Artwrld is pleased to present our first on-chain generative project – John F. Simon Jr.'s 

, a collection of generative artworks updated from his seminal software media artwork, and ode to New York City, 

Now available, the collection consists of 256 unique artworks constructed from six possible templates that vary in composition, interactivity, and rarity. 

Priced at .2 ETH. Available for random mint. 

Have questions? 

 

Curated by Nato Thompson and Cody Edison. 

Distributed in partnership with Art Blocks Engine

First exhibited as a physical artwork as both hardware and software in 2000 (and acquired by LACMA in 2001), 

 has been described by John F. Simon Jr. as one of his more autobiographical and representational early artworks. Now, over two decades since its creation, Simon is launching an updated generative on-chain collection of the software in the more digital-friendly environment of the blockchain.

 code explores contemporary urbanism through animated visual outputs containing abstracted elevators, clogged intersections, a city skyline in constant flux and other interactive and dynamic forms that have been collaged together in varying compositions to create 256 unique artworks. Similar to his earlier physical pieces, these tokens are not videos but software that is constantly changing –– real-time animations that create endless combinations in continuous motion.

Concerned with the “realism of abstraction”, 

 aesthetics investigate Mondrian’s iconic pure abstraction in 

 and the abstract realism of Stuart Davis. These lush and frenetic digital representations of the city, skylines, skyscrapers, and traffic flows are imbued with the optimism and possibilities of a new millennium.

This collection follows the release of John F. Simon Jr.’s critically acclaimed and first NFT collection, 

 which was included in the historic acquisition project by the Pompidou Center in early 2023.

Software Art and the Poetic Use of Code

The Keys to the City

 is a multimedia artist and Software Art pioneer whose work and installations are found in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art among others. In 2011, he collaborated with Icelandic singer Björk to write an app for her album, 

. An NFT from his critically acclaimed collection, 

(2021), was one of the first NFTs acquired by the Pompidou Center earlier this year.

Meet the Artist

What is generative art? 

Are all of these artworks works unique?

I’ve never collected an NFT. What do I do?

Are you doing any programming?

These aren't my frequently asked questions...

Is this the end?

“
John F. Simon Jr. talks about code as a form of creative writing. Code has also been referred to as the medium, the 'paint and canvas' of digital artists but it transcends this metaphor in that it even allows artists to write their own tools...

Projects You’ll Love

ComplexCity

The Orders

World-renowned artist Paul Pfeiffer presents 

in collaboration with Artwrld. A meditation on our collective cultural obsession with mass spectacle and ritual, 

 is comprised of edited footage pulled from two iconic boxing matches featuring eight-division world champion Manny Pacquiao. 

The collection consists of two long-form video works (each an edition of 5 plus 1 AP) and 150 short-form clips (each unique and variable in duration).

The collection of short-form clips have officially sold out but are now available on the 

Paul Pfeiffer's Vs. Sold Out

., transports the viewer to the boxing ring and highlights found footage from two highly anticipated historical boxing matches — Pacquiao vs. Horn and Pacquiao vs. Mayweather. To create each piece, Pfeiffer has taken existing televised footage and digitally erased Pacquiao’s opponent, leaving the viewer to witness a man struggling, resisting, suffering, and at times prevailing over a ghostly foe who is as unseen as he is undeniably present. 

More than an image of sports, Pfeiffer brings his unsparing eye to a culture of cameras and media distribution that ultimately lands, painfully, in a body. The collection presents us with an incredibly evocative and moving work by one of the great visual artists of our time.

About the Collection

A pioneer of video and computer-based art, Paul Pfeiffer has created celebrated works that sample and re-edit footage from televised sports, concerts, and other mass media events. Exploring the relationship between public spectacle, image culture, and individual and group identity formation, Pfeiffer’s work has been included in solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo; and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, among others. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles; Pinault Collection, Venice; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf and Berlin; and the Pinothek der Moderne, Munich, among others. 

 will collaborate with Artwrld as the official nonprofit partner for Vs., selected by Pfeiffer to receive a portion of every primary and secondary sale.

