platforms represent the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with 1 of 1 of X technology. I'm going to discuss one of the many different ways that we can use this technology outside of pixels on a screen. A lot of these interesting use cases bubble to the surface once we get towards mass adoption of NFTs, and we're still pretty far away from there.
I want to talk about some inspiration. I started a ceramic tile company in 2004. I come from design. I come from specifying ceramic tile that comes from Spain and Italy to architects and interior designers. I come from understanding how to listen to what people want and navigating the curation of products. Early in my career, and this is important to how I got here, I wanted to manufacture a custom tile. In order to make a custom tile, I had to order 50,000 square feet of that tile, one single image of a tile. That was back in 2005 and 2006.
Think about how much manufacturing technology has changed to where in 2019, right around the time that I started Art Blocks, I was able to order 100 individual tiles by sending 100 individual images to a manufacturer. This is a pretty intense innovation for the ceramic tile business. Even though it's still more expensive to produce the 1 of 1 of X or the individual outputs, we've come a long way since then.
I believe that manufacturers, product specifiers, designers, and also everyday consumers are looking for innovation beyond resolution, size, and thickness. For example, with ceramic tile products, for a long time, they were trying to make tiles that were bigger until they wouldn't fit in a container anymore. They would make it thinner, but then, if you looked at it, it would break. It could also be that if the resolution was higher, I'd have to get on my hands and knees to even know the difference in the resolution because it was good enough for me to stand on it.
We didn't need more resolution. We didn't need bigger tiles. They didn't fit in the containers. What happens to manufacturers that are continuing to try to innovate when they can't make a bigger tile or a thinner tile? To me, this is an opportunity. This is where innovation goes for manufacturers from trying to make bigger tiles or higher resolution screens. Can you tell the difference between an 8K screen and a 16K screen? I don't know how close you have to get to be able to see that.
Maybe innovation here by manufacturers can shift a little bit from trying to make something bigger or higher resolution to being able to make individualized outputs at a point of cost parity. Cost parity is the most important thing that we're going to talk about because we're pretty far away from cost parity from 1 of 1 of X outputs to 1 of X outputs.
You might have heard me say this before, but in a world where it costs the same to produce 1 million unique items as it costs to make 1 million identical items, all else held equal, people are given the opportunity to find meaning in everyday expression of living through individuality. Personally, I believe that humans will generally be drawn to individual outputs when given the choice. That's a theory.
Generative art pioneered decades ago, but experiencing a renaissance as a result of the intersection of art and technology via blockchain-based digital ownership enables all of this to happen. From fine art to embroidery, the applications of creativity and design are endless. Industries are, in my opinion, on the cusp of a paradigm shift.
All of this is complimented by Web3-enabled ownership, provenance mechanisms, creative coding, and a generation of people compelled by the proposition of unique identity in both the real world and the virtual world. At least for the last few years, that's what we've been experiencing, the virtual world and what our CryptoPunk looks like in crypto boxes, etc. I'm proposing that this desire to be unique and this desire to be individual will transcend outside of the virtual world and into the physical space.
There's something magical about the fact that the OG generative artist who dedicated themselves to this craft before there was a clear path towards monetization is potentially going to be recognized as the most valuable and scarce trade in the world. These artists have dedicated their lives to something that they were doing for fun and as a hobby. Now, they're becoming recognized as someone that might be able to empower individuality within creative expression.
There are the newer artists, the people that have been inspired by the explosion of generative art over the last few years. Those artists will never lack the opportunity to release creative content based on code, enabling individuality to consumers in a world where a significant number of consumer goods become individualized. I'm excited to say that all of this is supported by a product called Art Blocks Engine.
I mentioned earlier there's a broad spread in use cases for 1 of 1 of X or generative art technology. The first one, the one that we've seen explode over the last couple of years and the one that we've been very lucky to participate in to have a lot to do with, is art. “Art for the sake of art itself,” you guys have heard me say this many different times. There is a use case for buying art for the sake of art itself. Thankfully, that's proven itself over time.
