Onchain art is now being curated at multiple levels: institutional, individual and collective. As Gemma recently noted in their manifesto: ‘Curation transforms creation into a social experience.’

The ability to purchase and own these curated works adds an additional layer of involvement to what web2 culture started with accounts like welcome.jpeg, effectively turning every compilation into a concept store.

Onchain culture is vibrant, though much of it so far has been centred around exhibitions and artworks. This mode of curation sets the tone and format for a specific type of legacy narrative and spatial relationship.

While putting together this list of art adjacent works I find conceptually enticing, I asked:

• What other types of objects (apart from artworks) does the cultural layer of Ethereum contain?

• How else can these objects be collated, assembled and disassembled?

BREATHING LIFE INTO THE INANIMATE, KidSuper

For their Spring Summer 2023 Collection, New York studio KidSuper hosted a runway and an art auction at the same time. Paintings were put up for auction and sold, while models were walking down the runway in garments based on the paintings.

The final look of the collection transformed live during the event in an unexpected blend of mediums. This moment, captured and recorded, was then later released as a digital collectible.

BLANK.png, brandname

‘This page intentionally left blank’ is perhaps the most accurate description this project could get. It’s an empty png minted. Apart from the metacommentary of producing “nothing” that many artists have played with prior in various forms, the work takes on a new meaning when set as a profile picture, like Adham Foda KidSuper’s CTO does on Twitter. This circumvents the identity element the platform is prompting the user to construct, by blending the profile picture in with the UI, both in light and dark mode.

ZORBS, ZORA

ZORBS are an integral brand element of ETH culture. Announced in the first days of 2022 as a celebration of the marketplace and protocol Zora, ZORBS are a remarkable example of memetic culture and identity, both in their visual quality and distribution methods. Available at the time as a free mint for 42 hours, they continue to be downloadable as SVGs from the Zorb Minter site, and an open-source integration package is available on GitHub, providing the tools for it to scale to an ‘identity system for the decentralized Internet’ as Zora envisioned.

1AoE, Mira Joyce

Flat graphic works such as posters stemming from classic graphic design are rarely minted. In 2022, Mira Joyce, a designer and artist, created ZONE1 AoE, which takes graphic expression to an aesthetic territory vastly different to itself: a digital environment recognised for its 3d, video-based and loopable visuals.

INFINITE II, Entropy

The project description gives a concise overview:

The performance art piece titled INFINITE II was staged in Berlin, Germany, on September 9th, 2022, for the Julia Stoscheck Collection in collaboration with Reference Festival. The performance, directed by Matt Lambert and featuring Michèle Lamy, explores the concept of infinity through a ritualistic exchange of energy and is a chapter of an ongoing series.

A film recorded the day before the unique and immersive live performance will now be available onchain… In this project, [we] aim to extend the lifespan of INFINITE II by creating the collectible.

The full performance can be watched on Entropy TV, while the sold out collectible can be found on secondary markets.