Too many newsletters and talking about memecoins, AI agents, so as a treat, here’s a review of an art show that will live forever and immutable.
World Computer Sculpture Garden debuted on November 5th, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the idea that 0xfff once pitched during an informal chat, had become a reality: a smart contract that’s an exhibition of smart contract-based artworks.
If you have been reading Touch Grass for a while, you know already that I love smart contracts as a medium. I discovered the genre around 2018 by coincidence, and since then, I haven’t stopped collecting, writing, working with and admiring artworks that are born out of the constraints and programmability of our beloved smart contracts, like Terra0, a collective that has been covered on one of the Touch Grass installments.
Smart contract art, as I mentioned before, is not only interesting because it’s the most purist and native form of art we can create with the technologies we build. I’ll indulge in quoting myself so you don’t have to reread an old post: “Solidity (the coding language on which smart contracts are written) takes, through this art form, a completely different dimension of what an “expressive programming language” entails. For context, an expressive programming language should allow programmers to write code that is easy to read and understand, and make it easier to write code that accomplishes the intended task with fewer lines of code. Solidity, the language underpinning Ethereum, is almost completely human readable and allows for limitless expressive possibilities.” The initiator of the show, 0xfff, chose the name World Computer Sculpture Garden in reference to 113, one of the creators of Terraforms, another wonderful onchain garden. 113 refers to Ethereum as a sculpture garden in the same way I describe Solidity and smart contracts as expressive. In Ethereum we’re limitless to create, but work understanding that the constraints of onchainness are catalysts for inventiveness. Constraints, as smart contracts, become part of the medium. 0xfff understands this all too well. They’ve been working onchain for a while, and imagining World Computer Sculpture Garden for a while.
It’s interesting to show this exhibition to people that are new to this world. They might just think: “well, this is just glorified ascii” or “gosh the Onchain Conceptual Art people are at it again”, which are valid takes of course, as we are now used to the TikTok algorithm, to colorful memecoins and an electric atmosphere. I find the World Computer Sculpture Garden particularly special because of this moment we’re currently navigating. By choosing the same technology that creates the electric and most times frantic environment, 0xfff and artists 0xhaiku, hehehehehehe, Loucas Braconnier (Figure31), Sarah Friend, Material Protocol Arts, Rhea Myers et al. and Paul Seidler have created a space of observation and of immutable technological respite.
“Open to surprise. Open to delight. Purposefully non-standard.” greets the website, which is created by the contract. This show has no end, and as users interact with it and artists activate their pieces, it programmatically evolves. The tension between smart contract immutability and programmatic evolution of the show is one of its best features - by now, we understand that immutability is not directly linked to upgradeability (only if you want to), a thread discussed ad nauseam in the earlier days of the battles between Bitcoiners vs. Ethereans.
0xhaiku has been embedding poetic schemes (as his name implies) into smart contracts for a few years. His work echoes is nostalgic and beautiful - a collaborative poem that people can interact with through the interface, with delightful sound bytes. Echoes opens the exhibition and sets the tone of it: contribute with compassion. Followed by hehehehehehe that swiftly injects coyness and playfulness into the exhibition space (addendum - I could not figure this one out, so i was elegant on the review, but i know now, you know who you are).
Loucas Braconnier has been working with alternative ways of perception, by using photographic techniques early on in his career, and shifting towards exploring time as a medium, always experimenting across smart contracts. In Travelers, Loucas continues to explore his signature subject matter of block time, on this occasion, laying a visually simple endless road that grows as the machine is joined by travelers that discover new lands, by going backwards or forwards.
Sarah Friend’s Yes Bot builds on the 2014/2015 artwork by Rhea Myers, Is Art, where sending some ETH to Rhea’s contract verifies that the work is indeed art. Sarah takes this further, creating a bot that reassures Rhea’s contract confirmation of the “artness” of the work.
Rhea (et. al.) is of course an integral part of the exhibition, and the catalyst for me personally to write this review. In her artwork Critique of This Show, the proposal is to become an art critic. Given that during 2021-23 everyone with a pair of eyes became an NFT art critic, and that most of the critiques were positive (aka they would be written for the sake of pumping bags), the piece is an interesting memento of that era, as the possible critiques that Rhea’s contract allows for, are all positive. Interacting with the artwork, in the era of highly manicured blockchain user experiences, also got me reflecting about the importance of always inspecting what’s under the hood, a practice that’s almost lost nowadays.
In Modulation Studies, Material Protocol Arts invites us to the world of musical production and records the process onchain, on a durational performance merging production and documentation, verified on a zero knowledge rollup.
Finally, in Real Abstraction, Paul Seidler works with zk-proofs verified onchain that create a line connecting two digital plains - maybe creating a brand new genre I will totally obsess about and make no money at all from: zk-proof art. Jokes aside, the artwork follows after Smol Dollar, a charming project about cryptoeconomics, and the absurdity of monetary policy, and Straylight Protocol, a multi-player game constrained by the Ethereum runtime.
At the end of the exhibition, the spectator is invited to plant a flower on the Guestbook by sending 0.01 ETH to the show’s contract address.
This is a space to spend some time exploring - play with the artworks and look up the contracts on Etherscan. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. An invitation to step away from the current thing and make sense of what’s under the hood through art, is always really welcomed.
I’ll be back next week, thanks for reading and letting me indulge by exploring this exhibition for you - this time with my usual onchain digest programming.
Bye for now.