Ready To Rumbler: A Letter from the Curator by Nato Thompson

Paul Pfeiffer in Conversation with Artwrld Co-Founder Nato Thompson
5/10/23 at 12 PM ET

An Interview with Paul Pfeiffer and Francesco Tenaglia in Mousse Magazine from 2018

Paul Pfeiffer Featured in Art21

How much do these artworks cost?

When is this happening?

Collection Ethereum Contract Addresses

“
For me, the legacy of pictures is a desire to disrupt the surface illusion of reality and to access another dimension.

 marks the artists' debut collaboration with an NFT platform following the sale of the first-ever NFT, minted by Kevin McCoy in 2014.

The collection consists of 310 animated collage works – 300 short-form works available for random mint and 10 long-form works with audio available at a fixed price. 

The short-form works are sold out but can be acquired on the 

 if you are interested in acquiring a long-form collage work. 

Land Sea and Sky
Sold Out

Expanding upon their previous work with landscapes and the built environment, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy have devised a series of enigmatic collages embedded in the vernacular of the American West. Using formal cut-outs inspired by the compositional aesthetics of 20th-century landscape photography, the artists have created a series of landscapes derived from five databases of AI-developed source images. Using StableDiffusion, the artists generated hundreds of landscape images, which were then sorted into five different descriptive databases - Land, Sea, Mountains, Trees, and Sky. Searching these categories, custom scripts generated recombinant landscapes based on compositional structures from archetypal 20th-century landscape photographs, intertwining early 20th-century visual constructs of nature with 21st-century technology.

Activating distinct elements of each collage with image processing, the interaction of the layers juxtaposes established media processes like photography and collage with the rapidly evolving technology of AI. In the McCoys’ quest for AI-generated images that look more like memory than fantasy, their hand-crafted prompts evoke cross-country road trips, Ektachrome film, and the strange, hazy yellow-green tint of their childhood snapshots. The resulting images sit in the uncanny valley of distant memory.

Discover the Collection

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy are digital media artists whose works extends from film and video to installation and generative software. Their work often seeks to situate new technologies within our contemporary culture, using new tools to question their impact both on an individual and collective level.

The McCoys' work has been widely exhibited in the US and internationally, including notable exhibitions at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the British Film Institute-Southbank in London, and The Sundance Film Festival. Their work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the 21C Museum, and the Speed Museum. They received a Creative Capital award in 2003, the Wired Rave Award for Art in 2005, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011, and a Headlands Alumni Award in 2014. In 2022 Kevin received a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for co-developing the technology that eventually became known as the NFT.

 as the official nonprofit partner organization for the collection to receive a portion of proceeds from both primary and secondary sales. Rhizome champions born-digital art and culture through commissions, exhibitions, scholarship, and digital preservation.

Meet the Artists

A Sutured Sea and Sky: A Letter from the Curator by Nato Thompson

The McCoys discuss Land Sea and Sky and the Future of Web3 in NFT Now

Learn more about Rhizome, the non-profit partner for Land Sea and Sky

Jennifer & Kevin McCoy talk aesthetic shifts in the NFT world with the NYTimes

Are all of these collage works unique?

How much do these collage works cost?

“
We no longer occupy earth and sky but Google Earth and the Cloud. 

Land Sea and Sky

This Valentine's Day, celebrate with flowers that never die.

Out-Game Flowers—by leading conceptual artist Jill Magid—is a collection of bouquets of flowers plundered from the world's most popular video games. The collection is comprised of 165 bouquets—15 large with audio and 150 small bouquets.

but available for secondary sales on OpenSea. 

Out-Game Flowers 
Sold Out

Out-Game Flowers' digital bouquets—15 large with audio and 150 small bouquets—are composed of flowers from the world's most popular video games, including The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Minecraft, and more. Jill Magid traveled through these iconic digital worlds, plucking stems from each virtual landscape to craft her first NFT-backed artwork. In their respective worlds, these pixelated plants and photo-realistic flowers are tied to complex economies that drive their value in-game and out.

Magid's work shines a light on the power structures that create and monetize these items. Extracted from their walled gardens and assembled into a bouquet, she introduces the flowers into another closed system—a digital artwork with a secured provenance through blockchain technology. By assigning each flower an out-game value based on its worth in-game, she challenges us to define our own metrics of worth — based not just on economics, beauty, and utility, but also on nostalgia, speculation, and taste.

