Thread by @yyolk

As the owner, curator... of clever.gallery (aka 𝐁𝐀𝐌𝐅@clevergallery)

I've come accustomed to announcing my partnerships with long threads.

Today is no different. Time for another announcement from https://t.co/LKu8jPrwpM

🧵👇🕶️💨

To quickly summarize to date; I’ve had three project partnership announcements
(all also ✊🦐✨).
🍄
🐒
🦅

and the original @clevergallery announcement

👁️:

I am thankful to have found an artist like @xJebzie and a project they founded that came with an amazing community @XRPShrooms being the 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡 project to partner with @clevergallery

Today, I’m announcing a partnership I've been working on for what seems like months.

The 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 marquee artist clever.gallery will be representing.

As a 🦐✨, I wouldn’t ever have imagined I’d be able to announce this incredible honor, without a proper place to showcase their work.

I’m absolutely-exhilarated to announce @clevergallery will be representing the artist behind @CryptoNunks, (JAC).

Although @CryptoNunks name is out there, I’ll be referring to them as their handle or their initials (JAC) throughout this 🧵

Each partnership announcement I’ve made included a project that I researched and went in with my gut and my own money.
Its the most proper for me, a 𝐁𝐀𝐌𝐅@clevergallery to act.

Since this is the first individual artist @clevergallery will be representing, I thought it would be appropriate to share how it quickly came about; It’s been one heck of a journey!

It all started around October when I got to talk to Nunk’s themselves in one of @Pauly0x spaces. At the time, the only space I could find that talked critically about @opensea.

At the time, still anonymous; wanting to experience the name under the pseudonym of their latest successful collection, “CryptoNunk/s”. (A second attempt at “Noun Punks” after being delisted by @opensea).

@CryptoNunks (JAC) is a 1/1, a unique artist whose career has been making pixels through the traditional and either using the bleeding edge technology and immersing themselves to get there..

The work speaks for itself through independent projects without any link necessarily to any external arbiter of taste, pretense of gate keeping.

Age, creed, beliefs, it doesn’t matter when it comes down to craftsmanship and the work. Let’s talk about the work, and let’s focus on the work; while simultaneously being detached from the work to continue to produce new and improved work.

𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘐 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮?

I think sometimes serendipitous things happen when you remove the friction for individual nodes to connect.

Through the @CryptoPhunksV2 movement, which I was engaged with since this guy named @Pauly0x liked a tweet of mine talking about an artist named @ryder_ripps (at the time was still private on twitter).

For posterity, this was the tweet:

I followed Pauly immediately because he was using one of Ryder’s aliens as a pfp, I also liked their memes and he was criticizing @opensea. @Pauly0x generally used their powers for good from what I witnessed, and that made me attenuate towards them more.

Pauly somehow kept delivering an amazing group of people that wanted to critique the space, while simultaneously helping out the rare shrimp ✨🦐

Those early @CryptoPhunksV2 spaces were pretty sweet. @Pauly0x coined “rare shrimp” when describing those early spaces as like a big net where he was getting big whales, smaller fish, etc but sometimes these “rare shrimps”✨🦐.

With @pauly and @CryptoPhunksV2, with no other projects seemingly getting delisted unless they ripped off the ‘right’ project; exposing

by looking at the immutable history of the blockchain and exposing people like 𝓝𝓪𝓾𝓰𝓱𝓽𝔂 𝓝𝓪𝓽𝓮 who happened to also be delisting “Punk” projects.

@CryptoNunks (The original Noun Punk) was thoughtful in their approach. He knew he could use the imagery of nouns

⌐◨-◨ ⌐◨-◨

& juxtapose them on the aesthetic of the pixel punk. (Recently re-emerged with @farokh not able to see past his own bags.)

Still not doxxed, he didn’t know how anyone that didn’t know the right people (like @Pauly0x not afraid to be loud about it)

We know @Pauly0x and the unifying conversation around how bad the cathedral or @opensea is with his wider view of Crypto Punks and their original

SHI!TPUNK CASCADE THEORYL

How could get anything done with @opensea determining if the artist could survive and also thrive by what we now could’ve been linked to the actions of Naughty Nate, perpetuated by toxic VC culture where product value and profits is second to helping your user base create the…

…content.


These were the topics of discussion in those early @Pauly0x spaces & @Pauly0x spaces today (a rare treat)

An open floor about improving the experience/space, furthering the conversation, as @Pauly0x figured out the NFT space & became more aware of it being an extension of crypto.

That’s where I met @CryptoNunks on stage.

