E39 - (Un)wavering Conviction
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01. News
This week was another slow one on fxhash, largely thanks to the larger macro-economic climate that is having a huge impact on cryptocurrency and the NFT market as a whole. While fxhash is always more exciting when the market is popping off, it does give us the unique opportunity to continue our regression into old, bad habits such as gaming.
The fxhash economy isn't the only thing that is hurting. For the VERY many of you who are invested in Magic Spellslingers, Will isn't a huge fan of its free-to-play mechanics in comparison to Hearthstone and other, similar games. There isn't a ton of information out there on how it works, so we've linked a video guide below ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Friend of the podcast revdancatt kindly donated us a piece from his release this week. Read through his fun Twitter thread on the inspiration and his thoughts post-drop.
QQL happened. Play around with it if you haven't already. It represents something new in the generative art space and we're still processing \$17M emotions on it.
02. Project Talk
This week we are deviating from our standard "favorites + top 5" approach because it was so. Incredibly. Slow. Instead we've chosen to frame the projects around some of the market trends that have emerged.
High Spirits
This was such a fun one from Orr Kislev and Tender! Still available to mint (as of this article release).
Trinity loves the umbrellas in the background of her glass, but is craving the summertime vibes of the more colorful ones.
Caipirinha, aka Will's cocktail of choice for this release. Try it out, let us know what you think.
k3rnel
Headphones in, sound on for this one folks. Agoston Nagy's first release since July is also still available for a very reasonable 3 tez.
(Dotwork also still available, coincidentally)
Moiré was the artist's first big hit. Believe us when we say that that 30 tez top sale was a LOT at the time.
Another stand out project that took off earlier this year. (sound on)
You know the drill -- push the play button, click the piece, listen to some noise. The floor on these is less than half of mint, you should pick one up (NFA)
Bubblish
Another project with sound from a beloved artist that didn't mint out until it was burned to 140 editions. A huge shift from the craze that happened from Rami's work after Alphabits took off.
Mornings
If we were seeing normal market dynamics, we'd also expect a beautiful photo realistic landscape not only sell out immediately but also rocket in price on the secondary. Add this Mornings to the list of projects that is unexpectedly still available.
In contrast, Brian's prior work, River Prairie, has a top price of nearly 300 tez.
The small thumbnails don't really do the project justice, but at this scale we can see how some collectors may not like how the backlit effect makes each individual image seemingly less unique.
STRANGE LANDS
Oh hey, another cool project that is currently less than half minted.
Megastructures and Nests are the two prior releases from Kyle that we really enjoy.
Based on the thumbnail, we both thought that this was another piece by Phlins. Kari is perhaps the most similar.
The following three pieces are ones that we think are really cool, especially in comparison to the more muted project thumbnail.
^ g r a l i s
Cleya
Cleya also is still available to mint, have you noticed a theme yet? At only 90 editions (now burned to 32), it's a far cry from the impressive 999 that managed to sell for Dencity. The market has shifted.
On a fun note, Dencity has seen a bit of a run largely due to the efforts of fxhash collector NFape.
COMPUTERS
One of the main features of this project is the different animations that are 'inspired by' key figures in the history of computer science. Let's see if you can spot the difference (don't forget to hit run)...
^ wozniak
^ turing
^ lovelace
^ hoppler
^ backus
^ babbage
^ archimedes
^ al-jazari
Wow, that's a lot of animation! Palettes are also pretty key; we liked the two pieces below quite a bit.
Hoppler
This ended up being on the of only 'success' stories of the week, assuming we define success as selling out and hold a floor at least one multiple above mint price.
Will likens the textures on Hoppler to some of what we've seen on ykxotkx's more recent work.
Trinity sees it as a secret entry into Mikkel Hartmann's After the Fall series, instead. On theme for a space opera, indeed!
Panta Rei
For a project that neither of us collected, we surprisingly have a lot of feelings about this project! This is another one that sold out, but as of the time of this publishing the floor is hovering just above mint price.
There is a huge amount of variety in this project. Trinity calls out the waterfalls (as above), but Will is less of a fan of the green-washed pieces as seen below. Ode to zancan, perhaps?
Is it just us or do the solid trees have a passing resemblance to those that we see in Dr. Seuss books?
The use of trees in the back- / middle-ground gives Panta Rei more variety than if they were all in the foreground.
Variety aside, Will isn't sure about the ones that look similar to volcanic islands.
Regardless of the significant difference in tree usage, each piece feels part of a larger whole, which is something we can appreciate in the overall genre of landscapes.
Absolutely delightful.
Imi
We always love what Leander Herzog has on offer. Imi feels like a play on prior project, Returns.
When it comes to homage, however, the work is truly an homage to the art of Imi Knoebel. Monk Antony's Twitter thread sums it up best:
Based on the thumbnail alone, Imi could be a close relative of Will favorite Very Large Array. You should 100% check out his editorial on Tender to learn more about his love of subjectively unpleasant sounds.
Herzog's work is exactly the type that we would expect to end up in a museum someday. Paging MoMA and their push to auction off parts of their existing collection to start buying NFTs. We would expect him to join the likes of Toccata on our shortlist.
(insert shameless plug to listen to our interview with the always amazing andreasrau and msoriaro)
Amara Celestial
Our only real shout out of the week goes to the always lovely Patchitchat. For the record, this is not done with GPT-3 :)
03. Looking Ahead
Perkwerk has been teasing this for so long, which is typical (see: We Are Alone Together). Please come to fxhash, please come to fxhash....
Inverted lines in this gray-scale (?) mountain are nice variation!
Phlins has a new project in the queue coming out next week. It is one of the many projects in tribute to Herbert W Franke.
Aleksandra's tribute project released shortly after we finished recording. Marcelo released a 1/1 on Objkt in honor, as did Grasser Alexander
WILLARD's new project also unlocked post-recording. Based on its market performance so far it looks like it should make our Top 5 projects for next week!
...it seems like many projects release after we record. This is another we'll look to cover in more detail next week, and to follow up on Will's prediction that it would be a gassy drop!
And that's a wrap, folks! Thanks for getting this far. Please consider clicking that purchase button to support the show! You rock.