TENDER Insights #11

Letter from the Editor

As the calendar turned to March, I couldn’t help but think of spring cleaning. Spring means new life and new potential – which often requires that we shed some of the extra baggage we picked up over the winter. As the leaves start to bloom, let's focus on identifying and carrying forward what’s most important to us.

Maybe go through your collection and reflect on what resonates with you and what doesn't. Maybe send a piece to someone who you know would love it. Maybe start sharing one of your skills or passions that you haven’t brought to the community yet. Maybe take an extra moment to set goals and intentions for the remainder of the year.

We're in this movement together for the long-term, so let’s make sure we’re bringing the best version of ourselves in the periods to come.

All the best, Stephen Stanwood (sandcat)

Movements

This month, hundreds of art collectors generated thousands of potential outputs in the days leading up to the release of Erik Swahn’s work Fields.

Some were sparse; others exploded with color. Some were square; others were rectangular. Some looked like fields, some looked like flags, some looked like the night sky, and others looked like nothing at all.

On release day, only eight hundred of those outputs became part of the final project. The thousands of others generated along the way were left behind to make way for the official set of mints.

Fields is the latest in a line of recent long-form generative art projects where the infinite possibilities are whittled down to a final set intentionally rather than randomly. Sometimes the collectors pick which pieces "make it"; sometimes the artists do. Sometimes the pieces are tuned for certain attributes but the exact outcome is left to chance, such as with the upcoming fxhash Params projects.

So what exactly is the process of crafting these projects?

“Curation” is a very tempting answer, and some members of the community have already taken to calling these types of projects ‘curated’ – as if they contain "collector-curated" or "artist-curated" works.

While the word curation is used colloquially for everything from household decorating to friend selection – and we agree that shorthand is useful to talk about this concept – we don’t think “curated” is the right fit for what’s going on here.

That’s not because curation is meant to be elitist or inaccessible – it’s because the word carries a set of powerful associations that are worth preserving in their own right. The art world has spent many decades thinking through what curation is and why it’s important, and it is incumbent on us as stewards of this new generative art movement to understand some of that context.

So what exactly is curation, anyway? Merriam-Webster defines “curation” as

The Tate Modern goes even narrower, defining a curator specifically as:

The Met, meanwhile, defines the process of curation this way:

By any of these definitions, collectors saving their favorite outputs before a mint only get part of the way there – and we would add to the above definitions that there is a purpose to said Selecting and Organizing.

As a generative art community, we are certainly selecting which of the thousands of possible outputs of a new algorithm will make it onto the blockchain as mints in these pre-selected long-form projects. But organizing? Mint day is a first-come, first-served whirlwind, and it inevitably results in a chaotic collection of final outputs, that retain some sense of randomness within the algorith’s capabilies.

To Tender, curation is storytelling with art after the art is made. Curating should tell some larger story or have some additional purpose on top of the final selection of individual works that would not have otherwise existed without their arrangement of curation. On top of that, the selection of final individual works, even by a curator pre-selecting new individual works for a gallery show from a single artists, has a notably different flavor than pre-selecting a series of works from a single algorithm. Long-form projects have a strong additional consistency and singular code-derivative source, such that we liken any applied selection process closer to the editing process of narrowing down final works, rather than it being similar to the curation OR art-making processes.

The most useful analogy again comes from photography, where an artist may take thousands of images in a single ‘shoot’ only to narrow them down to a tighter selection for display or sale – whether that selection is performed by themselves or by an editor, or by a commissioning collector. We do believe that art-making has creative processes that involve self-editing, collector-specific selections, and observers expressing their preferences (as they might during a studio visit). But this is not to say that collectors are co-authoring the artworks through their feedback. Collectors and art patrons have long paid for projects on commission and commented on the progress of those works along the way, without claiming themselves as co-artists. After a photoshoot, creative directors and buyers go through and spot their favorites, and the photos they choose are literally called “selects.”

Viewed this way, picking our favorite outputs from a new project is a logical extension of the classic type of selection work that art collectors and patrons have done for hundreds of years.

After creation, curation can play a pivotal role. This makes intuitive sense, considering that “curation” comes from the Latin “cura” – meaning "to take care." Curators take care of artworks by bringing them together with other pieces, delving into what they mean in context, and helping viewers understand them and imbuing purpose.