I found a producing artist making amazing work that sold but the “frickin’ gas man!”, kept them from getting the majority of the share where I feel the #XRPL #NFT changes this significantly, in fact that was my opening pitch:

#TheSecondRenaissance will be enabled by artists investing in other artists.

#phunkism✊ comes from the collaboration of the #phunks with @CryptoNunks and the community, first with @Pauly0x helping out @CryptoNunks out when they needed it, which to this day I have no doubt that @CryptoNunks continues to pay it forward.

Some of those conversations were sparked with @CryptoNunks being inspired by something else that was said;

like that one time we talked about Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup and how that image entered the public domain, and imagine if @CampbellSoupCo didn’t embrace it.

#phunkism✊ is about being disruptive in the appropriate ways #MakeArtNotWar); the ways that people can rally behind.

Where #phunkism meets today’s #phunks is an extension of that, with @Pauly0x writing theirs, & @ryder_ripps continuing to add to their body of work around the image being free and we trade the token.

So now that I’ve gotten to know @CryptoNunks a little better through our mutual asynchronous listening to one another in the frictionless twitter spaces that talk critically to improve the overall space.

(JAC) self-describe themselves as, “a kid that grew up on a farm”

After high school CryptoNunks started their career, with the opportunity to work on a film in Copenhagen, Denmark

@CryptoNunks has been making digital work as far back as professionally possible, including having access to certain tools that were beta or emerging at the time like Quicktime VR, as seen here with their connection to the Warhol Museum.

Through our conversations & my own knowledge from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from professors like @jonsatrom, @joncates, and Eduardo Kac regarding how the analog to digital conversion came about.

With early digital media artists using broadcast equipment to alter the image in real time like with Dan Sandin and the Image Processor.

(via evl.uic.edu/dan/IP.html)

Light pens, 1Mb hard drives, slide to digital converters; all tools I’m told @CryptoNunks has in their studio including an archive of all the work they made since they started their career.

Including making work on the Amiga; having one of the first ✨1MB hard drives, and producing work up through today, including a large body of work already on the chain…

An astounding feat for any practicing artist to document their work under normal circumstances, this artist had the foresight to document and also ensured the durability of their work, by the way they documented it.

Although the images of websites at first glance may seem novice to the cursory observer; it’s an identical representation of the way the website looked (a screenshot as a slide is more durable than any file type 😉)

Compare the previously mentioned website that came out a year later, sold by @mcuban, kick-starting their VC work.

Similar to how Andy Warhol was indicative of the period when the personal computer became more well-known to people; with a contemporary and highly-recognized individual that could experiment with the platform and had fun doing so, and created work.

As a working artist during the heyday of Warhol and Basquiat; @CryptoNunks has picked a few things that we can relish with looking back at today.

We don’t need to, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t sprinkle the few that I found throughout this thread, let's indulge before jumping into recent work.

”Viva Verdi” (Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi... father of 432Hz Tuning)
“Batman”
“8-Bit Mona Lisa”
“Masked”

These abstract pieces fidelity are ruined by the image compression of my right-click saving, however to me are emblematic of @CryptoNunks’ play with the medium. Capable of being scaled infinitely, the source is a SVG, the JPEG has always been lossy.

With the extensive documentation that @CryptoNunks has done throughout their career, there is plenty of things to draw inspiration from now and into the future.

Let’s now just look at the projects @CryptoNunks has done since starting on their NFT journey.

"Alien Ape"

One of the collections @CryptoNunks spun up while they started to approach making new work in this new medium, “Outsider Art Punks'“, which is in conversation with Graffiti and Street Art or in the literal sense of the Outsider Art movement, self-taught artists

In the same regard I handled previous partner projects, I wanted to handle any artist’s work I represent at @clevergallery in the same way.

Primarily because I like the work, as with all the partnerships, I’ve always been primarily interested in the Art first.

It is a great pleasure to be able to work with an artist whose work you admire.

The Art I purchased before today’s announcement serves a special purpose, in addition to my thought that if we would work together.

I bought the Art because I liked the Art first.

I immediately admired the breadth of the work and the conversations he was having by juxtaposing the CC0 elements from nouns.wtf with the punk elements and a bit of artistic license.

Another collection that I adore, CryptoNunks, or rather (verb) Noun Punks where the (verb) is symbolic for getting f**** by @opensea with the delisting of their original “Noun Punks”;

(after @opensea delisted his original “Noun Punk” collection he re-emerged with Verbed (noun) Punk aka @CryptoNunks)

As my passion for collecting their work grew; also was my voice through my experience during the early #Phunk rooms with @Pauly0x and the wider conversation that spawned around #Phunkism.

