Summary
BIP-11 proposes to select an 8x8 grid of Botto’s fragments representing one of Botto's emergent aesthetics. This grid will be stylistically organized by a clustering algorithm as a means of showing Botto’s process of aesthetic development, and featured and sold as a limited edition on Feral File (https://feralfile.com/). The exhibition is curated by Jesse Damiani, who curated Botto’s exhibition at Vellum LA during Frieze LA, and will take place on October 20th, near Botto’s anniversary.
Rationale
Feral File is a group experimenting with the traditional gallery model and contemporary digital publishing techniques. They host curated exhibitions and Jesse Damiani, who curated Botto’s exhibition at Vellum LA, is curating a digital exhibition focused on "process". The curator has asked for a piece featuring Botto's process, which is a new kind of commission of the artist.
To do this in a way that retains Botto's autonomy, Quasimondo has applied a clustering algorithm to all of the images Botto has created, not just those 350 curated every week.
The clustering algorithm organized the fragments into a set number of themes so as to group them by a common theme/style. Experimenting with different numbers of categories, 128 was the number of themes that could be significantly broad without being so wide so as to have “shallow” or repetitive categories. An additional ordering algorithm selects 64 of the fragments most close to the central thematic feature and arranges them next to their visually closest neighbors in an 8x8 grid, resulting in a kind of “style swatch”.
These swatches distinctively look different to the regular fragments. The overall resolution of the final grid will be higher than that of the minted fragments, but the individual tiles within the grid will have a lower resolution than the ones Botto mints on SR. See the following two examples:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/901897130904526868/1002268059265937468/cluster8x8_203.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/901897130904526868/1002268171509698580/cluster8x8_238.jpg
There are 128 total swatches, one for each theme, which will be added to a voting pool to be voted on over a 2 week period. The most popular swatch will be delivered to the curator, and the other 9 will be sold as community editions.
There will be 11 other artists featured in the exhibition (TBA) and editions. Edition sizes on Feral File are typically a few hundred and are priced at $100-200 each. The final price and edition size of the artists will be a collective decisions between the artists and the curator.
Proposal Specifications
- Special voting round will run from the 16th of Aug appox. 11:00CEST (5am ET) to 30th of August approx. 11:00CEST (5am ET).
- Voting pool will be the 128 swatches, each containing 64 fragments in a 8x8 grid.
- Users may use their existing voting points to vote in this pool
- The #1 by VP score will be given to Feral File to featured and sold (final pricing, edition size, and revenue share tbd), with the exhibit launching October 20th.
- The remaining 9 will be sold as community editions, through botto.com (price and size TBD based on Feral File's price and edition size)
Revenue share:
Artists receive 66.7% of primary sales and 10% of secondary sales, and each artist will receive an edition of the other artists' works. More information can be found in the Feral File Artist Guide
Disadvantages/Risks
- This is the first “commission” and presents work by Botto in a new format. We believe this does not violate Botto’s agency and that the narrative can carry this, but these new editions are unknown territory for the DAO.
- The edition size and price are still to be determined
