Refraction’s first project is NFT Culture Proof, a collaboration with Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern. They use this historical moment to have us literally write, and re-write, a web3-native framework for storytelling and discourse. It’s an ideal launching point of collaboration for our DAO and Refraction Festival.
NFT Culture Proof is a landmark large-scale collaborative project that actively explores the expansive potential for the Blockchain as a medium of performance. For 32 days, participants contribute to a stream of live but immutable on-chain text, producing crypto-native SVG snapshots of collective dialog and storytelling.
Inspired by the practice of daily participation explored in On Kawara's Date Paintings, it also builds on pioneering text-based Blockchain projects - referencing the storytelling and collaboration of Loot, on-chain text generated NFT images of Token Equals Text, code-based on-chain generated NFTs of Art Blocks, and collective writing and image-based art of Untitled Frontier.
The project speaks to where Refraction sees the possibilities of Web3, from democratized platforms to collaborative writing and art projects, to concepts that not only excite, but also give space for reflection, discourse, emergent ideas, and experiments. NFT Culture Proof invites the audience into a pseudonymous digital dialogue that plays in the space between the improvised immediacy of digital transmission and the immutability of the decentralized block chain, sparked by some of our favourite crypto galaxy brains.
How it Works
Beginning on November 11, 9AM PST, contributors can submit their text-blocks, each building on the one before. Daily “writing prompts” from artists, thinkers, and authors spanning the crypto-verse will focus, inspire and provoke group contribution. Confirmed participants so far include @thesarahshow, @simondlr, @rheaplex, @_deafbeef, @sashastiles, @KalenIwamoto, @1nterdependence (Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon), @mal_levy, @MezBreezeDesign, @sterlingcrispin, @annespalter, @CaballeroAnaMa, @kzathe, @isthisanart, @katecursed, @kaigani, @ClaireSilver12, @artnome, @TRANSFERgallery (Kelani Nichole and Wade Wallerstein), @p1xelfool @ReginaHarsanyi, @pridesai, @aGENDAdao, @jpg, @dhof, @shumonbasar, @cibellecibelle, @FWBtweets, @gabriellemic.
Every text-block submitted will generate a unique NFT, which also lives completely on-chain as a crypto-native SVG. These are generated in real-time, and include the date, participation day (out of 32), edition number, and the participant's submitted text (up to 128 characters), as well as the seven preceding lines - to encourage ongoing collaboration. There will be 256 text blocks available for purchase on day one, with 256 more added each day. Every time a text-block is purchased, a previous participant will receive a second one. This ongoing airdrop is designed to facilitate continued and spirited community-oriented dialog. It also adds a random chance element to further collaborate and receive more NFTs for free!
We refer to our NFTs as Cultures*: they are your proof of participation, proof of collective performance, proof of ownership, and proof of culture.*
-NFT Culture Proof
Why RefractionDAO is Down
We've been continual fans and long-time collaborators with NFT Culture Proof creators and new media artists Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, since their breakthrough "collaborative online intervention", Wikipedia Art. What began as a request to participate as prompt writers grew into a partnership. When we learned more about their intentions to build community on the chain itself, it became clear that our shared values and beliefs in collective creation and distributed prosperity meant that we needed to involve NFT Culture Proof in RefractionDAO on a deeper level.
RefractionDAO is a group of artists, curators, technicians, and fans focused on moving the culture forward through collectively reimagining live experiences. We believe NFT Culture Proof will become a genesis framework for collaborative web3 performance and predict a Cambrian explosion of exciting derivative projects from our decentralized global creative community and beyond.
We hope for NFT Culture Proof to both capture - and push at the boundaries of - what collective creativity and distributed value might look like, be, and do. It is a seriously playful and playfully serious experiment, where today’s frivolity and work, hopes and ideas, are permanently inscribed - and tomorrow’s possibilities are just emerging.
- NS and SK
Join us in making history, and building a new future. http://nftculture.art/