Curated art hits different and Deca has built a platform with curation in mind. Until now, artists have had little say in how their art was displayed. Marketplaces applied a standard look and feel that came up short for the presentation of many artworks broadly categorised in four key areas:
Thumbnail previews cropped work reducing the initial impact of art.
Metadata visual ‘noise’ such as pricing distracting a viewer from an art only experience.
Resolution and size constraints on art presentation in the interests of overall marketplace performance.
Curation filtered by inventory attributes such as oldest, newest or lowest price with no options for what looks best together.
The combined impact 💥 of each of these limitations on art presentation created some ‘alpha’ opportunities for collectors who made the effort to view art unencumbered by platforms limitations, but for the most part we began to realise that marketplaces operate like wholesale inventory warehouses not as a retail art environment. Enter Deca.
The art comes first with Deca as thumbnail previews are done away with entirely, in favour of a fully composable canvas to present art works. The metadata visual noise is also absent. Perhaps most important is the display of art in high resolution as the artist originally intended it. The number of artworks that Deca has unmasked to reveal previously unseen detail is like revisiting the Sistine Chapel after its major refurbishment.
Manifold Nights created by Alpha Centauri Kid revealed new readable details on a digital screen showing Cool Cats on the right of the painting that previously were not viewable.
🍒 A quick recap. Deca replaces badly cropped thumbnails, low resolution visuals and distracting metadata with high resolution art that can be curated in any way you like.
What makes this moment pivotal for art is Deca is doing for curation what marketplaces did for art liquidity. As a curator of digital art, I thought I’d share what I’ve lurrrrnnned so far as I begin to apply what art might look good together and then see if it does.
Starting with the earliest work first and then arranging artwork in order of token mint is perhaps the most straightforward method of curation.
👏 Pro: Chronological curation is best suited to show how an artist has evolved over a period of time.
🤔 Con: Beginning with early work can reduce initial impact of the curation as earlier isn’t always best.
Examples Alpha Centauri Kid Deca curation focussed on a single smart contract showing every 1/1 artwork minted to the contract from #1 to #56. Ayla el Moussa Deca curation shown in two key time period reflecting the evolution of style from 2021 to 2022.
Artworks that can be categorised by a particular trait can be grouped together by each individual trait. Trait curation is valuable if you can show to the audience the differences between traits or the power of a particular trait that may not be as impactful if traits are spread across a collection.
Grouping traits together, if done right, can reveal something about the artworks that even the artist may not have known about their work.
👏 Pro: Featuring traits highlights for viewers particular attributes shared across a number of artworks. 🤔 Con: Some collections are not well suits to trait curation where there are too many traits or some of the traits are not appealing.
Examples Cryptopunk Deca curation highlights the possible traits of a Cryptopunk through the highlighting of four Cryptopunks. Grant Yun Deca curation highlights a day / night thematic present across many of his works to give viewers a sense of time as they view the collection.
A thematic curation brings in exemplar artworks from a number of artists to provide viewers multiple ways of accessing the artistic theme. Thematic curation is powerful where there are many ways that artists interpret the aesthetic. I wrote about the crypto aesthetic on MintFace in Aug 2021.
“The Crypto Aesthetic (T.C.A) is a shun of the status quo. A nose turned up to physical remnants and the well commissioned gatekeepers of the 20th century.”
👏 Pro: Gives the art viewer a full spectrum of possibilities that fit the curated theme. 🤔 Con: Can feel clumsy if not curated with care and empathy for the artists included.
Examples Punk Visions Deca curation highlights the kinds of crypto cities we might inhabit if there was a physical world for crypto artists and collectors to live in. Editions Deca curation helps viewers see photographers who have released editions. Rooftops Deca curation brings artists who climb buildings together under one roof. Sensual Deca curation brings together artists who feature the female human form.
Technical curation is the least editorial of the curation styles, instead categorising the art in a way that a library might. The Minted book chapters follow a technical curation approach including generative art, lens based art and illustrations to name a few.
👏 Pro: Technical curation has longevity built-in because its technical attributes do not change.
🤔 Con: Can feel clinical to experience unless care is applied to sub curation within the technical categories.
Examples Illustrations Deca curation shows digital art that is drawn, sketched, painted or generated to represent a remembered or imagined scene or object. Landscapes Deca curation shows art where landscape plays a significant role in the artworks depiction.
!Vibe curation is simply going with what feels right together. It is a freestyle form of adding artwork to Deca and can yield some beautifully moving curations. Deca boards curated in this way can be deeply meaningful when done by the artist.
👏 Pro: Go with what looks and feels best together in your minds eye. 🤔 Con: Your !vibe may not be to everyone else’s taste!
Examples Shepard Fairey Deca curation shows a handful of artworks that MintFace owns, next to a 1:1 artwork special to MintFace because it was the first discovered on my journey in to NFTs.
Cryptophunk 457 Deca curation uses the Deca board as a canvas where each NFT displays a single pixel of the larger artwork.
You can curate art any way you like, selecting the art you love and placing in a context that you !vibe with or you can curate by in date order, by trait, by thematic or via a technical art classification. For the first time with Deca, you get to choose not the marketplace.
Every artist should consider curating a Deca board of their own art by one of more of the themes mentioned above. Deca is a surfacing tool that can bring eyes to art that the Twitter timeline has long forgotten.
Every collector should consider curating a Deca board of art already purchased. Look at where the gaps are, understand what the overall picture is telling you about what you might collect next.
Bonus Deca Alpha
Deca is running a bunch of ‘use our platform and get free stuff’ while they attempt to get to critical mass. Not an easy undertaking for any platform. However the good news for people who create on Deca is you get some of the rewards in the form of DXP points.
These are useful to ‘upgrade’ artworks by Golid (of Art Blocks Curated Archetypes fames) that early Deca frens received. Whether they continue to deliver value remains to be seen, but if you are just doing it for the points and free stuff are you really here for the right reasons anon?
MintFace Deca boards mentioned in this article