While the work of curation remains as important as ever, there’s no denying that we’re living through a revolution in the means of offering and delivering artworks to collectors. Today, some new tools allow collectors to exert more control over final outputs than ever before.

Back in October 2022, generative artist Tyler Hobbs and self-described "web3 and gen-art enthusiast" Dandelion Wist co-created QQL. They presented their new work, which allowed collectors to exercise control over a number of parameters to create and select specific outputs, as “an experiment in generative collaboration.” QQL has grown into a runaway success in the months since its launch, and it help paved the way for platform-level structures like fx(params) and, of course, for collector-selected pieces like Fields.

After spending "much of [his] free time ... with the QQL algorithm, generating thousands of outputs a day," one TENDER community member shared a thread filled with beautiful outputs that posed a provocative question: "Am I an artist?”

Using the QQL participation evidence alone, we don't think so. Many mediums have "makers" who create works in the artist's vision and style, but there is still just one artist. Damien Hirst, to pick one oft-cited example, personally painted only a couple dozen of his 1,400 Spot Paintings—but he is widely accepted to be the [singular!] artist behind all of them. The same goes for Jeff Koons and his studio, Takashi Murakami and his assistants, or any of thousands of other artists and craftspeople who have worked alongside others to make iconic pieces.

While generative art is revolutionizing the processes by which art is created, sold, and transferred, it is not necessarily revolutionizing the question of who is an artist. The "artist + others" model has been around for centuries, and the fact that we are now working in a new medium doesn't automatically change that fact.

Certainly we don't diminish the creative involvement collectors now feel – or even their sense of ownership in the output – both of which we think are wonderful. We're also obsessed with the degree to which this new technology has lowered the barriers to witnessing, and to some degree participating in, art collecting and the art creation process.

Our proposal is to call these types of works pre-selected projects – either from collector-selected or artist-selected processes – or even from curator-selections. We believe that these accurately reflects exactly what’s going on while preserving the powerful meaning behind the word “curation.” To this end, we have expanded our Icons list of exceptional long-form generative art projects to include an additional ‘tab’ for pre-selected Icons!

We know that this has already been – and will continue to be – fodder for many a Discord conversation that we’re excited to be part of. Let us know what you think!

Project Love

seekers by ECKER_O_ (fxhash)

Generative art tools can be used to create breathtaking static images, and also code has the power to make art move in entirely unexpected ways, as we saw with ECKER_O_'s hit seekers last month.

Anonymous artist ECKER_O_ has been releasing work on fxhash since the platform’s earliest days. After an initial flurry of projects between December 2021 and February 2022, ECKER_O_ released one in the year between February 2022 and February 2023, leaving us in anticipation that something big was in store.

That turned out to be seekers: a long-form generative collection of 300 pieces “inspired by the view that mathematical entities objectively exist independently of the human mind.” In the piece, the small “seekers” – represented as small white circles – slowly explore a wild landscape of shifting colors and shapes. The resulting patterns, moire effects, glitches, overlain shapes, and textures are run through a gamut of animation paces within each piece. This produces exciting surprises in the way the art feels – sometimes pulsing with dynamism, and others meandering in its never-ending search.

But the seeker’s presence affects its surroundings, so it can never actually see the underlying mathematical reality of the spaces it visits. Is there a sadness in that futility – or do we just accept that type of observer effect as an inevitable part of our physical world?

Fields by Erik Swahn (Verse)

Erik Swahn describes himself on Twitter as an "Architect, etc." – and it’s been a pleasure watching him lean further and further into the "etc." over the past year and a half ❤️

Based in Stockholm, Erik has been a cornerstone of fxhash since the platform launched in November 2021. His first project, Retrogrades, combined lines and arcs into colorful and intriguing geometric forms. Two of his works since then – Farbteiler in December 2021 and Punktwelt in November 2022 – have cemented their place as platform classics and TENDER Icons. If you have never spent time on Erik’s website looking at high-resolution Farbteiler outputs, we highly recommend it.

Last week, Erik launched Fields: **a new collection of 800 works presented by London-based gallery Verse. Bringing his signature colors and dot-based shape constructions into deeply textured shapes, Erik’s Fields algorithm is a full-on sensory delight.

