Thread by @kofewithkofe

The underdog story of A.I. artist #Deepblack @BitairtI
Producing generative art NFTs using GAN technology starting in 2018, to bring equality to art by using blockchain technology to achieve that.
"The greatest scientists are artists as well"
- Albert Einstein 🧵👇1/12

It began in France, '18 with an anon dev after a lifestyle change, he desired to create art. Not having the traditional skills to do so, but with a set of coding skills at hand – he decided to create an A.I. to produce the art... Enter #DeepBlack 2/12

He explained the origins and why he wanted to utilise blockchain technology and then minting the smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain in 2019 - “I wanted to share the art and sell it for $1 on the blockchain so everyone around the world could own original artwork “… 3/12

“My idea was that everyone could save their artwork locally, so they keep it as private key. And as the hash is encapsulated in the token, they would always be able to prove ownership. It became a standard. But back in time … I wasn’t too sure” 4/12

Deepblack. Is the artist’s name of the 3 independents A.I. systems built to produce GAN trained art. The goal with the process was to have no human interaction and is completely AI driven, even the appraisal of each artwork to be done by an AI developed by the French anon. 5/12

“It was a long process, back then, it wasn’t that easy. Creating the smart contract took almost 6 months as I didn’t know how to do it the most efficiently. So, I tested several ways, using Merkel trees, making users input random numbers to generate an AI and then mint it. 6/12

Genuine early minters largely from the OG @cryptovoxels community including @StellaCat4 @dan_OpenSea @bergleeuw62 @nessnissla @j1mmyeth @zardozclub @G4sp4rD Scmeaulin and @ralxzryan who has a gallery of Deepblack art on CV -
cryptovoxels.com/parcels/728 7/12

He explained how he went through years of attending and dragging his girlfriend to various meetups and conferences about NFTs and blockchain technology including presenting the project at CES Las Vegas to gain traction but with no prevail. 8/12

August 2021 – Deepblack explained how he woke up overwhelmed to barrage of notifications of mints from the contract – he rushed to his website where the web3 connection was broken as he realised there were people minting directly from the contract to gather the last of DB. 9/12

He was overwhelmed to the sudden spark of interest was one of confusion and excitement. He was unaware just how exciting the NFT space has become and the advancement since DB's birth. Leading to disbelief in the flurry of activity was coming from or what sparked it. 10/12

Deepblack has announced that the collection is now complete. A community of collectors has now formed to appreciate and rejoice over the works and engage in adding context to the works as the Deepblack lore is written. 11/12

"T H E M O S T B E A U T I F U L T H I N G W E C A N
E X P E R I E N C E I S T H E M Y S T E R I O U S . I T I S
T H E S O U R C E O F A L L T R U E A R T A N D
S C I E N C E . "
- A L B E R T E N S T E I N
12/12