Discover the Larger Collection

Through her multifaceted, performance-based practice, Jill Magid explores the emotional, philosophical, and legal tensions between individual agency and large institutions such as intelligence agencies, artist’s estates and the police. 

A Guggenheim Fellow, Magid has received solo exhibitions at the Tate Modern, Whitney Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Netherlands. Her work is in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Whitney Museum, Fundacion Jumex, and Walker Art Center.

A portion of proceeds from this project will be allocated to 

—a public arts organization that works with artists to contribute to the dialogues, debates, and dreams of our times.

Kazi Rayhan of Direct Dimensions is credited with 3D animation for Out-Game Flowers.

Jill Magid's Hand-Hacked Bouquet 1 Acquired by the Pompidou Center

Do Flowers Grow on the Internet? An Essay from the Curator by Nato Thompson

Flowers That Never Die: An In-Depth Look Into the Value of Digital Flowers

Learn More About Creative Time, the Non-Profit Partner for Out-Game Flowers

Jill Magid's Out-Game Flowers Featured in Artnet News 

Are all of these bouquets unique?

How much do these bouquets cost?

“
I imagined myself as the naughty girl knocking down the walled gardens of the online gaming landscape to go flower-picking within them.

Out-Game Flowers

'A Loss for Words' is the first NFT collection by renowned artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat. Inspired by some of her earliest and most iconic photographs, the works in this series combine video, poetry and computer animation in a meditative gesture of prayer.



Proceeds from A Loss for Words benefit The Brooklyn Rail. Founded in October 2000, The Brooklyn Rail provides an independent forum for arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and beyond. Other Rail initiatives include Rail Editions, which publishes books of poetry, experimental fiction, prose meditation, artists’ writings, art and literary criticism, and interviews with artists. The Brooklyn Rail is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. 

10% of primary sale proceeds and 10% of resale royalties (1% of the total resale price) are donated to The Brooklyn Rail.

This animation is my first effort in creating a work that bridges my interest in still photography and the moving picture. In 'A Loss for Words' we use a similar approach and aesthetic as my earliest photographs, with calligraphy inscribed in the palms of hands, yet the progressive movement reveals and then exerts the words.

The notion of one’s desire to ‘speak,’ to ‘express’ even if discreetly, in a culture of dictatorship such as in my country Iran, is created in a simple, poetic yet subversive gesture. The inscribed poems are by several different Iranian poets, including Nima Yushij, Forugh Farrokhzad, Sohrab Sepehri, Ahmad Shamlou and Simin Behbahani.

The Story of A Loss for Words as told by Shirin Neshat

Contract Address

About the Project

About the Artist

A Loss for Words 

Artist Walid Raad presents a series of (occasionally, but rarely) lovingly crafted birthday cakes for some of the world's most toxic and/or bigger-than-life leaders.

Proceeds from Festival of Gratitude benefit ArtEast and other non-profit cultural organizations selected by Walid Raad. ArtEast is a leading New York-based nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging a growing global audience with the contemporary arts of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). 60% of primary sale proceeds and 60% of resale royalties (6% of the total resale price) are donated to ArtEast and other non-profit cultural organizations.

As a teenager growing up in Beirut, my favorite pastry shop was Noura. It is still there today. I adored their Mango tarts, but just could not afford them. So, I hatched a plan. What if I offered my budding photographic skills to the owner in exchange for tarts?

My plan worked. I got the job, and worked day and night, picturing all the cakes and tarts I fancied. That is, until the day that I came to photograph a bunny-shaped birthday cake for Amine. All of a sudden it dawned on me that ‘Amine’ may be the divisive President of Lebanon, Amine Gemayel, who was known for his bunny fetish and sweet tooth. 

I started to fantasize about poisoning the cake, but just could not go through with it. My cowardice got me thinking about all the adored and/or despised world leaders, and their birthday cakes.

The Story of Festival of Gratitude as told by Walid Raad

Contract Addresses

Curatorial Statement from Nato Thompson

Curatorial Statement

Festival of Gratitude

Inspired by the acts of multiple truth-tellers, artist Ahmet Öğüt collaborated with Artwrld to create Monuments of the Disclosed–a collection of digital monuments to nine historical whistleblowers. Individuals who, often at tremendous personal sacrifice, exposed the fraud, malintent and wrongdoing of unfettered power; and who, more often than not, remain unrecognized for their acts of courage.

