0xDEAFBEEF

Announcing Glitchbox, the sculpture. SOUND ON 🔊 Premiering July 12 at @ToledoMuseum in Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms, curated by @juliaxgulia Glitchbox began in 2021 as an early programmable NFT: a generative audiovisual system with parameters modifiable via on-chain transactions. Through an arduous transformation, at the cost of sweat and sanity, Glitchbox now takes a corporeal form of forged iron and electronics. A fully interactive audiovisual synthesizer, inviting audience members to touch and manipulate tactile controls in a real-time sensory experience. Glitchbox has many facets (some would say six) thematically that I'll try to get into over time: labour, craft, generative systems as cybernetic systems existing beyond purely digital/virtual as embodied sensual experiences, and the significance of these themes in an era of generative AI.

Degenerative 2022. An NFT collection of generative art slot machines implemented as smart contract. Owners submit roll() transactions, competing to be first to win jackpots, granting mint passes for a diminishing supply of additional slot machine NFTs with increasingly rare attributes.

He stores his art as C code on Ethereum. If every server disappears, it can still be rebuilt. At Zero 10 in Basel, strangers played it live. Every input written permanently onchain. Full interview with @_deafbeef in the next tweet 👇

@conniebakshi Amazing will do. I love reading two books at once for weird synchronicities

@_deafbeef highly recommend juxtaposing ‘the forge and the crucible’ against fred turner’s ‘from counterculture to cyberculture’ for a mindfuck of a feedback loop😘

Reading and re-reading on craft, embodiment, and material agency: Making, Tim Ingold Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett The Forge and the Crucible, Mircea Eliade How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles Touching and Imagining, Jan Švankmajer

and Spell of Sensuous, David Abram

@lovidlovid Computer art feels like a label for a time period

what's the difference between computer art and digital art?

@borgetsebastien @AspreyStudio 🤍🙏

Proud to add to my collection @_deafbeef "SYNTH POEM: OSCILLOSCOPE", part of a series of on-chain generative audiovisual works, each paired with one physical sculpture (Oscilloscope) in forged iron by the artist himself. 0xDEAFBEEF is an artist and engineer based in Toronto, Canada. Over the past twenty years, he has been tinkering in diverse areas overlapping art and technology, including music, sound recording, computer animation, blacksmithing, and generative art. As a classically trained musician with a strong background in sound technology, he brings his interests together in a bespoke art practice using low-level computer code and a minimal tool set to craft raw information into audiovisual artworks. For several years he has carried on a professional metal working practice producing sculpture and jewelry. In his view, blacksmithing, in which the artisan crafts their own tools and production systems using materials immediately at their disposal, bears similarities to the crafting of computational systems. Each digital Synth Poem piece is created at the moment of minting from a unique hash, producing distinct combinations of tempo, timbre, pitch, and structure. While primarily sonic, each work is accompanied by a visualisation derived directly from its audio signal, referencing early vector displays and oscilloscope imagery. The physical sculptures are inspired by analogue oscilloscopes, a type of electronic test instrument introduced in the late 19th-century that graphically displays varying voltages of signals as a function of time. Oscilloscopes are used in many different disciplines, including medicine, engineering and telecommunications.

Just received Ben Laposky "Oscillon 16", 1953 photograph on vintage silver gelatin print 🤗 thanks to @aspreystudio & @_deafbeef In the 1950s, mathematician and artist Ben Laposky (1914–2000) and filmmaker used analogue oscilloscopes, sine wave generators, and electronic circuitry to manipulate electrical signals into visual forms he called “Oscillons” — among the earliest examples of electronically generated art. By photographing these constantly shifting waveforms, he transformed transient electronic events into fixed visual compositions, anticipating many of the ideas that would later underpin digital and generative art.

gm friends 🎶

Ecstatic that after many long years, I finally collected a Hashmark by @_deafbeef ! Thrilled to have secured this hand forged iron sculpture and it’s NFT that must be refreshed every year for ten years to become permanent and maybe turn iron to gold! Shoutout to @AspreyStudio !

