A flash of inspiration manifests a fuzzy picture in my minds eye. The Zora State of Mind image & Pepe the frog - my ego tells my intuition it’s going to accept the muse’s contract. I’ve got to workout first though, and there’s new drama with the Friendsie rug finally confirmed.
HYPERSPEEED onchain & new creative space to play with, I’ve returned to v4 Midjourney with new tactics & ideas. Hyperpop, Enlghtenment, & now Algo Art Dealers.
Earlier that evening I completed my ‘muse contract’ on MEMEWARE. Like most contracts I just shut up and get to work. The message is usually easier to understand in hindsight I’ve learned.
And in some instances, with this being one of them, a bonus contract from the muse pops up after finishing the initial one. Algo Art Dealers is that bonus piece. One that provides multiple avenues of investigation.
To understand what “memeware” means to me, is to understand what software is. It is also understanding what memes are, why we use story, & the power of words (internally and collectively).
Assuming all that is common knowledge to the reader, Algo Art Dealers builds off of some of those foundations. It also dabbles in the conceptual reality of tech-x-culture (culture influenced by tech, not technology culture).
The art
Initially the core idea was that we build something using robots, art dealing aesthetics (Sotheby’s), and add in some abstraction for necessary flavor - beyond that it’s an informalism approach.
In hindsight, I see my curiosity/confusion in the current art world at the meta & anecdotal level starting to crystallize finally. Daily involvement in a new art world has left me with many questions. Here’s one:
Do you think more people would know of Beeple or Monet? Well I ran a poll ↓
https://twitter.com/0xlght/status/1628287668475035648?s=20
My hunch is that more people would know Beeple at the moment as well. The core instinct coming from the realization that most people (that consume art) are on social media platforms & have likely been fed a Beeple piece in their algorithms at some point.
Is Monet in the algorithm at scale?? I think not, and this is the lead of my core instinct.
The meta
Within the piece we have three text bubbles that signify the ‘bridges’ connecting what I’m thinking to the viewer. Trauma, Outrage, For you. In my estimation, these memes are the ‘gatekeepers’ of the current art world (via social media algorithmic search and discovery).
It should be acknowledged that social media algorithms helped solve the previous ‘gatekeeper’ dilemma (auction houses, galleries, 1% access, etc). However, this does not absolve it of creating new gatekeepers in the form of conceptual ‘stratafigures’ - tangible code multiplied by intangible human intervention at scale. A wordy, but intentionally descriptive, way of saying we now face Algorithim Art Dealers instead of human ones. The things that push the ‘right’ button on a code set are now the keys to ‘access’ instead of pushing the ‘right’ button on humans.
This is not inherently good or bad, yet the current apex of these new AI art dealers (Twitter) is not at all tuned for the art world ironically enough.
Trauma earns attention but is about personal and collective disaster
Outrage earns recognition but is about irrationalism and extremism
For You is a suggestive feed about what the algo values not the industry
If the keys to get past gatekeepers are unrelated, and even inhibitory, to the industry in question (decentralized art) it seems obvious that ‘unplanned’ obsolescence is in the cards. And on a more emotional side of things, it could be argued that it is harming individual expression at scale and the compounding effects of its potential success. A problem that is much too great for one individual to solve.
The wrap up
So, I am at the point of my contract where I have expressed what was needed from me. The art piece is a visual expression of this essay. This essay is an intellectual expression of the art piece. I have no claims on knowing the answer to this algo art dealer obstacles, but I have brought forth whatever it was the muse desired from me.
If things remain unchanged then I believe Twitter will no longer be the home of onchain tech, art, and decentralized culture.
Smells like an opportunity.