Generative art from a consumer adoption perspective represents the lowest friction use case of 1 of 1 of X technology. I'll explain a little bit what I mean by that. There are dozens of platforms showcasing this powerful medium and elevating the craft of generative art. Art Blocks and FXhash are the most notable ones. There are also a handful of other ones that are up and coming and starting to hit the market. At this point, there are dozens of platforms that are releasing art using 1 of 1 of X technology, and it's a beautiful thing. It's wonderful to see more adoption of this medium because it's a medium that deserves more attention.
When I mentioned that these are low-friction use cases, if you think about the fact that your computer screen does not care what pixels are displayed, there is cost parity between 1 of X and 1 of 1 of X when it comes to your computer screen. If I show 100 of the same images and I show 100 unique images, your computer doesn't give a crap about what is being displayed. There's no additional cost to showing those. This is the lowest friction use case because it doesn't require any additional stuff.
In-Person Generative Minting
We then have in-person generative minting. This is something that our engine partner, Bright Moments, has done spectacularly. They are here based in LA. They've taken our imagination to a whole other level in what you can do with generative art. They add a whole layer of individuality and personalization by being in person. They work with the artist and curate with the artist.
They craft and create these experiences that are meaningful for the artist and the collector to be standing in the same room at the moment that an artwork is revealed. Some of these are revealed in small intimate settings, and some of these are revealed in grand settings like what they did in Cratfwerk in Berlin. They've demonstrated that people get excited about minting and seeing generative art for the first time. Mad props to what Bright Moments has done. They've taken this technology to a completely different level.
DIY Artwork
We have DIY artwork. This is something that's fun for me. I'm a maker. I'm a nerd. I bought a 3D printer the first time you could buy a 3D printer. I have a plotter at my house. I love to code. There's a platform called plottables, and this is what I call DIY artwork. DIY artwork is something where you can mint an artwork and have it reproduced in your house exactly to the specifications of the artist. With plottables, you buy a piece of art. Within the browser, you're able to plot it directly using a plotter and the result is as close as you can probably get as making something in your own home.
Technology has come a long way in the last few years. Imagine several years ago what it would've taken to be injection molding. You can 3D print something with hard enough plastic and then have a desktop injection molding machine. You can produce hundreds, if not thousands, of art in your living room in a way that would have completely been impossible several years ago using technology that was available back then. You can get on YouTube but screw that. You can get on ChatGPT for it and, within 30 minutes, write code that would've taken people a lifetime or at least a whole career of studying to be able to learn how to do it.
Going back to the, “’Do we need bigger tile? Do we need higher resolution?” technology is focusing on helping also consumers empower them with the ability to create things. We talk about teleporting objects one day in the future into your living room. You can 3D print them in your own living room, too. You are also able to 3D print DIY artwork, tattooables, 3D printables, and see unseeables. There are a lot of fun things that we can do with this technology.
It's also interesting to consider what a B2B to C model is. Everything in the crypto space is B2C. It's Business-to-Consumer. We are minting something that the platform is giving us. What does it look like when we have the B2B to C model where I do a mint but I don't allow list the ecosystem? I only allow list the distributor, someone that's capable of manufacturing a product. That person goes and distributes that product with a license that's built into an NFT the way that we have seen licenses built into an NFT. There's a lot of fun to be explored there.
Generative Fashion
In generative fashion, one example is 9dcc. I don't think G is here, but I am super grateful for gmoney and his team for the stuff that they've put into it. Fashion is already one of society's greatest examples of individual creative expression. With most fashion items being a 1 of X, something that is made in repetition, imagine what happens when each individual is empowered by their own micro brand that they walk around with. That's exactly what's happening with the shirt. I've seen at least two other people wearing the shirt. There's nothing more flattering for me than to see people wearing the shirt out there. It's a special thing.
Imagine when you walked into the pop-up in Miami for 9dcc, you walked into a room, minted an NFT, and within ten minutes, they took that NFT and printed it onto a shirt. Each NFT was unique. They printed it onto a shirt, activated an NFC card using IYK technology, which is pretty brilliant, put it in a beautiful box worthy of the fanciest of stores, and handed it to you behind a clear glass so that you could see the entire process. It took ten minutes to do that.
