Okkervil 🐦‍🔥

Such an honor to have works from this pioneering artist on objkt - born in 1937, Gravenhorst is one of the founders of Generative Photography and he has been exploring computer art since the 60s.

Rumor mill saying this is the last ETHDenver ever. Not sure if confirmed yet, but heard across multiple people.

There's something that happens to a digital object when it gets recorded on a decentralised blockchain. Something changes in what that thing is, not just in how it's stored. Before that moment, digital objects are essentially weightless copied infinitely, deleted without a trace, alive only as long as some server decides to keep them. They have no history that belongs to them. They float. But once something is inscribed on-chain, it suddenly has roots. It acquires a past that can't be undone, a trail of relations, who made it, when, what happened to it, woven permanently into a shared record. The object doesn't just exist anymore. It has existed, and that history is now part of what it is. This is perhaps most visible in digital art. For decades, digital artists made work that was ontologically homeless. A JPEG could be on a million screens simultaneously, saved by anyone, stripped of its context, detached from its maker. You could encounter a digital artwork with no way of knowing, no way even in principle, whether what you were looking at was the "original" or a copy. The distinction barely made sense. NFTs didn't solve this by making images uncopyable. The image remains as reproducible as ever. What changed is that a particular instance was anchored to a verifiable point of origin, a timestamp, a creator, a chain of ownership that travels with it permanently and that no one can quietly rewrite. The artwork acquired a biography. Walter Benjamin wrote that what makes an original artwork irreplaceable isn't its visual content but its aura, its rootedness in one place, one time, with a traceable history. Mechanical reproduction destroys that aura because copies carry none of it. Digital art, for most of its existence, had no aura at all. It was born already infinitely reproducible, already unrooted. Blockchain synthetically restores something aura-like to the digital. Not by making copies impossible, but by anchoring an instance to an unforgeable origin a history it carries wherever it goes. The philosopher Yuk Hui argues that what gives any object its reality isn't just its material substance but the web of relations it holds to time, to other objects, to the people and processes that produced it. Most digital objects have been ontologically thin. Blockchain makes them thicker. It gives them relational depth, a before-and-after, a place in a story that existed before you encountered them and will continue after. For digital artists, this isn't a minor technical footnote. It's a transformation in what their work is. A piece minted on-chain enters the world differently than a file shared on the internet. It has weight. It has a history. It is, for the first time, genuinely somewhere.

Let me tell you the story of my encounter with a true philanthropists Because he never took credit for his kindness nor did he ever asked for anything in return. In October 2023 I organized a show (side event to Paris photo) at IHAM featuring Artem Humilevski, Bager Kaya, Ben Zank, Brandfuet, Brooke Didonato, Fatimah Hossaini, Foodmasku, Iness Rychlik, Lara Zankoul, Maria Pleshkova, Samantha Cavet, Synchrodogs and Cyber Yuyu. As always I don’t have any sponsor I fund everything on my own, the exhibition is popular but yeah I don’t manage to sell much despite having a great curatorial concept and artist participating. At the occasion of the first edition of Paris photos digital sector the idea of the show was to present a panorama of the next generation of upcoming digital native photographer, most hailing from emerging scene, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Turkey, Lebanon, Taiwan, and Russia. They spoke of exile, the absurdity of life, the beauty of the world, and the overturning of gender norms. Their creations are raw, Instagrammable, undefinable, poignant, triumphant, strange, queer, or humanist. Anyways it was a nice show, I take curation very seriously so there was a catalog, signed text for every artist, scénography, spotless screen display and much more. One collector I knew from online (but met for the first time at show) , which has always refused to be name and credited for his kindness, on the last day of the exibition offered to pay for the show. I was baffled and confuse did he meant to buy a work ? Maybe he want to sponsor the next show ? He can’t really sponsor this one all the communication is done we are shutting down the show tomorow.. No no no he said then asked me how much I spent on the show and that he will cover it. I was so touched I am used to see collector support artist but it was the first time and the last time I ever saw someone truly care about a curator. What could I do in exchange ? How could I make it right ?? Do you want me to credit you online for it ? Should I do this or that ? “You’re already making it right for the artists, I wanna support you and what you do. You’re young. You took a risk by presenting what you did the way you did and I want to reward that” (or smt around those lines) Even the artist I support by exhibiting and valorizing the works most often don’t ask me if I’m doing ok financially when the show is done. Excluding the time dedicated the show had costed me about 3000€ to organize , which he felt was not much for the quality output (I do a lot of things on my own) but yeah I was used to get in debt every time i did a shows so not having to worry about that felt nice. It might not be 350k but it was gesture of kindness and support that really gave me strength to keep on organizing top notch digital art show aimed to onboard the trad art collectors. He didn’t act as a sponsor or a patron but as a true philanthropists which is a rarer bread of collector than we think in our space.

🌹AI CONTEST 9🌹 Awarding ~18,000 in prizes for AI art. Contest open to anyone, including anti-ai accounts. Theme: WE Medium: AI/Mixed Media Deadline: 2/1/26 Prizes: 1st: 3 ETH (~$9000) 2nd: 1.5 ETH (~$4500) 3rd: 1 ETH (~$3000) 4th & 5th: .5 ETH (~$1500) Theme in next post👇

To the Nifty Gateway community, Thank you for your feedback on the recently announced closure of the platform. It is our goal to conduct the process of closing Nifty Gateway in a smooth and orderly way and that all of our customers are able to move their NFTs to their wallet of choice and have access to them in perpetuity. Below is an update on the closure process: ✅ Our plan is to migrate the metadata and media hosting on Nifty Gateway to a permanent, decentralized solution on Arweave. There is a subset of NFTs created in 2021 or before with metadata that is permanently linked to Nifty Gateway’s servers. For these NFTs, we will continue to host this metadata in perpetuity. ✅ We are extending the deadline for moving assets to a 90 day window, with a deadline of April 23, 2026. After this date, if customers have not moved their assets off the platform we will continue to work with customers to make sure that they are able to move their NFTs to their wallet of choice. ✅ We are working on a bulk withdrawal tool for our customers who have multiple NFTs on our platform and will be rolling it out shortly with plenty of time to use the tool before the April 23 deadline. We continue to be grateful to the Nifty community for joining us on this journey. 🩵