The variety of grid play is accentuated by the myriad proportions of individual pieces, various offsets of a given square within a composition, and the artwork edges that expose deep layering of each box. Watching each piece load builds quick anticipation for the colors to come – sometimes building a peacefully consistency arrangement of tones and textures, and other times revealing anomalies that break up the overall composition into powerful juxtapositions. Even the multi-colored layering within a given square brings a lot to absorb – making simple grids a pleasure to behold, and grids with many divisions often feeling like visual powerhouses.

Rather than generating random mints on release day, Verse allowed collectors to use the algorithm ahead of time to select their favorites. This inspired a nonstop flood of beautiful outputs in the Tender Discord and on Twitter alongside an intriguing conversation about what we should even call this new type of artistic and collecting process.

Our Movements piece traces the history of the term “curation” in order to put this new discussion in historical context. Come join that conversation this week – or just lose yourself in the Fields outputs. The choice is yours.

Metropolis by Michael Kozlowski (Bright Moments)

What's harder than planning a great live minting event? How about planning five great live minting events set to happen over nine days in cities thousands of miles apart?

Bright Moments and Art Blocks recently collaborated to do just that. From March 2 to March 11, live minters in New York, Berlin, London, Mexico City and Los Angeles each had the chance to mint a piece of art uniquely associated with their city. And that was just the start of the magic with Michael Kozlowski's (MPKOZ's) Metropolis piece.

We love how this series builds off of elements from Michael’s previous long-form works into something new and definitively urban feeling. Each piece is dimensional, painterly, and glowing – bringing rich graphic life to these architecturally structured artworks. Whether portraying abstracted cityscapes, or the swirling bustle and chaos that represents metropolitan life so well, these pieces all have a taut vibe that makes the entire project a pleasure to behold.

After minting, each Metropolis owner had a chance to mint a second piece for free. That second piece drew on traits from the first and created a complementary output designed to be displayed alongside it. Indeed, the theme of connection is everywhere in this project: connections between pieces, connection across cities, and connections possible only because of the strange magic that we call blockchain technology.

This whirlwind tour left us with over nine hundred brand new Metropolis pieces—all of which you can explore right here.

Don’t Miss This

• Feb 26 (Sunday): pile by abstractment x TENDER

• Mar 6 (Monday): Tragedy Static/Heaven by jeres

• Mar 7 (Tuesday): The Muses by Danielle King

• Mar 7 (Tuesday): Territory B by Louis-André Labadie (~100 unminted)

• Mar 9 (Thursday): Supernal Memories by Diego Pintos x TENDER

• Mar 10 (Friday): Strands of Solitude by William Mapan

• Mar 10 (Friday): Arbitrarily Deterministic #27: Ken sits down with artist trifecta Marcel Schwittlick, Andreas Rau, and Antti Pussinen

• Mar 12 (Sunday): Waiting To Be Signed #62: Will and special guest host Pronoia!

  

   
  The project hero image from the collaboration between jeres and TENDER –the first fully animated release for both artists!

• Just released: TENDER x jeres collaboration (fxhash)

• Mar 20 (Monday): launch of fx(params), the platform’s highly anticipated “new module enabling artists to define parameters that collectors explore, adjust, and toggle to find a favorite output before minting” (full details from the initial announcement)

• Mar 20 (Monday): The Passage by HERE & NOW (full details from initial announcement), a long-term experimental minting journey that will use fx(params)

  • To get a spot, mint a HERE & NOW: Edition 5 coin (~2000 unminted; 48 ꜩ)

Collector Spotlight: herefor_this!

Hey, thanks for making time for us between Fields-generation sessions!

Thanks for thinking of me!

So, “herefor_this”—what's the backstory there? 👀

For me, understanding comes through immersion. Sometimes that leads to fascination or borderline obsession. “herefor_this” started back in 2017 when I first got into blockchain and cryptocurrency. The deeper I dove, the more I learned, and I saw my casual interest evolve into a passion. I love the technology, the current and future use cases, the creativity, the community—I am here for all of it.

What’s your current state of mind?

I'm great! Feeling fortunate to be in a position where the highs and lows of the market are completely separate from my in-real-life responsibilities. Ever since I moved into collecting generative art in the summer of 2022, it has been a breath of fresh air and a welcomed relief from the stresses of grinding Discords and flipping PFPs. I also try to keep it all in context. Each morning, I get to kiss the still-sleepy smiley faces of my wife and kids. Everything else is extra.