What happens when manufacturers work on this process and then instead of taking 10 minutes, it takes 7 minutes? A few years later, it takes 3 minutes, and then a few years later, it takes 1 minute. It gets to the point where one day, you can walk into a store, swipe a credit card, and a minute later, you have a completely custom shirt that is clearly belonging to the same family but is individualized to you accompanied by an NFT to prove the digital ownership. It's only a matter of time, I believe, until we see that stuff. This is where manufacturers are encouraged to start considering the technology of bridging the gap toward cost parity for individualized items versus identical items.
Design is a catchall. I come from design. I come from the tile business. I spent twenty years with architects and interior designers. As we've demonstrated the powerful network effect of large groups owning individual digital artworks, let's say, Fidenza, Squiggles, etc., what happens when that same power goes into individuals owning designed goods, coffee tables, wallpaper, or generative tapestries? This was demonstrated by a company called TRAME out of France that worked with Alexis André on creating a 1-pixel to 1-strand generative tapestry. The artist created a file that is fed into the digital loom directly. What happens when that enters the design world and when we are able to track digital ownership in that way? There are some powerful things that happen there.
Also, hotels and hospitals are covered with art that's guaranteed not to ever go up in value. If you ever specify art in the A&D world, you might spend $30 to $40 for a print that comes from an art consultant that has zero provenance or zero chance of ever going up in value. Even without going as far as making a generative coffee table, what happens when you take hundreds of thousands of artworks that are on the Art Blocks platform, many of which you can buy for $30, $40, or $50? You then go to FXhash and you can buy who knows how many things for $30, $40, or $50.
Instead of splashing $30 prints with no provenance or no value that you would get from an art consultant into a hospital, a hotel, or a law firm, you take this $30 artwork that you buy. Don’t forget. CryptoPunks were free. Look at the value that they have now. Why? It is because they have provenance associated with it. I have said this a bunch of times. If Larva Labs were to release a CryptoPunks project on a server and you logged in with a username and password and then used a credit card to buy a Punk from somebody else, I guarantee you Punks would not be in the 65 ETH range. It's all about the blockchain. It's all about digital ownership.
What happens when you have 25 buildings in your portfolio and within that portfolio, you don't track the value of the real estate because all of the artwork that's in those buildings also happens to be NFT artwork that has traceable value? What happens when you can add the value of the artwork to your portfolio instead of looking at it as a write-off to decorate a wall plus being relevant with a new generation of people that are collecting art? There are many applications in the design industry here and we're scratching the surface.
Generative Art Souvenirs
We have generative art souvenirs. Generator souvenirs, to me, is the idea that you can enable people to take home individualized memories that commemorate and experience without adding more stuff to our lives. I don't need more stuff in my life. I have two children. I have moved four times. I don't need more stuff. NFTs are wonderful for not adding more stuff to our lives.
Instead of adding stuff, we add these souvenirs which have utility. They'll let you into a concert. They're your ticket into something. On top of that, they add to a catalog of digital memories with an artistic sentimental meaning entirely authenticated through verifiable distributed ledger technology. We've worked with a wonderful artist, Martin Grasser, on this love project that was released by the American tennis professionals where they used data from the actual serves in generating the final output. You have a live generative piece.
VeeCon tickets in 2022 were made with a generative algorithm that I colored a bunch of letters together. The point is when you leave with a ticket stub and everybody has the same ticket stub, that's fine. That's how I grew up. We all have the same ticket stub from a sublime show or whatever we went to. What happens in 40 years when everybody has unique ones? The ones that look the same start losing a little bit of value in comparison to the idea of having an individualized output. It’s something that's dear to you and unique to you.
Art Installations
We then have installations. The original idea for Art Blocks was to be able to tip an artist that was creating something of a larger scale than themselves. I'd go back to when I was a child. I'd go to Europe and I’d watch those statues that would be frozen. Somebody would put money in the hat, and then the statue would move. Somebody would put in the hat and the statue would move again. Over and over, this was a way of tipping an artist. This artist was interesting. A whole group of people around you were watching it and you were the one that triggered that reaction. To me, there's this opportunity within digital art, immersive art, and blockchain technology to be able to do the same thing.
