For the past 7 days, the NFT gods have rained content onto our ether and I, having poured hours away sifting through trash on the garbage island slowly but surely accumulating on both the literal and metaphorical OpenSeas, have a controversial stud for this Thursday’s column:
‘King of AI’ from styleWish’s AI Fountain collection, which went for .33eth on Monday.
As any good HOR for my adventures on OpenSea knows, this piece puts the ‘ificial’ in ‘art’ — a machine learning algorithm generates each piece, clustered around themes that will present themselves to collectors over time as they are created, minted, and sold, with a guarantee that the collection will be limited to 2,500 pieces.
Aside from challenging my understanding of the English language, this concept also challenges my standing that computers cannot create art — I do feel an emotional connection to the piece. Whether it’s the color scheme (I’m a sucker for the rendered death of the American dream) or the hypebeast in me responding to the ‘King James meets J. Cole’s KOD’ vibe of the thing, there is truth in it. If I had a grand to drop on it, I would.
Fucking beep-boop artwork aside, I do think there’s a larger conversation to be had as to what constitutes art. @3lpr0f on Twitter if you have some thoughts.
Our Biggest Sales of the Weak are:
A Robolox outtake went for 80eth — the cost of a Bentley Bentayga.
An 8bit Doodle went for 150eth — the cost of a Dorset country home.
Some Asshole [actual title] went for 1300eth — the cost of an island nation.
(To be fair it’s probably Snoop Dogg’s now too.)
