Feral File  Chain Reaction

Jennifer and Kevin McCoys Public View / Private View opens up the artistic process of creation  usually driven by artists concepts and aesthetic choices  to a community of donors and art supporters connected to the McCoys. Collectors receive an animated composite of a series of images that are based on pictures submitted to the McCoys by a group of donors of the artists work who thereby participated in the NFTs creation process. Public View / Private View is based on the McCoys 2018 project Public Key / Private Key for which they produced a short 16mm film, donated it to the Whitney Museums Special Collection, then issued 50 Ethereum ERC-721 tokens to represent the right to be named as one of the donors of record for the film and selected 50 donors from an open call for applications. The tokens were allowed to freely circulate for a period of six months. For Public View / Private View, the McCoys asked these 50 donors of record to submit an image personally meaningful to them and created a coded interpretation of it. The interpretations of the donors 50 images were then combined into the animation that collectors can purchase as NFT. The 50 donors receive an ink-on-paper version of the image. While Public Key / Private Key made the donation process accessible to a wider public, Public View / Private View involves the donors in the creation process itself. Using the blockchain as authentication and distribution mechanism, the two projects form a creative chain that not only binds the artists as makers to an expanding community of interested supporters, but makes the nodes along the way a formal part of the work itself. In Public View / Private View the blockchain anchors the creation, distribution, and archiving process of the artwork.