Jonathan Colón retweetledi
Thirty days of "Artificial After All"
On April 15th, the contract was deployed to Ethereum mainnet. A single transaction, and 256 child contracts waiting to be created from it. Over the following twelve hours I enjoyed creating the 64 artist prints, one by one.
Each piece a self-contained system, a compressed neural network embedded into 24kb of bytecode, capable of computing its own image on the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
The remaining 192 contracts were then opened to everyone at 0.128 ETH each. Each creation constituted a contract calling the "Artificial After All" contract, which in turn deployed a new "Artificial" contract. The chain handled the deployment, the storage, the computation, and the ownership ledger in a single sequence. All 192 Artificials were acquired within ten hours, and I shared a clue for Artificial After All during that time.
"The machine learned to see before anyone was watching. In those early moments, each creation was given an identity on the world computer. Every identity ends with a breath. Follow those breaths, from the first creation to the last before the doors opened."
A private key had been distributed across the addresses of the 64 artist prints. The final hex digit of each, in order, formed the key. One day after the sale, the puzzle was solved by @gifted_0x : x.com/gifted_0x/stat…
As of today, the work has accumulated its own activity. 149 wallets hold at least one piece. 105 secondary transactions have occurred. 47.37 ETH has changed hands between collectors. The highest single sale settled at 0.95 ETH.
In function, these resemble NFTs. They can be owned, transferred, listed, and bought. The structural difference is what matters. Each piece is a smart contract, not a token. The owner holds the contract itself: the weights, the inference logic, the marketplace functions, the ownership ledger. All of it, in one indivisible unit.
For example, this is an Artificial. You don't have to view it through the website. Any blockchain explorer works: 0x363F824eD7EAF45F9757C5C1FBe45957c2D1E844
There is no separate token pointing to external metadata. The ownership and the work are the same object. This is also why they do not appear on standard marketplaces. Each piece is its own marketplace. The chain itself is the storefront.
@yougogirl_eth published a detailed technical breakdown of how the network sits inside the contract: x.com/yougogirl_eth/…
These are artifacts of permissionless infrastructure. Each piece computes its image deterministically from its seed at the moment of inquiry. The website is just an interface. The work is independent of it.
@InCartersEyes built a viewer that visualizes the inference happening in real time: artificialviewer.vercel.app
What follows
My desire is to extend the work beyond the chain through publications, prints, and other formats that can carry the underlying idea into other contexts.
16 Artificials are reserved for donation to museums and galleries. A portion of the remainder is intended for future patrons of the practice. This is an open letter to any of them.
Finally, I appreciate all collectors who are interested in digging, seeing the value in it, and rooting for it.
The art is not stored. It is computed. The market is not hosted. It is encoded. The permanence is not promised. It is enforced.
artificial.han.io
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