What is Concept?
Concept is a 10,000 by 10,000 grid of transparent pixels, sold as an NFT as the genesis mint in my "Single Editions" collection on Foundation. It was listed for 0.1 ETH and, after a 24 hour auction, ultimately purchased for 1 ETH (roughly $2,500 USD at the time) on March 5th, 2022 by proper.
Concept (2022)
Concept as a reflection of value
At its inception, I thought, if a collector wants to treat my work as a financial instrument, does it even matter what it looks like? Simply owning any of my work might be what some collectors value, so who cares if it's an empty image? In this sense, Concept is a commentary on the rich history of authenticity in the art world - autographs, certificates, and now NFTs - wherein the token can sometimes mean more to the owner than the art it authenticates.
Taken alone, I felt this was a pretty self-absorbed interpretation, so I decided not to publish it. I couldn't shake the idea for several weeks, though, during which time the work took on several new meanings to me. At a certain point, I couldn't resist any longer and decided to put it into the world.
Concept as an invitation to discover
Concept is transparent. Not pure white, black, or anything else. Transparent. If you hang it in a gallery or display it on a web page, it will literally be there, but you might have to search around to find it.
This presents an interesting opportunity for digital gallery curators. If Concept is hung somewhere in your gallery, and your patrons know this, it turns the space into a treasure hunt. It is an invitation to look closely at the blank walls in the space and try to determine which portion of those walls is Concept.
The paradox of a printed Concept
Generally, my work is formatted for print. A reasonable question, then, is what a printed Concept would be, if such a thing could even exist.
Say you send the file to a printer, and they print it out at 30x30" at 300 dpi (which Concept is sized well for). You frame it and hang it on your wall. What is the artwork? Is it the blank paper? Is it the nonexistent ink printed on that paper? Is it the space between the viewer and the paper? Does the paper running through the printer somehow mark it as an edition of Concept? Can Concept be shown in a physical space without any paper at all? In other words, is a placard placed on an empty wall enough? I don’t have the answers, but I do have a lot of questions.
Concept as a reflection of the viewer
Concept changes dramatically depending on the way it is viewed, and the owner doesn't really have much control over it. For example, it will show up differently in a browser depending on the viewer's Dark Mode setting. Many image viewers will display it as a grey checkerboard. It adapts to the world around it like a chameleon. In many cases, it is blending into a world created by the viewer themselves, and it becomes a reflection of the viewer's environment.
Concept as a symbol of communication
I've been working hard for several months on a few projects, personal and art related, and I’m tired. I realized a few weeks after coming up with this idea that it partially grew out of a strong desire to create and connect with my audience after a frustrating dry spell in my creative work. I want to share consistent experiences with the viewers of my art; this is what drives me. Concept is the absolutely minimal way to facilitate such a connection. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the discussion over the piece play out, and look forward to having further discussions about it.
Concept as insight into creating
We tend to think of a brand new visual art project as a blank canvas or piece of paper. For my work, Concept is a bit closer to that blank state. It is a step further from a canvas or piece of paper, having nothing backing it. Concept is a conveyance of the very beginning of a new generative project feels like to me - a completely blank slate without even a background color chosen. If presented with a fully transparent images, how would you fill it? Concept invites you to contemplate this question.
Additionally, Concept was generated with code, much like most of my work is. Here it is:
import Sketch.Import
main :: IO ()
main = mainIOWith
(\opts -> opts { optWidth = Pixels 10000, optHeight = Pixels 10000 })
(pure ())But that's not the whole story: what's Sketch.Import? What's this code doing? Quite a lot, despite the fact that the image it produces is blank.
Concept was created using a closed-source, personal generative art framework that I've been building up since 2017. It may be a blank image, but it was a blank image created with a drawing tool I have been building for 5 years. It is evidence of a machine capable of producing all sorts of images, a “hello world” from a mechanism with vast creative potential.
No Utility.
Concept explicitly has no utility. It unlocks nothing. Ultimately, it is an experiment in doing something absurd for the sake of generating questions about the nature of art. It holds a place in my heart for all of the thoughts it surfaced. I never thought that the idea of a blank image could stake such a hold in my brain, but here we are. Many thanks to all who asked questions about the work, got confused by it, spread the word, and participated in the auction.