NFT

NFT releases by artist Most. Stay in touch for new drops.

ThE ICARUS PROJECT

March, 2023

We could see modern tech as Icarus’ wings, it brings us to unimaginable heights, but eventually also doom. Right? Well, the Icarus myth is often seen as this tale against being reckless. But in reality there’s more to it:

Icarus father advised him to avoid extremes, not go too heigh, and not go too low. The true lesson in there might be to use technology in a balanced way, integrating extremes. But what would such a balanced future look like?

This artwork experiments with creating a journey through such a future, that integrates extremes. One that combines reckless and careful, old and new, and reality and simulation.

The piece revolves around a central object. A simulation of a hydrogen combustion engine in a peculiar engine shape. Calculated with a new supercomputer (DelftBlue) of the Technical University Delft, The Netherlands.

Around it you see AI creating a journey passed elements from the Icarus myth, like water and fire. Adding to it all sorts of AI generated content. The vehicles, the buildings, and objects. It's all AI generated.

The Icarus Project hopes to inspire a future equilibrium and was realized as an NFT within an artist residency at the Crossing Parallels program.











 

Qube Mouse

April, 2022

Qube Mouse is a quantum NFT that explores if good can be created from nothing… It consists of human, natural, and artifact parts. Merged together in an endless transition, based on measurements of the energy of nothingness, quantum vacuums:

To us, a vacuum would come closest to nothing. It’s a space with nothing in it. In the quantum world of unimaginable small scale, true vacuums do not exist. Particles continuously pop in and out of existence. Because of this, even a vacuum contains an energy on a quantum level and has an attractive force… Measurements of the vacuum energy result in a random data stream that decides the variations in the shape of the Qube Mouse.

The Qube Mouse exists as NFTs. Profits of the NFT-sales are reinvested to achieve ‘super/profit’. An investment approach based on quantum data in which:

  • 33.3% of profits is invested in empowerment of nature on the blockchain, think of preservation funding initiatives

  • 33.3% in artifact preservation and blockchain presence

  • and 33.3% goes to the survival of the human artist

Could nothingness really breed the good?

Full background of the Qube Mouse

We are living in a fascinating time where technologies like quantum computing, AI, and NFT develop at unimaginable speed. It is a period as well that calls for reflection. On good and bad, on our relationship with nature, art, others, materialism, etc. It’s the concept of nothingness that aggregated many of the thoughts of the artist on these topics, which led to the creation of the Qube Mouse.

The first foundation for the ideas behind Qube Mouse were actually laid in 2016-17. Back then, artist Most created static versions of the Cube Mouse (then with a C) using algorithms, as a symbol for the art of the future. This future art would endlessly change form through AI and react to its surroundings. The underlying ideas were published in a manifesto. In 2022 the Mouse for the first time comes alive in animated form using quantum and NFT under the name of Qube Mouse. The motivation to do so was as follows:

Recent technological developments in quantum computing led to the insight that the art of the future might not just be able to take on multiple forms, but could actually be multiple forms at once: a super/form. As is possible in the quantum world, where particles can be in multiple states or locations at the same time. A phenomenon called superposition, used in quantum computers to boost computing power in huge ways.

Web3 developments like the blockchain and NFTs also called for an artistic critique. The blockchain is currently often described as ‘decentralized’. From a technical perspective this decentralization is regularly criticized. In the eyes of the artist however, there is a more important reason why decentralization is lacking: because the blockchain and its profits are currently focused, centralized, on the human. This calls for a shift in the blockchain power balance to natural and object entities.

Also, could the profits made with NFTs be considered exorbitant? In comparison with money spent on societal issues or even non-NFT art? In some way NFT profit seemed to resemble exorbitant enterprise profit that Karl Marx called ‘superprofit’. Reason for the artist to experiment with NFT profit redistribution: A practice in which substantial amounts would be asked for the NFTs. Sale profits would be redistributed to causes the artist considers to be ‘good’.

At the same time the recent boom in NFTs and energy that’s been put into digital art was inspiring. From nearly nothing there suddenly was this huge new art scene. But to what to extent are we dealing with a bubble here? Can nothingness breed a continuous stream of energy? In his studies of the quantum world, the artist encountered quantum vacuums, that seemed to fit these questions perfectly for an artistic exploration. In the quantum world of unimaginable small scale true vacuums, empty spaces, do not exist. Particles continuously pop in and out of existence. Because of this, even a vacuum contains an energy on a quantum level and has an attractive force…

Next to that, the Qube Mouse project is inspired by philosophical streams like Harman’s Object Oriented Ontology, Latour who wrote about a Parliament of Things, and meditational exercises. That pointed to the existence of (object) realities that were outside of the artist’s scope: in the non-humane worlds of nature, and artifact objects.

Together, this lead to the creation of the 2022 Qube Mouse:

The Qube Mouse itself, that consists of human, natural, and artifact textures, is built up using quantum technology. Measurements of the quantum vacuum energy* are used by the artist to build up the mouse. It’s a random data stream that pulls the different parts together in the cube shape. Offering a real life view of events in a quantum-level environment.

The energy and attraction of the vacuum nothingness, brings rise to the Qube Mouse, born as an NFT on the blockchain. Profits on the NFTs are redistributed again by the mouse through a quantum mechanism, in a super/dimensional way. An investment approach called super/profit, in which measurements of particle superposition trigger a profit redistribution:

  1. A third of profits goes to blockchain initiatives that empower nature, think of natural preservation funding

  2. Another third to projects that increase the presence of the artifacts that surround us on the blockchain. Could the super/dimensional artworks of the future be able to exist on the blockchain, outside of human control?

  3. The final third is for to the human artist

* As measured by the Australian National University (https://anuquantumoptics.org/research-topics/quantum-information/quantum-random-number-generation)