What is your most treasured piece in your collection? Hands down, my Hollow:

This entire collection has bewitched me. While mine might not be the rarest, I cherish it all the same. Of all the pieces in my collection, I've spent the most time with this one. The magnitude of the mountains; the tiny tourists fading in and out. The concept, texture, lighting, dark space… all of it just hits me.

If you could own any artwork, which would it be? Meridian is probably my favorite generative art collection. I’m always a fan of monochromatic pieces, so a Charcoal-style piece like #638 would be my grail of grails:

What is your idea of the perfect drop? There are a few styles that I enjoy. Personally, I like hyped drops announced well in advance—like Perpendicular Inhabitation by Studio Yorktown. But my hands-down favorite would be something like Landlines Art’s last drop under his alternate account (Décollage): a surprise drop with a large allowlist for previous collectors. The excitement from discovering a drop like that—or the period leading up to a hyped mint—both get the blood going for me.

As a collector, what has been your greatest success—and your biggest regret? Financially, my biggest success and biggest regret are actually from the same project. The success was selling a free mint for 20 ETH. The regret was then getting caught up in the bull market “up only” euphoria and turning down a 105 ETH offer—and that’s when ETH was $3,300. Lots of lessons learned! Money aside, my biggest success has been starting to become an art collector, and my biggest regret is not starting to do that sooner.

What three artists, dead or alive, would you most want to have dinner with?

1. Leonardo DaVinci. A chance to experience genius and for him to be the first time traveler. Would love to understand the man behind the curtain.

2. M.C. Escher. For his perspective, of course!

3. Kwame Bruce Busia (Studio Yorktown). His art has always resonated with me and would love to hear his story over drinks and dinner.

What's the most important quality in an artwork to you? That’s a tough one. For lots of my favorite collections, there has been an immediate “oh my God—I love it!” response. There are a few collections that are community favorites that I like but never had that immediate connection with, and even spending more time with them doesn’t usually don’t move the needle to “love.” So that immediate impact is key for me.

What do you do to relax? There isn’t a whole lot of relaxation time these days! But I find organizing and pairing pieces from my collection in Deca or oncyber to be very calming. I'm still working on understanding and developing my style and tastes, and that exercise helps. Other than that, reading and building Legos with my son!

Thanks for chatting with us! Which collector would you want to hear from here next? There are so many good ones to choose from! How about horndog?

We do love the ‘dog! You heard it here first—we’re coming for you, ser! 👀

TENDER Picks of the Week

The Piece: Screens #927 by Thomas Lin Pedersen
The Price: 2.27 eth (at floor)

The Piece: Sequence #441 by Hevey
The Price: 799 ꜩ (well above 230 ꜩ floor, but an absolute grail)

The Piece: Asemica #344 by Emily Edelman
The Price: .4 eth (just above .3 eth floor, striking exemplary piece)

The Piece: Coronado #141 by jeres
The Price: 300 ꜩ (at floor; lowest floor since December 2022)

The Piece: Lepidoptera #65 by mjlindow
The Price: 299 ꜩ (at floor; next listing is 799 ꜩ)

The Piece: THX-1 #286 by Thomas Noya
The Price: .086 eth (vs .071 eth floor)

The Piece: Foundations #235 by Florian Zumbrunn
The Price: 100 ꜩ (at floor)

The Piece: Ask Me About The Dimensional Shift #32 by Lisa Orth
The Price: 89 ꜩ (at thin floor, ~6% listed)

The Piece: Unbound #268 by whitekross
The Price: 30 ꜩ (at floor; next is 40 ꜩ)

The Piece: Abbreviated Curves #469 by Landlines Art (animated in live mode here)
The Price: 27 ꜩ (at floor)

The Piece: Barriers #100 by Ada Ada Ada
The Price: 25 ꜩ (at floor, ~5% listed)

TTFN 👋

We’ll see you out there on Discord & Twitter and plan to be back in two weeks with another issue of our TENDER Insights Newsletter. Feel free to reach out with anytime with comments or suggestions. 🙂

— Adam, Stephen, and the whole TENDER family