The National Whistleblower Center is a tax-exempt, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC whose mission is to support whistleblowers in their efforts to expose and help prosecute corruption and other wrongdoing around the world.

Protocinema is a cross-cultural art organization that commissions and presents site-aware art around the world. Their purpose is to support dialogue between cultures on equal footing and create opportunities for listening and expression.

In recognition of this special project honoring historic whistleblowers, Artwrld is making available a suite of monuments to each of the nine whistleblowers included in Monuments of the Disclosed (details below). If you're interested in acquiring this piece, please contact us at info@artwrld.com.

This suite of 9 monuments comes with file formats for image, AR, and 3D viewing and includes the following whistleblowers: 

Aaron Swartz (Gold, Plinth 3) 
Marsha Coleman-Adebayo (Bronze, Plinth 3)
Mona Hanna-Attisha (Bronze, Plinth 4)
Karen Silkwood (Silver, Plinth 6)
Kimberly Young-McLear (Gold, Plinth 3)
Marlene Garcia-Esperat (Silver, Plinth 1)
Li Wenliang (Bronze, Plinth 3)
Bunnatine Greenhouse (Silver, Plinth 1)
Phillip Saviano (Bronze, Plinth 2)

A comparable suite of monuments was recently acquired by the Kadist Art Foundation for their permanent collection. 

A Suite of Monuments 

In a time when the conversation about monument-making and unmaking are in flux, I wanted to create monuments that spoke to courageous acts of resistance rather than standing for powerful institutions. While each of the nine NFTs represents an individual, the work they risked everything for was for the greater good and so these busts stand for more than themselves.

This project imagines another kind of world with monuments dedicated to under-known heroes. By imagining diverse monuments not at risk of removal by the powers in the digital world, I wanted to emphasize that there is no singular narrative while at the same time present the possibility that these could become real, once distributed in the minds of many.

The story of Monuments of the Disclosed as told by Ahmet Öğüt

Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse held the highest civilian rank in the United States Army Corps of Engineers when, in 2003, she raised concerns over a no-bid, no-competition $7 billion contract with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) for the repair of Iraqi oil fields. In 2005, after testifying before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee regarding the Halliburton deal, Greenhouse was demoted and stripped of her security clearance. The Department of Defense and Army Corps of Engineers eventually settled the lawsuit Greenhouse brought against them for their retaliation. Greenhouse’s whistleblowing efforts helped galvanize major reforms in wasteful, no-bid government contracting. 

On December 30, 2019, Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist working at the Central Hospital of Wuhan, China, sent a WeChat message to a group of fellow doctors warning them about a possible outbreak of a disease resembling severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Despite requesting discretion, the message leaked and screenshots circulated on Chinese social media. Days later, Li was summoned and interrogated by the Wuhan Public Security Bureau, who accused him of spreading false rumors and disturbing the public order. In early January 2020, Li contracted what was now understood to be Covid-19, was subsequently quarantined, and later died of the infection on February 7, 2020. After his death, an official inquiry exonerated him, the Wuhan police rescinded their previous reprimand, and Li was recognized as a “martyr” by the Chinese government, the highest honor bestowed to citizens. 

As a chemist in the Phillippine’s Department of Agriculture, Marlene Garcia-Esperat exposed rampant political grafting practices by government officials. She was subsequently appointed ombudsman within the Department, where she continued to call out widespread corruption, eventually being placed on a witness protection program on account of multiple death threats. After growing impatient with the slow-moving anti-graft prosecutions she initiated, Garcia-Esperat started reporting her findings through a local radio program and newspaper column. On March 24, 2005, Garcia-Esperat was shot and killed in her home in Tacurong City, Mindanao, Philippines. Her murder was orchestrated by two agriculture officials whose corrupt dealings, including ciphoning millions from government contracts, Garcia-Esperat had explosed and investigated for years. 

