“Am I dreaming?”

You look down at yourself and see you're in a spacesuit. The world you’re in is like nothing you have ever seen. You walk through ever-changing landscapes, only protected by thin layers of airtight garments. You don’t know if the place you’re in is hostile or welcoming. Slowly, you realize that you are not dreaming at all. However, the world around you is not real either, at least not in the classic sense. In fact, you are the first human to witness a new dimension of reality.

Having come to this realization, the explorer in HUMAN ONE embarks on an infinite walk through the various terrains this metaverse provides. In a certain sense, HUMAN ONE itself creates a new dimension of reality.

Its creator, Michael Winkelmann, a.k.a. Beeple, designed this digital video sculpture to live between the digital and the physical world. Four video screens are mounted on a slowly rotating, phone-booth-like metal case, displaying what Beeple describes as “an illustration of what it would be like when the metaverse exists, and the first person is born in the metaverse.” While the artifacts that HUMAN ONE consists of can be viewed online by anyone as a 2D video, the video sculpture is the only way to experience the artwork in real life and in three dimensions, as intended by the artist. Like paintings or marble sculptures, HUMAN ONE has to be installed in a physical space to be watched by visitors.

This by itself would be notable, but Beeple did not stop here. The metaverse is an emergent, dreamlike digital universe that expands and evolves. HUMAN ONE adopts this characteristic by evolving, too. Whenever HUMAN ONE is exhibited in a new place, Beeple adds more video footage to extend the story of the first Metaverse native. The NFT continues to evolve, even after being sold already. Imagine classic artists doing that with their oil paintings! “Ding dong.” “Hello! May I come in? It’s time for the quarterly re-painting. I brought my oil colors and brushes with me.” It may be a silly idea for classic paintings, but intriguing in the context of NFTs.

The truly unique nature of HUMAN ONE already generated broad media coverage and critical reception from both the traditional and the digital art worlds. HUMAN ONE is building up a large amount of off-chain history from the responses of the media and the public. Add the list of exhibitions where HUMAN ONE was shown and will be shown. Then, add the increasing amount of video footage to be added. Now, you have a rough impression of the vast amount of data that HUMAN ONE has accumulated and continues  accumulating as its lore.

By bridging the digital and physical world, HUMAN ONE has triggered reactions that bridge the crypto-native world with traditional art and mainstream media.

Bridging the physical-digital divide

When art backed NFTs exploded in the early 2020s, digital art had a watershed moment, punctuated by the $69 million dollar sale of Beeple's The First 5000 Days at Christie's in 2021. This success rekindled a debate in the traditional art world. Was digital art as valid a format of art as its physical counterparts? Are atoms more valuable than bits? Is the future digital, physical or both?

These questions are still being hotly contested. However, we are seeing the lines blur as more and more artists create in both worlds. Contemporary art moves on a spectrum between physical and digital with infinite variation.. It tends to embrace and extend itself into the technologies of its time, and this movement is just getting started with that exploration.

HUMAN ONE ingeniously synergizes both ends of the spectrum. The manifold Metaverse landscapes can only be experienced through a life size, unique sculpture. that can only be exhibited in a single place at a time. Its digital core is rooted in a unique non-fungible token on a blockchain: digital soul, physical footprint. This dichotomy embodies the best of both worlds and serves as an entrypoint for art enthusiasts from all backgrounds.

Evolution as an art form

“People really resonate with this idea of art that is evolving, that is a river of time, that you can step back to and is not the same thing.”

• – Ryan Zurrer, owner of HUMAN ONE, on the SquiggleDAO podcast*

Besides bridging the physical-digital divide, HUMAN ONE also breaks up with the idea of artwork being immutable once created. In most traditional art, when the artist lays down the tools and declares his piece as finished, it won’t change anymore except through natural decay or deliberate destruction.

HUMAN ONE is nothing like this. Together with artwork like Unsupervised or Ethereal Rose, it spearheads a new generation of art that refuses immutability. This new kind of art undergoes constant evolution after its initial release. At each exhibition it is part of, HUMAN ONE will be different from before. The factor of time and change adds a new quality: uncertainty. According to Sam Spratt, HUMAN ONE is “a work that has the ability to die if not kept in motion. If the gears stop turning, the code breaks, the power cords unplug, the generator fails, the battery drains, the update fails, the location stops changing, the artist stops creating, or even worse: stops growing: the walk cycle ends—it can die in little ways gradually, or even all at once.”

Art collectors have to deal with this new quality of art. It is a risk and a chance.

Capturing lore and provenance of evolving art

“The token ID is not the end of the story - it's the beginning.”

– @izgnzlz

When the fluidity of time becomes part of an artwork, the dimension of time needs to be preserved as any other aspect of that artwork. If you saw HUMAN ONE for the first time in 2030 and  discovered there were ten previous versions, wouldn’t you be curious to see what HUMAN ONE looked like at its very first exhibition? Or how it changed between two exhibitions?

But if we take a step back, we can see that NFT art already includes a time aspect. It accumulates a track record of exhibitions, social media responses, and other off-chain data, in addition to on-chain provenance like the mint date and the transfer history.

Take another NFT as an example. Sam Spratt’s The Monument Game became famous not only for being a giant digital painting with countless details to explore, but also for including several thematic layers.

• Sam Spratt posted the painting’s backstory on X

• A few dozen selected players were entitled to select a spot in the painting and leave a thought there, leading to numerous inscriptions that are now part of the artwork

• The engagement of the Monument Game to the web3-native community

HUMAN ONE extends these layers in several aspects.

• The artwork itself continues to evolve

• Each evolution contains hidden clues and corresponding rewards, gamifying each chapter of HUMAN ONE for an online native audience

• It created an unusually large coverage on classic media, whereas other NFTs typically observe coverage on social media only

• It gets critical reception from both the traditional art world and the digital art world

Look closely, and you’ll notice that all these layers have two traits in common: they are immaterial and generate ongoing change. Great art, however, is worth existing for centuries to come and bringing joy to generations of art lovers. Preserving NFT art and all of its history for future generations is vital.

This is why we at Atomic Form are pleased to provide the means of capturing and storing NFT art and all of its lore. We leverage the world’s most advanced technology for eternal storage to preserve all key parts of HUMAN ONE’s history, creating a lore yet unseen with other NFTs. As of this writing, we captured about 30 citations in Atomic Lore, along with the evolving assets of the artwork itself. The token on the blockchain is the undisputable root of all the artwork’s assets and lore. It allows us to capture, sign, and preserve the artwork’s history in a decentralized way.

Conclusion: The future of hybrid, evolutionary art forms

The new generation of fluid, multidimensional, ever-changing art has an impact on art collectors and the art world as a whole.

Collectors must embrace the idea of buying a work that is still progressing. They will not know what the final piece of art will be like—if the progress ever comes to an end. Collectors have to decide whether they consider this a risk or whether they decide to stay curious and excited to participate in the artwork’s evolution.

As Beeple said, “It opens up a different type of relationship with the collector. Ryan [Zurrer], the owner of the work, knew that I might say something at some point that he wouldn’t agree with. But that excited him because this was something he couldn’t have control over. There is a level of trust with him that I’m going to update this artwork in a way that continues to challenge people with beauty and new meaning.”

The art world will undoubtedly see hybrid art, evolutional art, and any combination thereof gain enormous momentum. This momentum depends on a reliable, trustworthy way of capturing an artwork's provenance, collecting its off-chain history, and, ultimately, building and preserving its lore forever. At Atomic Form, we work on making this vision a reality.

Atomic Form thanks Lukas from 1of1 for his invaluable feedback during the review stage of this article.