I knew that there were real artists that liked my ideas and I threw a room together.

If you recall I reached out to @CryptoNunks in October; when I ran that room, nobody knew about me. I wanted to set some things straight.

It was mostly because I was fed up with all this ignorance in space, and my long history with this stuff; I think as a result good things happened.

Where people saw me as genuine, and previously were attenuating to me I imagine for the same reasons I attenuated to @Pauly0x; @CryptoNunks came into that space and heard me talk about why the #XRPL #NFT (#XLS20) is the MVP for NFT

The 222 of the original Noun Punks (@CryptoNunks) sold out on 2/2/22. ✊

A more recent collection the #XNunks has also been pretty 🥵, well-deserved for the work speaking for itself. Another artist’s work that is a doll of NFT, @sartoshi_nft picking up #190 X-Nunk.

This is par for the course when #TheSecondRenaissance is powered by artists paying other artists.

Like @sartoshi_nft, is paying it forward, but also buying something they like. The ledger is transparent, if you have genuine tastes, you like to show them off.

@CryptoNunks; is an artist that re-invests the $ETH he earns in other artists (pays it forward). He gets their work in return which is also an investment; this was the latest re-investment from over the weekend:

@CryptoNunks has also been open to accepting $XRP for a piece bypassing whatever marketplace; it’s to accommodate the buyer who still receives the work on Ethereum.

A huge gesture, which I think should be recognized if you’re interested in any collection that will still be available.

However, I’m also happy to include in this announcement that this will be a limited engagement. Although payment for pieces that @CryptoNunks holds will likely still accommodate any collector, in the future there will be a trustless, one-way bridge.

I first teased this when I announced my purchase of Phunk #9636

I thought maybe the tease was a bit subtle, so I even called it out in a tangential tweet…

Like then I decided to not really be that subtle about it…

Not that subtle at all

With the knowledge that @CryptoNunks likes, $XRP believes in the ‘best incentive is no incentive’, already embedded in NFTs, producing work that sells while also being a “rare shrimp”.

@CryptoNunks is the sole minter of all their works past and present giving them the implicit authority to receive any royalties; and to also present a method for transitioning works.

Disregarding everything else, the gestalt as mannerisms which we will implement the trustless bridge will-as well as open sourced

Open to anyone with @CryptoNunks’ works that wish to move them over to the #XRPL, re-constituted as the #MVP for #NFT, #XLS20, the one-way gateway will ensure @CryptoNunks receives their royalty.

The one-way, trustless, considerate act will allow anyone to transfer their work to the #XRPL.

As the mannerisms which are done will be open to all; and repeatable even without @clevergallery’s one-way, trustless gateway that ensures the artist gets their just desserts.

You can’t copy a NFT, but you can extend provenance.

This process will be historic in the conversation of who is the real authority of their works.

In addition to enabling the one-way bridge with @clevergallery’s assistance, which can then be mimicked; (@clevergallery will provide this to any artist we work with that has interest).

@CryptoNunks will also be embedded in the ongoing development of the gallery.

The UX and onboarding for any artist is crucial to the future success of the gallery, and other galleries by setting a good example.

By leveraging @CryptoNunks experience in the Traditional, or rather “Trad-Art” world as well as the contemporary marketplaces that artists use to mint, it re-enforces my commitment to @clevergallery being an artist-first platform.

@clevergallery will continue to improve, as an artist who desires to make a better world for artists; I’ve talked briefly about how long I’ve been thinking about NFTs (since 2010)

In 2012 I wrote the backend to enable showing work around the world, while removing the friction for the artist to submit to those shows, @0P3NR3P0

In 2014 I made an appliance out of a Raspberry Pi using C++ and @openframeworks to display all the SVGs in @nounproject collection at the time

With the projects I’m working with, the fact that I’ve been iteratively progressing towards @clevergallery since 2010, I think we should all endure a bit longer.

enduring.art

To quickly summarize to date; I’ve had three project partnership announcements
(all also ✊🦐✨).
🍄
🐒
🦅

and the original @clevergallery announcement

👁️:

With @clevergallery’s 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡 individual artist partnership with @CryptoNunks, being the fourth.

𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴!

#XNunks will be available through @clevergallery opening day, as @CryptoNunks minted works
As #XRPL #NFT; the MVP for NFT; #XLS20, a native object w/ implicit royalties, that is implicitly & globally audited across the network.