New York – Christie’s is proud to announce Robert Alice’s SOURCE [ON NFTs] (2024), the first on-chain, generative art collection on Christie’s 3.0 will be auctioned and minted live on the blockchain on 12 March, in partnership with TASCHEN. The collection features 400 unique generative digital paintings by Robert Alice – a pioneer in crypto art and NFTs. The auction coincides with the release of ON NFTs, the largest art historical study on NFTs to date. The first-of-its-kind, 600-page publication charts the digital medium’s origins and evolution and was edited and co-written by Robert Alice. The artistic works in SOURCE [On NFTs] were inspired by the art historical work that Alice put into the book. It is the project that came out of and was inspired by the making of the book.

Marking the US launch of On NFTs, Christie’s are partnering with TASCHEN to auction a selection of copies of The Hard Code Edition along with SOURCE [On NFTs]. TASCHEN have reserved the rarest and earliest edition numbers, Edition No. 1 through 10, of the full edition of 600 for the auction. The first 10 mints/bid at auction will receive the edition numbers of between Editions No. 1-10.

Sebastian Sanchez, Manager, Digital Art Sales, Christie’s, remarks, “The 400 artworks in SOURCE [On NFTs] investigate how literature and language inform the digital space. Each NFT is an expression of its source material, referencing traits from 30 books, writings and manifestos – from Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction to Seth Siegelaub’s The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement – that are foundational to an understanding of NFTs.”

Developed in collaboration with Digital Practice, a Web3 Fine Art Development group in New York City, Alice’s cutting-edge approach uses a Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm – similar to machine learning and AI models – to categorize texts according to their semantic meanings, identify their key phrases and generate new phrases that merge disparate histories to create new meaning. Works of science fiction collide with seminal digital art manifestos while cryptography whitepapers merge with 7^th Century Chinese philosophical texts. The source material was selected to reveal the cultural ecology around the origin of NFTs, so the new phrases poetically distill the pre-history of NFTs.

A form of digital graffiti, the text is layered into large color fields made entirely of text fragments that veer between legibility and illegibility, order and chaos. The tradition of color fields is recast as a celebration of the RGB color spectrum that characterizes digital art today. Together, this chaotic gestural system is an attempt to inject a deeper element of chance and chaos into generative systems.

Robert Alice remarks, “SOURCE [On NFTs] is the artistic reflection on the process of creating On NFTs. These digital paintings attempt to distill the inherent chaos and fragility of history, especially in our contemporary moment, while rooting itself in a number of specific insights regarding NFTs that I found most poignant when editing and writing the publication. First, NFTs when stripped to their bones are just text. Whether an on-chain work or a hyperlink, text is current and currency that creates and secures NFTs. Secondly, blockchains are the latest breakthrough in the history of publishing and so it was this dance, between the importance of text to NFTs and the disruption of blockchain to publishing, that has been the guiding inspiration and philosophical backdrop to both SOURCE [On NFTs] and the book itself.”

SOURCE [ON NFTs] will be sold in a ‘Dutch auction’, in which the asking price decreases over time. A first for Christie’s 3.0, the format has gained popularity in the Web3 community. Pricing details to follow.

Nicole Sales Giles, VP, Director, Digital Art Sales comments, “We’re thrilled to be launching a generative art project at Christie’s, and we’re delighted to collaborate with Robert Alice.  I’m particularly excited about this sale as it’s a full circle moment for Christie’s: Robert Alice’s work, Block 21 (42.36433° N, -71.26189° E) (from Portraits of a Mind), was the first NFT at Christie’s, accompanying a physical work of art by the artist in our October 2020 New York Day Sale.”

Marlene Taschen, Managing Director of TASCHEN says, “We are very excited for the auction of Robert Alice's SOURCE [On NFTs] at Christies in partnership with our publication ‘On NFTs’,  the first major art historical survey on the subject. Edited by Robert Alice who, as an artist and curator himself, gave us a lot of confidence in this ambitious project. Alice curated the artist selection with an unusual, inspiring, and decentralized approach, drawing on the knowledge and recommendations of the chosen artists. The result is a fascinating picture of this disruptive genre.”

Sale Date
12 March, 2024