As I look back, it seems like a lot has happened, but our team achieved not much actual progress. For simplicity's sake (and as a personal accountability model), it might be reasonable to share a list of events, decisions, and small actions during the working hours of the past month. 

A personal part about a resume

It's been a rather bumpy start to the year. Getting sick (and then again), searching for a new place to live (as the landlord of the current apartment of almost four years decided to sell), and the whole "dead month January" routine, which always paralyzes any work-related activity till February. On the other hand, it was a precious time to set up goals and to think deeply enough to understand the big picture around you. Hence the following story: on the first week of January, I've chatted with a fellow producer who makes pretty successful features. She casually asked for my updated CV during the conversation, telling me that they're expanding the studio and looking for some fresh producing hands. I haven't made anything film-related for a while now, so the instinct burst out to learn how much they are even ready to offer me nowadays. There's a book that sums up this situation perfectly: (loosely translating from Russian to English) "You Can't Leave, You Can't Stay: Identity Crises, Burnouts, Meanings, and Resources in the Film Industry." I know a lot of film professionals who literally can't leave; that's how scary and addictive it is. These people can't even imagine doing something else than being production assistants or casting directors. The constant fear of being out of a job prevails above anything else. And here I was carefully adding external links from 2020-2021 to my CV, thinking by myself about knowing precisely how predictable the whole thing is. Ironically, she didn't return my call. Guess it's wishful thinking.

A part about Generative Art

We spend the most time in the team discussions around on-chain generative art during the month. We started exploring the space as it turned out the most compelling use case for visual artists to present in web3. Diving deeper and deeper into generative projects keeps you in awe. Like, I can't get enough figuring out Fidenzas. I fell comically in love with the simplicity of Chromie Squiggles. It's interesting to comprehend personally, too: my background in event production taught me well enough that the project's success depends on predictability only. The sophisticated way you destroy the obstacles for other crew members defines you as a professional. As students, industry professionals tried to constantly remind us that everybody wins when everyone knows exactly what they're doing. To this day, I've never fully realized how this notion of predictability ruined many of my peers – we were making unbelievably boring things just to play it safe.  

From the outsiders' point of view, the public narrative around on-chain generative art seems centralized around ArtBlocks only. Snowfro and his team were the first to acknowledge the future promises of on-chain artistic generative works. And in a short period, they fully absorbed the sphere, at least in the eyes of the media. I get why it's almost impossible to break through without sufficient curatorial power behind or without a well-funded marketing campaign. That's why Curated Collections are a thing and an unbelievably successful one. But it still creates a noticeable perception for up-and-coming artists that the only rule to launch a successful generative collection is to get in line to be selected by the one team only. 

Most projects we studied can be described as "a collection for the collection's sake," lacking an exciting narrative. The central premise of most of them is the uniqueness around the algorithm: as a participant, you expect this pure magical math to make the most beautiful digital art in the world. Art historians can effectively argue with the notion of how important the narrative is for the generative works – you go and try to make a story out of Composition VI. That said, it's hard to recall any generative collection trying conscious worldbuilding or persuasive storytelling. As a generative artist in the current environment, it's like you're supposed to create a project and move on to the next one. I hope the conversation around ArtBlocks as the only platform for generative artists to prosper will shift towards other players. The audience and, most importantly, collectors will start to cross the boundaries of what generative art means. In my view, the NFT crowd is not giving enough attention to the narrative-driven generative collections.  

A part about meeting XR-guys from London

In the last week of the month, my business partner brought up her recent conversation with a guy from London who leads the development of an XR-engine product for simple everyday usage. They are currently looking for featured artists to utilize the software under the promotion banner – turns out it helps in fundraising. We made the pitch to collaborate on a project using their XR engine and our creative juices. The engine itself is not a finished product by a large margin, and the team is still tweaking things here and there, but we collected all the drafts from the "generative art project research" and presented a vision for the "Soul Of The World" (working title). Simply put, it's an NFT-project structured around a theatrical visual experience in a tropical forest and its various constantly changing inhabitants in tune with nature's rhythms. As of this writing, the engine significantly lacks many crucial tools, but the devs hope to fix the issue in 3 months. Our last meeting went well and concluded with mutual admiration, a scheduled follow-up call in early March, and a promise to stay in touch as we are still fooling around their engine. 

As I look back, it seems like a lot has happened, but our team achieved not much actual progress. For simplicity's sake (and as a personal accountability model), it might be reasonable to share a list of events, decisions, and small actions during the working hours of the past month. 

A personal part about a resume

It's been a rather bumpy start to the year. Getting sick (and then again), searching for a new place to live (as the landlord of the current apartment of almost four years decided to sell), and the whole "dead month January" routine, which always paralyzes any work-related activity till February. On the other hand, it was a precious time to set up goals and to think deeply enough to understand the big picture around you. Hence the following story: on the first week of January, I've chatted with a fellow producer who makes pretty successful features. She casually asked for my updated CV during the conversation, telling me that they're expanding the studio and looking for some fresh producing hands. I haven't made anything film-related for a while now, so the instinct burst out to learn how much they are even ready to offer me nowadays. There's a book that sums up this situation perfectly: (loosely translating from Russian to English) "You Can't Leave, You Can't Stay: Identity Crises, Burnouts, Meanings, and Resources in the Film Industry." I know a lot of film professionals who literally can't leave; that's how scary and addictive it is. These people can't even imagine doing something else than being production assistants or casting directors. The constant fear of being out of a job prevails above anything else. And here I was carefully adding external links from 2020-2021 to my CV, thinking by myself about knowing precisely how predictable the whole thing is. Ironically, she didn't return my call. Guess it's wishful thinking.

A part about Generative Art

We spend the most time in the team discussions around on-chain generative art during the month. We started exploring the space as it turned out the most compelling use case for visual artists to present in web3. Diving deeper and deeper into generative projects keeps you in awe. Like, I can't get enough figuring out Fidenzas. I fell comically in love with the simplicity of Chromie Squiggles. It's interesting to comprehend personally, too: my background in event production taught me well enough that the project's success depends on predictability only. The sophisticated way you destroy the obstacles for other crew members defines you as a professional. As students, industry professionals tried to constantly remind us that everybody wins when everyone knows exactly what they're doing. To this day, I've never fully realized how this notion of predictability ruined many of my peers – we were making unbelievably boring things just to play it safe.  

From the outsiders' point of view, the public narrative around on-chain generative art seems centralized around ArtBlocks only. Snowfro and his team were the first to acknowledge the future promises of on-chain artistic generative works. And in a short period, they fully absorbed the sphere, at least in the eyes of the media. I get why it's almost impossible to break through without sufficient curatorial power behind or without a well-funded marketing campaign. That's why Curated Collections are a thing and an unbelievably successful one. But it still creates a noticeable perception for up-and-coming artists that the only rule to launch a successful generative collection is to get in line to be selected by the one team only. 

Most projects we studied can be described as "a collection for the collection's sake," lacking an exciting narrative. The central premise of most of them is the uniqueness around the algorithm: as a participant, you expect this pure magical math to make the most beautiful digital art in the world. Art historians can effectively argue with the notion of how important the narrative is for the generative works – you go and try to make a story out of Composition VI. That said, it's hard to recall any generative collection trying conscious worldbuilding or persuasive storytelling. As a generative artist in the current environment, it's like you're supposed to create a project and move on to the next one. I hope the conversation around ArtBlocks as the only platform for generative artists to prosper will shift towards other players. The audience and, most importantly, collectors will start to cross the boundaries of what generative art means. In my view, the NFT crowd is not giving enough attention to the narrative-driven generative collections.  

A part about meeting XR-guys from London

In the last week of the month, my business partner brought up her recent conversation with a guy from London who leads the development of an XR-engine product for simple everyday usage. They are currently looking for featured artists to utilize the software under the promotion banner – turns out it helps in fundraising. We made the pitch to collaborate on a project using their XR engine and our creative juices. The engine itself is not a finished product by a large margin, and the team is still tweaking things here and there, but we collected all the drafts from the "generative art project research" and presented a vision for the "Soul Of The World" (working title). Simply put, it's an NFT-project structured around a theatrical visual experience in a tropical forest and its various constantly changing inhabitants in tune with nature's rhythms. As of this writing, the engine significantly lacks many crucial tools, but the devs hope to fix the issue in 3 months. Our last meeting went well and concluded with mutual admiration, a scheduled follow-up call in early March, and a promise to stay in touch as we are still fooling around their engine.