Top artists. Unique pieces of art. Artist names revealed only after the mint. 

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Season I: https://collective.proof.xyz/grails   
Season II: https://collective.proof.xyz/grails-2

PROOF Grails II

Cognition #0 - Returning Home

"It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.Hito SteyerlMade with noise, code, scrap paper, tea, tape, discarded electronics, graphite and light projection. Inspired by artist friends in the highly networked practice of generative art, as well as Hito Steyerl's seminal defense of the poor image, GEIST mixes generative, traditional, digital and material processes.An exploration and reconciliation with the strange power of the static thumbnail in web3.An homage to all the poor images no less haunting for their humble resolution that became formative cultural influences for those of us who grew up on the Internet.
Lastly, a non-literal labyrinth linking past and upcoming long form generative art projects - GEIST gives rise to keys for those willing to explore a non-linear future.

GEIST

A year ago I was obsessively crafting algorithms to draw trees with a pen plotter. At the core of them is a piece of code that fast computes line intersections, the black magic behind all of my pen plotter works.
The Fabric of Trees is an output from the same algorithm that later made my genesis ETH piece "The Oak Tree", nothing less, except the magic of deactivating line intersections. "
 5600x5600 PNG
 made with javascript code
 exists as a plottable file

The Fabric of Trees

Imperfect restorations of the same picture. Each restoration has limited information and a limited ability to reassemble the pixels correctly.
This is a re-utilisation of a pixel-sorting algorithm I made a few years ago. The combination of applying it on a relatively simple image and doing it multiple times makes the workings of the algorithm more apparent. The attached video shows how the algorithm works, repeatedly swapping pixels to recreate the original image.

Crude Figures

The style is an amalgamation of the many art styles that I have been deeply influenced by throughout the years- From Italian renaissance portraiture, Catholic Medieval, Flemish Primitives, Thanjavur, Thangka, and the first art styles ever introduced to me- 16bit pixel work and Anime inspired American cartoons from the 1980"s.
The backdrop is the view of Manhattan from my childhood neighborhood of LIC Queens.
The 80"s iconography is obvious and cliche, but it"s continued influence on my aesthetic is undeniable.

There were a few ideas I had for who would be the deity of this piece. I shared my sketch ideas with my friend from childhood, Gene, who was an incredible graffiti artist and musician. He liked my Voltron inspired sketches the most, and I always valued his opinion, so I went with his choice. Tragically, Gene went on to take his life only a week later.

I adorned the Voltron deity in Michael Jackson"s "Thriller jacket- Gene"s first musical influence.
Shortly after, my beloved B Paul"s health took a nose dive. His fight with cancer was coming to an end- he was in rapid decline.

I worked on most of this piece from my iPad while sitting next to him in the little Brooklyn apartment that we used to share together throughout his hospice.
B paul had an affinity for gold and bling in general. The gold accents of this piece are a homage to him and his distinct style.

B Paul"s numerological number is "33. It is the number of the Master Teacher, a Master Number. 33"s are the personification of pure love and compassion- and the love that B had given to me, and all those around him was genuinely nurturing, unconditional and pure.Without B Paul"s care and guidance, I would have never become a tattoo artist, nor would I have had the opportunities and career I have today.

Both Gene and B Paul are integral features to my story, who I am as a person and artist, and a large part of my NYC experience. This isn"t the first piece that they have influenced, and will not be the last.

Artwork created on the IPad with Procreate and Pixel Studio

My Mother the Sun

This titan is keeping the Vault safe. What's behind though ?

The Guardian

Store

Gas masks were extensively used during the First World War and the Second World War. Although it is rarely talked about, Africans played a huge role in both wars, which means that they must have been handed gas masks at some point to go out into the war front and face the enemies. Yet, a cursory search on the internet shows that there is hardly any image of an African wearing a gas mask in these wars. Why?

IN THE AIR

I do not do editions for a variety of reasons. This practice continues in this Grails Piece. While each of these may appear the same, they are actually unique generative pieces augmented with noise from the quantum computer ibmq_quinto. At regular scales our world is consistent and predictable, but at the quantum level everything is random and chaotic. Look closely at the details of this piece and you will see that it mimics this phenomenon. Furthermore, the animated numbers, which may be confused with binary, are not actually binary. They are visual representations of qubits in perfect superposition as measured by observing atoms within ibmq_quinto.