Our signature commission awarded to world renowned photographers to help them create new work for the Obscura platform. 2 photographers per month are selected for their outstanding contributions to the medium of photography. We offer the artist a curation team to assist in the selection of the final pieces. Each artist will produce a collection of 55 NFTs.

55 Season Passes will be sold for the Curated Commission. Each pass guarantees 8 NFTs, one from every curated artist. Sold once per season.

purchase your season pass on the secondary market: https://opensea.io/collection/obscura-mint-pass or stay tuned for the season 2 primary sale at: http://obscura.io in May 2022

Obscura Curated

Ursula 3 #19 by Hannah Whitaker

This collection of photographs expands on a character who has been the focal point of my work for a few years: Ursula. I leave ambiguous exactly who and what she is. Her nature is something between an AI, a fictional character, an avatar, a product of the collective imagination, and a living, fully dimensional, being. 

I have previously made two bodies of work with her. The first I published with Image Text Ithaca Press in a book called Ursula. These photographs also comprise my genesis NFT drop. The second I showed recently at Galerie Christophe Gaillard in Paris in an exhibition called Shadow Detail. This third body of work is the first made specifically for the NFT space. Im calling it Ursula 3, as the third iteration of the project, and in a nod to Web3.

These photographs incorporate some of the photographic techniques that I have used in the past in cultivating the mystique of Ursulasilhouettes, special effect lighting, and printed backgrounds. For Ursula 3 I combined these techniques with a more hands-on approach to set building. I had several props and set materials fabricated out of mirrored plexi, including patterned screens, Ursulas profile, and her hands. I also had made a turtleneck, gloves, and hoods in reflective materials. In addition to using these props, I incorporated rear projection, a technique used in a pre-digital era of Hollywood filmmaking. 

The sets are more complex than I had done previously, with the intent of making the space in the photographs stranger, more layered, and more difficult to decipher. The resulting photographs evoke the established language of the Ursula lineage but usher her into an increasingly synthetic universe.

Edition: 1 of 1

Commissioned by Obscura

Ursula 3 #19 by Hannah Whitaker

Voyages

Voyages #231 is part of the Gaia series. Gaia comprises photographs of our beautiful Earth, taken while travelling at a speed of about 900 kmph. #231 was taken in December of 2015 over Northern Canada.

Voyages #231

PROXY

PROXY is a collection of 639 portraits generated from a pool of 322 pixel grids. Each grid carries the algorithmically evaluated dominant tones from photographic portraits of the United Nations global leaders found through a peculiarity of the UN Photo Library. The collection is a class photo featuring member states representatives and leaders of all departments, offices, subsidiaries, funds, programmes, bodies, commissions, agencies and organizations. 

In an attempt to refigure figuration, this collection abstracts away all sense of representation. It puts forward curated outputs generated by countless repetitive image interpolations of the initial pixel gridstransmuted surrogates of select political avatars.

PROXY #560

hell_ world

Abex I

If you squint, it looks like an elevator button from Doom or Quake!

Earthy Half-Shut Hell Hole

PROXY #42

Little Lyell Machines

Web is a monument to the hyperlink, a poem dedicated to machine learning and a computer's drive within itself.

The project is a fully on-chain generative cross-linked network of webpages released in partnership with Fingerprints DAO and is a coproduction with Superposition. Blockchain development by Jake Allen.

Web is a monument to the hyperlink, a poem dedicated to machine learning and a computer's drive within itself.
 
 The project is a fully on-chain generative cross-linked network of webpages released in partnership with Fingerprints DAO and is a coproduction with Superposition. Blockchain development by Jake Allen.

oen Dmctu

Rotating nested squircles: a fully on-chain spin-off of "Markov's Dream: Orb" by Harm van den Dorpel, 2022. Colours, amount of rings, rotation speed and curvature are determined on mint. The animated vector graphics that compose this artwork are entirely generated by the Solidity code that the smart contract was programmed in. It does not rely on any web server or off-chain storage solution like IPFS, which means that this artwork is indestructible and will live on as long as the Ethereum blockchain exists.