During the 1990s, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo worked for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a senior policy analyst in African affairs. While serving on the Gore-Mbeki Commission, she reported that an American chemical company was exposing South African miners and their families to toxic levels of vanadium. When the EPA refused to act, Coleman-Adebayo alerted outside groups, a decision that prompted multiple retaliatory actions against Coleman-Adebayo within the EPA. In 2000, Coleman-Adebayo won a historic lawsuit against the EPA, which was found to have violated Coleman-Adebayo’s civil rights on the basis of race, sex and color discrimination and a hostile work environment. She provided the leadership for the 2002 passage of the Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act (No-FEAR Act), the first US civil rights and whistleblower law of the 21st century.

In 1992, Phillip Saviano read an article about a Catholic priest who was being sued for abusing children in a New Mexico parish in the 1970s. Saviano recognized the name as the same priest who had abused him and his friends in Douglas, Massachusetts over the course of several years. Suffering from the AIDS virus and assuming he was near the end of his life, Saviano approached The Boston Globe with his story. He was one of the first survivors of the Catholic church sexual abuse scandal to speak out about his experience. With the advent of antiretroviral drugs, Saviano’s health improved and he went on to help other victims tell their stories and to found the New England chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). Based on evidence, testimony and stories assembled by Saviano, The Boston Globe published a series of articles in 2002 revealing widespread, systemic abuse by Catholic priests. 

Kimberly Young-McLear is a professor, tech expert, former State of the Union Guest of Honor, and highly decorated senior military officer who served in the U.S. Coast Guard between 2003 and 2023. From 2014-2018, while teaching at the Coast Guard Academy, Kimberly endured persistent workplace bullying, harassment, discrimination, and retaliation due to her intelligence, race, gender, and sexuality. In 2018, the Homeland Security Inspector General issued a report finding the Coast Guard violated numerous policies and federal retaliation law. Following a separate 18-month investigation, Congress conducted two hearings and issued a report exposing 8 admirals and abuse of power at the highest levels of the Coast Guard. Ultimately, Commander Young-McLear’s bravery was the catalyst for over 30 Coast Guard policy reforms, key passages within the 2020 Elijah E. Cummings Coast Guard Authorization Act, and two subsequent national defense bipartisan laws. There has never been any justice in her case.

During the 1970s, Karen Silkwood worked as a lab technician at the Cimarron Fuel Production Site, operated by the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation, in Crescent, Oklahoma. As part of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union’s bargaining committee, Silkwood monitored the plant’s healthy and safety practices and found numerous failings, including spills, record falsification, inadequate training, and missing plutonium. Silkwood eventually testified before the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, DC about her findings. On her way to meet with a New York Times reporter armed with evidence of further safety violations at the plant, Silkwood was involved in a car accident and died. Though police surmised Silkwood had fallen asleep at the wheel, markers on the bumper of her vehicle indicated she was forced off the road.

Mona Hanna-Attisha is a pediatrician and public health advocate at the Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Michigan. In 2015, Hanna-Attisha used hospital records to determine that lead levels in Flint children’s blood samples had doubled between 2014 and 2015, a period of time that coincided with the local government’s cost-saving decision to change its water source from the treated Detroit Water & Sewage Department to the Flint River. After going public with her findings, government officials attempted to discredit Hanna-Attisha and her research, which was ultimately confirmed as accurate. For her efforts in exposing the Flint Water Crisis, Time Magazine named Hanna-Attisha one of 2016’s Most Influential People. Hanna-Attisha continues to advocate on behalf of the residents of Flint. 

Computer programmer, activist, and entrepreneur, Aaron Swartz was an advocate for free and open access to internet resources. Over his short but influential life, he founded Watchdog.net to provide free access to datasets about politicians; co-founded Demand Progress to support grassroots activism and lobbying initiatives that promote Internet freedom and civil liberties; co-developed SecureDrop, an open-source whistleblower submission system; and provided free access to millions of federal court documents stored in the PACER database. In 2011, Swartz was charged by federal prosecutors with wire fraud and violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act after using an MIT account to log into JSTOR and download over 4.8 million documents. If convicted, Swartz could have faced a $1 million penalty, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution and supervised release. Swartz died by suicide in January of 2013, two days after failing to reach an acceptable plea bargain with federal prosecutors.