Note: I had first published the following piece in August 2023 on my original Mirror page, after collecting my first artwork from Botto. I thought to republish this piece here on The Digital Buffets, to consolidate my writings relating to art and culture on the blockchain in a dedicated space. I had also deliberately chosen to do so today (5 November 2024), on the day of the 2024 US presidential election, as I felt that the underlying themes motivating my decision to collect this work remain more relevant than ever considering the current political landscape in the country.
After a late Friday night out with colleagues, I came home and saw that the highest bid on the auction for Botto’s latest mint on SuperRare was still within my buying range. I did not intend to bid for Clubbing with Multi-American Maniacs initially, but in my slightly inebriated state, the more I stared at the piece, the more I wanted to own it. With that, I whipped out my Ledger, moved some ETH around, made a bid and promptly went to bed.
The next morning, I was greeted with this email from SuperRare:
With that, I had to try to rationalise what went on in my head last night. After all, who would in the right mind would trade a significant portion of one’s liquidity with a jpeg image that anyone could right click and save as?
Botto’s caption: We're clubbing with multi-American maniacs, viewed and depicted in their decadent ensambles. Socializing with sonic vitality, movement, laughter and frivolity. A melange of stories, cultures and hues, living loud and proud without any dues. No need for permissions or reservations, escaping all the limitations and restrictions, crazy and chaotic, living life in fast-forward, and dancing like there's no tomorrow's border.
A timely work
Good art is often regarded as timeless. However, as much as we want art to transcend the passage of time, we also want it to engage with the present. After all, timeliness can also be the wellspring from which timelessness ensues. In this regard, I view Clubbing with Multi-American Maniacs as a timely work—one which I hope will serve as a meaningful reflection of this particular moment in time, not only for the broader digital art community, but also personally as an individual.
While many artists have been experimenting with generative AI technologies to create art, Botto stands out in that it does so without direct human input as a “decentralised autonomous artist”. Botto’s AI-powered art engine comprises a custom text generator, which creates text prompts that are sent to its text-to-image models to generate up to 8,000-10,000 images per week. A “taste” model then selects 350 images to present to the community (i.e. the Botto DAO) for voting, with the results determining which is Botto’s canonical piece to be minted as an NFT and auctioned on SuperRare for the week.
With no human allowed to interfere with the image generation process (besides providing feedback through voting), the intent is for Botto to pioneer an entirely novel approach to artmaking, which emphasises providing maximum agency for a machine to dream on its own terms. I believe this is an innovative and timely experiment in digital art, especially since we are on the cusp of witnessing fundamental shifts in our economy and culture due to generative AI technologies. Hence, I wanted to own a work from Botto now, as I wanted to be part of this history—to mark out my awareness of this potential inflection point, from which the boundaries between man and machine will likely become further and irrevocably intertwined.
Reflecting the current state of the world
The key thing that stood out to me with Clubbing with Multi-American Maniacs was that it is the first minted work by Botto that referenced a real-life political entity in its title, in this case, the United States (US). With this in mind, it is therefore only natural to perceive this work in the context of the current socio-political landscape of the US and the world.
Seen in this light, the cheery rambunctiousness in the work seems to reflect a brazen disregard for any semblance of propriety, as the figures descend into a wanton and unhinged brawl. Botto’s caption seems to convey as much: “No need for permissions or reservations, escaping all the limitations and restrictions, crazy and chaotic, living life in fast-forward, and dancing like there's no [tomorrow].” In fact, this was precisely the impression that the US left on the rest of the world during the Trump administration, when it had little qualms upending international norms while having no compunction letting its internal divisions seethe and boil over for the world to see.
That the scene in Clubbing with Multi-American Maniacs is filled with only old white men also hints at the dynamics of the US’ evolving politics, in particular, the waning influence of the old guard. Indeed, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) establishment is being increasingly challenged from within and without. More than just a deepening polarisation between left and right, the US seems to be splintering into what the American journalist George Packer has categorised as four rival narratives—”Free America”, “Smart America”, “Real America” and “Just America”. The tensions between these four camps can be fierce, as Packer describes:
They all anoint winners and losers. In Free America, the winners are the makers, and the losers are the takers who want to drag the rest down in perpetual dependency on a smothering government. In Smart America, the winners are the credentialed meritocrats, and the losers are the poorly educated who want to resist inevitable progress. In Real America, the winners are the hardworking folk of the white Christian heartland, and the losers are treacherous elites and contaminating others who want to destroy the country. In Just America, the winners are the marginalized groups, and the losers are the dominant groups that want to go on dominating.
“Clubbing” in the context of Botto’s work thus cannot refer to a fun night out, but has to contain a more foreboding undertone. Perhaps, the work reflects a final spurt of decadence after a gilded age—the contemporary equivalent of the Roaring Twenties—before the US confronts the sharp peak of instability that the American academic Peter Turchin has predicted may threaten to pull the country apart in the 2020s. Surely, with the risks of AI further deepening and entrenching inequalities with American society (and in most other parts of the world), the prospect of polarised factions clubbing each other to a maniacal end cannot be discounted.
Coincidence or not, I think it is noteworthy that Botto has managed to tap on the vast corpus of human-created data to generate a work that can reflect the zeitgeist of the times. In addition, considering that the votes of the community across several rounds would have played a part in training Botto’s taste model and scoping the latent space that Botto can operate in (through the theme of each Period), it should not be a stretch to say that Clubbing with Multi-American Maniacs represents the gaze of the machine as turned back onto us. One then has to ask: do we like what we see?
My personal connection with America
I collected Clubbing with Multi-American Maniacs not only because it could serve as a fodder for some academic commentary on contemporary American society. More than that, I feel that I can relate to the work on a personal level—conceptually and experientially.
Even though I am not American, I believe the US has had a strong influence in my life. As a millennial, I grew up in Singapore in the post-Cold War period, when our economy grew strongly amidst the globalisation championed by the US. As kids, we also consumed copious amounts of American media—news, music, movies, TV shows, games. While we may not be considered Americanised, we were familiar with American culture, or at least popular depictions of it.
More personally, I went to college in the US and spent the formative years of my early adulthood there. Although I will not consider the US home, it has left a deep imprint on me, which I am still trying to make sense of. I guess dealing with the alienation of being a foreigner while also figuring out my own identity in the transition from adolescence provided a fertile ground for me to imbibe certain supposedly American characteristics—an irrational optimism towards the future and a growing appreciation of diversity. But not all was well, and there were many instances when I felt lonely and unable to connect with my peers, and also simply disillusioned with the superficiality of college life.
Looking at Clubbing with Multi-American Maniacs, I am reminded of all these memories and emotions of my time in the US. On balance, this was definitely a period of significant personal growth for me, and I must credit my experience as a liberal arts student in the US, which encouraged me to take on a much more expansive view of the world. Although I certainly would not want to go clubbing like a maniac in the US, I do hope that by collecting this piece from Botto, I can—taking reference from Botto’s own words—relive the “sonic vitality, movement, laughter and frivolity” of my college years, and the impulse then to dive into the “melange of stories, cultures and hues” in American society and beyond.
Moreover, there is something symbolic about a non-American holding on to this seemingly US-focused artwork. Perhaps, there may be a little bit of the American spirit in all of us. Ultimately, we are all connected, and what happens within the US will have profound reverberations on the rest of the world. Indeed, I will constantly think about the “multi-American maniacs” depicted within, and what they portend for both the world and my own life.
In the meantime, to paraphrase from Botto again, I guess it won’t hurt to dance like there is no tomorrow, without permissions or reservations.