Markov's Dream: Orb (lite)

On-chain rotating nested squircles by Harm van den Dorpel, 2022

Orb (lite) #66

DotCom Seance

Logo reimagined by Cosmographia's text-to-image machine learning (Diffusion Model) software for **efanshop.com** (1999-2001) from the description "A logo for a 2001 company named 'efanshop.com' a company that managed logistics and technology for sports web shops".

[**Dotcom Seance**](https://dotcomseance.com) is a collection by Simon Denny, Guile Twardowski, and Cosmographia. 

Presented by [Folia](https://folia.app).

efanshop.com (1999-2001) reimagined by Cosmographia, with Simon Denny and Guile Twardowski

quasar fighter

quasar fighter: An on-chain generative art piece and a mini game inspired by retro space shooter and bullet hell games. Each piece contains a unique spaceship design, programmatically generated in 3d. Use your mouse to fly your spaceship and fight against procedurally generated waves of enemies, with unique patterns and designs for each piece. Press "M" to toggle sounds. "P" to pause. "L" to see the your highscores.

quasar fighter #99

SocialContracts

Social Contract #196 traces its collectors collections, creating a collection graph that shows similar accounts and projects future acquisitions. It updates periodically and upon transfer of ownership.

 For the best experience, view larger  https://socialcontracts.jpg.space/tokens/196

Social Contract #196

Death Before the Bloom

Death Before the Bloom is a collection of 111 unique snapshots of an evolving palace from my imagination. With each mint, fans collect a snapshot of a unique rendition of this immersive experience, and are invited to follow along as their particular space evolves to either match their snapshot or reveal alternative phases of this developing environment. Listen to Future, the final track on my upcoming album and enjoy a virtual experience inspired by the transformational effects of natural growth and mycelium.

Death Before the Bloom #46

Ethereum Mining Commemorative Coin

Ethereum Mining Commemorative Coin (2022) is an issuance of a virtual commemorative coin that memorialises the mining that contributed to the network between 2015 and 2022   to be halted forever, after the Merge. A Ghibli-style short animation by animator Simon Mine introduces the coin as it floats across a desert landscape, recalling the initial branding of the Frontier release in 2015. Through a globe network illustrated in the style of the Ethereum Homestead release graphics, a miner bought off ebay is retired forever and morphs into the commemorative coin. The reverse of the coin reveals an animated version of CNATCH & Hsiao-Wei Wangs Panda merge meme, compiling several key moments in Ethereum visuals. The soundtrack is from Amnesia Scanners Scammer project, a classic music NFT series launching open source royalty-free snippets on the Ethereum network in 2021. Everything,everywhereisalwaysmoving,forever  but history is not forgotten.

Ethereum Mining Commemorative Coin 52

Surreality

In Surreality, Sage Sarvie has created 100 unique dreamscapes that invite you to step away from daily life and enter into your own slice of what the world could feel like when the natural world and functional spaces unite. Filled with clean and cozy colors, there is a sense of calm when you step inside of one of Sage"s dreamscapes, which are explorable in browser.

Surreality #23

The Idea Becomes A Machine is a conceptual art project which explores art works as instructions using the medium of text prompt based AI image generation. The piece assembles a narrative from text prompts and generated images. The work references the wall drawings, structures and seminal essay Paragraphs on Conceptual Art by American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt and juxtaposes them with tropes from science fiction including autonomous robots and a super intelligent AI which sends information into the past from the deep future.


The Idea Becomes A Machine

detailed anime mecha walking in art gallery with colorful Sol LeWitt wall drawings on wall in background, unreal engine 5, octane, arnold, 8k, realistic, ue4, hdrp

IDEAMACHINE 414/512

Points in Time

a fun experimental piece. 128x128px of #ffda03  
Inspired by Mathcastles "zero-glimpse Sunflower" (https://unitlondon.com/nfts/zero-glimpse-sunflower-one/)  
This sunflower, however is not unknowable, it is merely abstracted. 
Yes, the colour is sunflower yellow - but inspect the file, and you"ll find a sunflower represented as XYZRGB data. It is reconstructable  - or you can simply enjoy the lines of numbers, and feel the warm glow of the Sunflower. 