Why John Gerrard Is Generating Hourly Ethereum NFT Art for a Full Year

On Tuesday, digital artwork purveyor Feral File will debut “Crystalline Work,” a brand new generative, on-chain collection from the Irish modern artist John Gerrard that can algorithmically produce new items each hour for the following yr.

The collection, set to change into the longest-running on-chain efficiency artwork undertaking ever tried, returns Gerrard to acquainted territory: environmental activism. In “Crystalline Work,” a robotic stationed at a digital, barren model of the North Pole performs an algorithm impressed by ice formations to create intricate designs made from crystal bar lattices.

The collection additionally makes use of one other Gerrard favourite, the WebGL browser API, to convey the hourly act of every piece’s creation to vivid life with immersive, interactive 3D graphics.

Each hour starting tomorrow, for the following 8,760 hours, the robotic will generate a brand new design and mint it into an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain. Every NFT will value $100 price of ETH, with 1 / 4 of proceeds from the sale going to Hometree, a rainforest restoration undertaking in Eire.

A pattern output of “Crystalline Work.” Courtesy: John Gerrard, Feral File

In different methods, nevertheless, “Crystalline Work” marks a transparent departure for Gerrard from his present physique of labor. In previous initiatives like “World Flag” and “Western Flag,” the artist struck a decisively dire tone in warning in regards to the failure of present techniques—nationalist, or capitalist—to handle local weather change.

Now, Gerrard stated he’s placing that form of criticism behind him.

“I do not wish to be concerned in artwork that observes the world anymore, that feedback upon the world,” the artist informed Decrypt. “I am not .”

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Considered one of Gerrard’s earlier works, “Burning Flag,” on show at Sphere in Las Vegas throughout a U2 live performance. Courtesy: Stufish Leisure Architects

As a substitute, together with his newest undertaking, Gerrard seeks to place forth a constructive imaginative and prescient of humanity’s potential to create: a fantastic, “luminous” show of the doable.

“I am shifting on to a unique form of strategy,” Gerrard stated “It’s optimistic in a manner that the opposite works simply will not be.”

The work premieres this week at the beginning of the summer season solstice, and can prolong till subsequent yr’s summer season’s solstice. The solar is central to the collection, as Gerrard sees it. The pollutive warmth from burned oil is, in a meta sense, outdated daylight; each tree planted in Eire on account of the undertaking will shield the Earth from some tangible quantity of the solar’s rays; that motion will in flip enable some palpable variety of ice crystals to repopulate the planet’s poles.

A pattern output of “Crystalline Work.” Courtesy: John Gerrard, Feral File

“As a substitute of being a chunk of ecological protest, it is a piece about constructive optimistic motion within the face of local weather change,” Gerrard stated.

Ethereum was chosen because the undertaking’s on-chain house as a result of its high-profile embrace of an environmentally pleasant proof of stake consensus mechanism in 2022.

However Gerrard has additionally deliberately tipped, as of late, into>“My modern artwork world is rejecting information wholesale,” he stated. “However I imagine that information is a most crucial and essential modern artwork language.”

“You actually need to interact information as an artist now,” he continued. “As a result of information is altering the world.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward