2021 was an eventful year for Impossible Object, to say the least.

We launched in early summer as one of the first ever web3-native small presses (perhaps the actual first - never been able to establish for sure!) Taking forebears such as Semiotext(e), Urbanomic and Ignota as our models, we stated our aim to publish theory, fiction, poetry and conversations, and had successful crypto and fiat crowdfunds for our first book, Conversations on AI.

https://r.mirror.xyz/zghnOjS2aVlowlZ5D7ocnswHVSLSe04ZG-ubaMFBHmI

Over the following six months we did two things: we built a community and began the process of getting Conversations on AI out of the gate.

Building the community was fun and quick (until Covid and other events threw their respective spanners in the works). Between July and October the Telegram group hosted day-to-day chats about literature and ideas and a series of community calls-cum-podcasts entitled IO Hangs.

https://r.mirror.xyz/hbSGpEPEt_HkWYfBMHiSfWxSb3e9JZhPcFgQpvGcm6c

(You can expect the return of IO Hangs when our capacity is a little bit greater, and regular office hours/plain old community calls in the meantime. We also hope to be able to host the promised Book Club and other events before too long.)

Getting Conversations on AI on its feet proved a trickier process than expected. In retrospect, it was always going to be a tall order to get the slow-moving cogs of publishing to rotate at web3 speed. But we’ve now cracked that nut and are ready to get properly going.

Without further ado, we’re excited to reveal our 2022 Roadmap!

Shortly before Christmas 2021 we announced an exciting change in the format that the three conversations would be adopting. The conversations were originally intended to take shape via email exchanges between Reza and his respective interlocutors (Ben; Nick and Helen; Holly and Mat), but they will now occur in real time and be livestreamed for backers and selected guests to attend and participate in:

In a slight change of plan, the first conversation will now be between Reza and Nick (with a written exchange between Reza and Helen to follow, TBD), at the end of February:

• 24th February, 14.30 GMT (09.30 ET) (Platform TBD, but probably Twitch)

(A couple of factors prevent us from holding the conversation later in the day - apologies West Coast folks! There will be a recording for you to watch back at your leisure.)

The dates for the other two conversations are still TBD but will likely take place in March and April. Further announcements incoming.

We’re planning some further Mirror posts to fill in detail on the other stages in the roadmap, many of which were also explained in the original crowdfund post, but to conclude today’s post, we’d like to tell you about the Impossible Object OG NFT collection.

Once plans started to fall into place for the conversations to be livestreamed, it became apparent that it was about time to make the transition from the Telegram group to a Discord server, where numerous threads of discussion can take place and be archived. This will be a great venue for real-time group chats about the livestreamed conversations, as well as for hanging out together and sharing our thoughts from week to week.

The Impossible Object Discord will be gated, and we considered using the $IMPOSSIBLE token from the crowdfund to unlock it… But then we had a better idea.

To express our enormous gratitude to our backers and to our community for the support you’ve shown over the last half year, even when updates and developments were thin on the ground, we’re giving you a surprise gift: an NFT from the Impossible Object OG collection which, as well as being purdy, will be used via Collab.land integration to gain entry to the Discord.

Produced with VQGAN+CLIP, there are four different OG NFTs, some of which are reserved for crowdfund backers and some of which will be available to the broader Impossible Object community.

• If you backed Conversations on AI, you need do nothing to get your NFT. Just take a look in the ‘Hidden’ tab in your Opensea account on or around 1st Feb to see which one you got!

• If you’ve been a member of the Telegram group over the last few months, be sure to go back in there over the next week and keep an eye out for instructions about how to claim your NFT.

In the coming days, we’ll post a step-by-step guide for NFT noobs about setting up a Metamask wallet and viewing your OG NFT on Opensea.

This will be followed in early-mid February by another guide on accessing the Impossible Object Discord with your NFT once it opens its doors and viewing the dedicated channels for the livestream chats and other book discussions.

Thanks so much for reading! Watch this space for further updates, & very much looking forward to seeing more of each other in 2022! 🎉 🎉 🎉