Hello Pal Alto! Some fine ironwork at the Cardinal hotel and vintage radio gear. See you later at @nodefnd for @kimasendorf PXL opening 💿🎶

Only 2 Hashmarks remain from the edition of 100. Created by artist, engineer and blacksmith @_deafbeef, each 1/1 hand-forged work is paired with an iron pigment print and its corresponding digital token. Available through Asprey Studio. DM or email for details.

Discount Grail by @_deafbeef A stout grail fabricated from pure silver.

@sarpkeremyavuz @TheArtNewspaper Thank you. Sent you an email last night, would be grateful if you could forward that expanded response that to the editors. 🙏

@_deafbeef @TheArtNewspaper Sent your note over to the editors, though I was sitting in the front row when you said prompts lacked legacy unlike other forms of digital practices when you argued they did not qualify as craft.

Grateful for any coverage @TheArtNewspaper and open to criticism. I'm hack and I know it, price you pay for being a generalist. but this is incorrect. I never dismissed prompting or the use of AI in art making, and well aware of those histories (PAYPHONE was in fact on display). Another small correction is that I hate welding. The oscilloscope sculptures are hand forged and have zero welds.

@KateVassGalerie @TheArtNewspaper @brtmoments 🤍🙏

You don’t need to explain yourself, @_deafbeef. The signal always outlives the noise. Over the past year I've interviewed 60+ collectors, and your work came up again and again and again. @brtmoments collab is one of the most thoughtful projects I've seen in on-chain art. Keep creating. 🤍

@DagieDee @eli_schein @trevorpaglen @ArtBasel @fellowshiptrust 🤍🙏

@eli_schein and @trevorpaglen These are some of my highlights from Zero Ten @ArtBasel . I believe the curatorial layout of the booths worked exceptionally well and almost functioned as an invisible guide into a storyline about digital art. Starting with @fellowshiptrust and the three flags by @john__gerrard , who uses code as a medium to connect stories of critique and hope about the world we live in today. I felt that the central placement of these three works at the entrance created a beautiful bridge between the traditional part of the art fair and the rest of 0.10. Moving on to @_deafbeef , it had never been so clear to me how much his work engages with the roughness of raw material, the craft it demands, and the way the digital component evokes a nostalgic glimpse of the past. His work speaks to the poetry that emerges when these two radically different worlds are brought together. At the centre of 0.10 sits the booth of @nguyenwahed . @lennyjpg 's Infinite Garden was beautifully installed horizontally on the floor, while at the back of the booth stood one of the most compelling code-based artworks by @andreasgysin . It felt almost like a coded counterpart to Joseph Kosuth's One and Three Chairs. I was in awe and completely fell in love with it. Behind that sat maybe one of the most needed artworks at the fair by @artmetaofficial , featuring several historically important works of generative photography. In my opinion, these pieces are among the missing links that help explain where contemporary generative art comes from. Nearby was the boot of @office_impart and @GalleryUpstream with @JanRobertLeegte . To me, Orbits is one of the most poetic outcomes of his more than twenty-five-year exploration of what it means for something digital to possess material form. Next to that sits @artblocks_io with @williamapan . I hope his work managed to open the eyes of some traditional art collectors, because the Landscape series represents something genuinely new in the history of painting. Mapan has found a remarkable path forward for the medium. Painting once served as a window onto the visible world. Later, during Modernism it increasingly turned inward, becoming a reflection on its own materials, gestures, and emotional possibilities. Mapan takes the next step. His work asks what painting can become in a world where systems and algorithms increasingly mediate how images are produced, distributed, and seen. Rather than resisting those conditions, he transforms them into a new visual language. These were just some of my favourite moments at 0.10. What I particularly appreciated was how the curation and mise-en-scène created pathways between contemporary digital practices and stories that stretch deep into art history. Rather than presenting digital art as something isolated or detached, the exhibition revealed its connections to much longer artistic trajectories. I believe that is precisely the direction in which the conversation should continue. A big congratulations to @eli_schein and @trevorpaglen .