ANDREA BONACETO (B. 1989)
ANDREA BONACETO (B. 1989)
ANDREA BONACETO (B. 1989)
ANDREA BONACETO (B. 1989)
3 More
We will invoice under standard VAT rules and VAT w… Read more
ANDREA BONACETO (B. 1989)

AB Infinite 1

Details
ANDREA BONACETO (B. 1989)
AB Infinite 1
unit name: ABInf1
creator address: EMPT2JVHMIKH66Y6QA4P6ELL4UAMVGLRYYUULTYDFLQS3LDDKZPBHXDOQU
token ID: 742860434
Mutable ARC-19 NFT created as an Algorand ASA with corresponding 33734 x 1606 pixel image. The work is driven by artificial intelligence data processing, where certain portions of the artwork automatically update every few days based on people's interactions on social media. The source file is a vector which can be adapted as a video loop for any screen size or pixel image.
Executed in 2021-2022 and minted on 16 May 2022 on the Algorand blockchain. This work is unique and is accompanied by a non-fungible token.
Provenance
The artist.
Exhibited
New York, Times Square, Marriott Marquis, Andrea Bonaceto: AB Infinite 1, 2022.
New York, Times Square, Big Kahuna, Andrea Bonaceto: AB Infinite 1, 2022.
London, W1 Curates, Flannels, Andrea Bonaceto: AB Infinite 1, 2022.
Milan, Museo della Permanente, DART 2121, 2022.
Special notice
We will invoice under standard VAT rules and VAT will be charged at 20% on both the hammer price and buyer’s premium and shown separately on our invoice. Please note that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are not regulated assets in the UK or protected by financial compensation schemes. The value of an NFT could go down as well as up. For tax purposes, including potential sales tax, NFTs may be considered a digital service or digital product and thus Christie’s may be required to collect relevant taxes dependent on local laws. Tax may be payable on profits from investing in an NFT. You may wish to consult an independent tax adviser. Whilst each NFT is associated with a digital asset (for example, the digital artwork), they are separate and distinct. Purchasing a NFT does not mean that you are buying the digital asset associated with the NFT. You should check before bidding what rights to the digital asset you obtain by virtue of buying the NFT (if any). Please see the Conditions of Sale for further information. Except in the event you are a resident of Mainland China, you may elect to make payment of the purchase price for this lot in the cryptocurrency Ether, Bitcoin or USD Coin. Payment in Ether, Bitcoin or USD Coin must be made to Christie’s via a digital wallet maintained with one of the following: Coinbase Custody Trust; Coinbase, Inc.; Fidelity Digital Assets Services, LLC; Gemini Trust Company, LLC; Gemini Europe Limited; Gemini Europe Services Limited; Paxos Trust Company, LLC; Digivault Limited; Ziglu Limited; or Archax Ltd. Only payments sent from digital wallets maintained at these platforms will be credited towards this lot purchase, and we will not recognise payments from digital wallets hosted at other exchanges or self-hosted wallets. The digital wallet must be registered to you, or, if you registered to bid as a company, then in the name of the company. You agree, upon our request, to provide documentation confirming that the payment was made from a digital wallet registered in your name and maintained at one of the platforms listed above. Partial paymen You must pay the purchase price no later than 24 hours after we issue you with an invoice if you elect to pay for this lot in Ether, Bitcoin or USD Coin, or by the end of the seventh calendar day following the auction for all other currencies. The relevant exchange rates will be disclosed in the invoice. For further information and to view our Buyer’s Premium rates, please view the Conditions of Sale via the link below. Please note that any tax for this artwork will depend on buyer geo location. If this artwork is invoiced to a UK address, standard VAT rules apply.
Further details
The interactive component of this work will continue until the 12 October 2022 at 23:59 BST, when it will be frozen by the artist. The buyer of this work may choose to re-open this facility in collaboration with the artist.

This work has been requested for inclusion in the following upcoming exhibitions:
Beijing, CAFA Art Museum, Andrea Bonaceto: AB Infinite 1, November 2022 - December 2022.
Milan, MEET Digital Culture Center, Andrea Bonaceto, December 2022 - January 2023.

Please note that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are not regulated assets in the UK or protected by financial compensation schemes. The value of an NFT could go down as well as up. For tax purposes, including potential sales tax, NFTs may be considered a digital service or digital product and thus Christie’s may be required to collect relevant taxes dependent on local laws. Tax may be payable on profits from investing in an NFT. You may wish to consult an independent tax adviser.

Whilst each NFT is associated with a digital asset (for example, the digital artwork), they are separate and distinct. Purchasing a NFT does not mean that you are buying the digital asset associated with the NFT. You should check before bidding what rights to the digital asset you obtain by virtue of buying the NFT (if any). Please see the Conditions of Sale for further information.