I'll quickly run through the idea of the Bellagio fountains. Those are a bunch of servos, motors, lights, and sound. We can have an artist choreograph an entire installation or an entire choreography of the fountains and mint that. You take home this NFT that represents that moment that you and thousands of people got to see, but you're the one that triggered and started it. A year later, you can come back with that same NFT and re-trigger it because all that information is still stored on the NFT.
Generative Receipts
Finally, we’ll talk about generative receipts. Generative receipts is the interesting one. There is this idea that scarcity is not necessary for an NFT to have value. When I talk about a generative receipt, it's the idea that you having this digital item represents ownership of a digital thing that may or may not then give you ownership of a physical thing.
The Friendship Bracelet project that we released is a semi-example of a digital receipt. If I buy the Friendship Bracelet NFT, make the friendship bracelet, and then sell the friendship bracelet NFT, no one is going to come after me for me to take that friendship bracelet off my wrist. It's not meant to. This is the concept of an ephemeral physical. It's this thing that the NFT does not lose value if the digital and the physical get separated.
Generative receipts are what you're going to walk into, slide your credit card, and get that shirt made in one minute one day in the future. That's going to be your receipt. What's crazy from a point of sale perspective or an accounting perspective is you're going to have all the transaction data in the purchase because you're going to be minting in the NFT. All of that information gets captured in the same transaction for transparency and accounting models that we haven't even started to explore.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, we've seen powerful adoption, acceptance, elevation, and curiosity in not just digital art but, more specifically, in the medium of generative art. In a short time, we've somehow been catapulted into major international art museums, galleries, auction houses, top collectors, plus thousands of people's wallets that may have completely skipped right over the world of art if it had not been for what happened with generative art over the last few years.
I used to get crucified and yelled at in Discord for saying, “Buy art that you like because you like it and you want to put it on your wall.” Somehow, that has become the new meta and the new narrative in this space. That's a wonderful thing because the people that did buy art because they liked it are the people that are having the most success. It’s because they bought a thing that they liked. Nobody wants to buy something that goes down in value. Also, not everybody wants to sell something seven days after they buy it. In the traditional art world, maybe it's 30 years. In the crypto space, it's 30 minutes. Maybe we're going to find a happy medium somewhere in between.
The future of all of this is starting to feel like it is here. It's time to start thinking in years, not in months. It's time to dedicate our brains to finding the same product market fit we've discovered in generative art but for the consumer market. This technology could be the catalyst for onboarding the next million or the next billion people. I'm pretty bullish on it.
Some of these people may not even know that they're being onboarded, which is very valuable as well. This will not only enhance the value, attention, and provenance of the incredible art that's already been created on Art Blocks, FXhash, and other platforms, but it will also prepare the crypto startups that we're all in to navigate and survive the world outside of “crypto” or outside of being an NFT.
One day, we will all be companies. We're going to be competing with attention with companies that are 100 years old that have 25,000 employees. Who is Art Blocks’ competitor if we’re outside of the NFT space? We need to think about that because one day, that person is going to be our competitor. We're going to come out with a crazy competitive advantage because we're going to be producing digitally native goods that are going to appeal to the next generation of people. Let's position ourselves to be interesting to the new audience that has not yet realized the value of provable ownership of a digital asset.
I want to say that we, at Art Blocks, through our flagship and engine products are dedicated to empowering the future of 1 of 1 of X and building something likely to delight the everyday consumer. I encourage all my fellow builders do the same thing because that's what's going to get us into the next cycle. If we don't add more people to this space, we are all going to be in trouble. Let's think about that. What does it take to get outside of this little echo chamber? It's more important than ever. This is the time to build. That's what we should all be building towards. That's it. Thank you all so much.
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We've reached the outer limit of the show. Thanks for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures on this starship, so invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to iTunes, rate us, and say something cool then go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole.
Important Links
- Art Blocks
- iTunes – Edge of NFT Podcast
- Bright Moments
- plottables
- 9dcc
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