Except in the event you are a resident of Mainland China, you may elect to make payment of the purchase price for this lot in the cryptocurrency Ether, Bitcoin or USD Coin. Payment in Ether, Bitcoin or USD Coin must be made to Christie’s via a digital wallet maintained with one of the following: Coinbase Custody Trust; Coinbase, Inc.; Fidelity Digital Assets Services, LLC; Gemini Trust Company, LLC; Gemini Europe Limited; Gemini Europe Services Limited; Paxos Trust Company, LLC; Digivault Limited; Ziglu Limited; or Archax Ltd. Only payments sent from digital wallets maintained at these platforms will be credited towards this lot purchase, and we will not recognise payments from digital wallets hosted at other exchanges or self-hosted wallets. The digital wallet must be registered to you, or, if you registered to bid as a company, then in the name of the company. You agree, upon our request, to provide documentation confirming that the payment was made from a digital wallet registered in your name and maintained at one of the platforms listed above. Partial payments of a lot from multiple digital wallets will not be allowed. The cryptocurrency amount will be calculated by us based on the following:
- For Ether: the USD/ETH hourly quoted CoinDesk Ether Price Index (ETX) at the start time of the auction. The USD/ETH rate will then be converted into GBP/ETH using the GBP/USD exchange rate provided by our bank at the same time as the ETH/USD is quoted; or
- For Bitcoin: the USD/BTC hourly quoted CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XTX) at the start time of the auction. The USD/BTC rate will then be converted into GBP/BTC using the GBP/USD exchange rate provided by our bank at the same time as the BTC/USD is quoted; or
- For USD Coin: the GBP/USD exchange rate provided by our bank at the start time of the auction.

You must pay the purchase price no later than 24 hours after we issue you with an invoice if you elect to pay for this lot in Ether, Bitcoin or USD Coin, or by the end of the seventh calendar day following the auction for all other currencies. The relevant exchange rates will be disclosed in the invoice. For further information and to view our Buyer’s Premium rates, please view the Conditions of Sale via the link below.

Brought to you by

Tessa Lord
Tessa Lord Senior Specialist, Head of Department

Lot Essay

An extraordinary vision by one of the world’s leading NFT artists, AB Infinite 1 is Andrea Bonaceto’s magnum opus. Displayed in Times Square, New York and more recently at W1 Curates on London’s Oxford Street, this digital interactive tapestry represents a pioneering collaboration between artist and viewer. Describing the piece as ‘my most profound work so far’, Bonaceto offers a snapshot of his life and the cycle of culture, giving form to the journey ‘ab infinite’ (‘from infinity’ in Latin, and a pun on his initials) to its origin—symbolised by the number 1. By way of a specially designed artificial intelligence mechanism, viewers of the work have been able to contribute to its appearance, using the hashtag #abinfinite1 on Instagram and Twitter. Images uploaded under the hashtag are translated with Bonaceto’s bespoke AI technology, thereafter incorporated within the work’s distinct visual vocabulary. Through the same process, any text posted under the hashtag becomes part of an evolving poem displayed within the work, reminiscent of a modern stream of consciousness built in the footsteps of James Joyce's Ulysses. While the NFT is currently ‘mutable’—able to be altered by the audience—Bonaceto will cease this capability after its purchase, freezing it as a record of its time. It will then be up to the collector whether to reactivate it on future occasions.

Born in Pisa, Italy, in 1989 and raised in the Tuscan coastal town of Viareggio, Bonaceto has risen to prominence both as a contemporary artist and as a leading figure in the blockchain space. He is the Co-Founder of Aorist, a next generation cultural institution supporting a climate-forward NFT marketplace for artists working at the edge of art and technology. The present work was created and minted on Algorand, widely considered to be one of the world’s most environmentally-friendly, decentralised and secure blockchains. Bonaceto’s custom-built AI image generator uses PyTorch, OpenAI, VQGAN and DeepAI to produce stylistic responses to the images uploaded by the public to social media: the programme was ‘trained’ using a number of the artist’s pre-existing works, royalty-free images and a selected colour palette taken directly from AB Infinite 1. This experimental technology represents a new user-friendly form of AI that does not require input from a software specialist or coder. During its installation on Oxford Street, viewers were able to see the artwork on 36 high-resolution screens, granting them unprecedented access to the creative process.

The democratising power of AB Infinite 1 lies at the heart of Bonaceto’s agenda. ‘Through compassion and love we need to come together as a community and become one entity’, he explains. ‘… I consider this artwork as permanently unfinished, as I hope there will always be someone in the future who wants to be part of it together with me.’ While references to artists such as Kandinsky and Picasso are embedded in the work’s surface, its real-time participation element aligns it more closely with aspects of performance and conceptual art, conjuring precedents ranging from Michelangelo Pistoletto’s ‘Mirror Paintings’ to Marina Abramović’s use of Mixed Reality. More broadly, it be seen to extend the legacy of art forms that have sought to document the multiplicity of human existence: from Alighiero Boetti’s Mappe and Tutti, to ancient Chinese scrolls and medieval tapestries, to the meditative, life-long practices of artists such as On Kawara and Roman Opalka. At once personal and universal in its scope, it is a thrilling record of human time, and the images and words with which we choose to fill it.

Bonaceto explains that, for him, 'art is defined as the honest attempt to truly be yourself. AB Infinite 1 is encouraging the audience to start this trajectory, as we are moving towards a society where most jobs will be automated by AI and robotics. In that society, we can’t identify ourselves anymore with the jobs we have. As the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa said in his poem "The Tobacco Shop":

When I went to take off the mask,
It was stuck to my face.
When I got it off and saw myself in the mirror,
I had already grown old.

AB Infinite 1 is my attempt to take off that mask with the hope that others will follow. The ultimate aim is to sublimate art, and with new eyes operate in the field of redefining society embracing new technologies and organisations like blockchain, DAOs, AI, robotics and more. A world where technology is at the service of humans, that can now effectively monetise the data they produce hence have more time to understand who they truly are and being themselves.'

More from 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale

View All
View All