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Lot Essay
Opening the doors to their Venice Beach digital art gallery in May of 2021, Bright Moments is an on-chain Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) that, over the last three years, has specialised in creating live and in-person NFT minting experiences. Hosting a series of major projects, events, and exhibitions across the world, Bright Moments has pioneered the idea of revealing AI and generative art outputs to collectors as a special, bespoke experience: a real, participatory event that is distinctly ‘elevated, a kind of performance art’ (S. Goldstein quoted in B. Droitcour, ‘Bright Moments’, Outland, 18 April 2024). The first of these ‘IRL minting’ projects, Rituals, involved generative artists Aaron Penne and Boreta and launched in September 2021 at the Venice gallery location. Of the 1,000 outputs that make up the work, the first 200 were minted on-site over the course of two full days, from sunset on Friday to sunset on Sunday. Providing collectors with a fully immersive, shared experience, Ritual would later go on to win the Lumen Prize for NFTs, and establish the organisation as trailblazers in the field of digital art.
2021-2024 Complete Works marks a comprehensive grouping of 216 generative and AI artworks executed and minted since the inception of Bright Moments. Of the collection, 100 were live-minted across Venice, New York, Berlin, London, Mexico City, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and Paris, and reflect the organisation’s wide-reaching global ambitions. Though they are digital assets, and are by their very nature immutable and intangible, the outputs nonetheless trace a unique physical trail forged by the DAO through real time and real space. Bright Moments staged events at 150 Wooster Street in New York over four nights in December 2021, rented Kraftwerk in Berlin for ten nights in April 2022, and a few months later held exhibitions at a Soho gallery in London for several generative artists. The present grouping includes artworks by Tyler Hobbs, Mario Klingemann, Emily Xie, Claire Silver and other artists working at the vanguard of the digital art space today.
Within the Complete Works is an Ultra Full Set of 40 CryptoCitizens. Inspired by the tokenomics of popular NFT collectibles—namely the CryptoPunks project launched in June 2017 on the Ethereum blockchain, which comprises 10,000 unique, algorithmically generated characters—the CryptoCitizens are a portrait collection of pixel characters designed by artist Qian Qian. Released in batches of 1,000 and minted in each city Bright Moments visited between 2021 and 2024, each one is representative of membership in the DAO. They include CryptoLondoner, CryptoMexa, CryptoBerliner, CryptoNewYorker, CryptoTokyoite, and CryptoParisian. Within 2021-2024 Complete Works, 16 artworks come from the collaborations between Bright Moments x Art Blocks, and 60 artworks reflect contributions from each of the participating artists of the Venice Finale Collection. Concluding the DAO’s three-year and nine-city tour at the 2024 Venice Biennale, the final collection saw a new work of art created on-chain, randomly generated from sixty artists that had participated in Bright Moments projects across the world, including Maya Man, Anna Carreras and Piter Pasma. The outputs were revealed live at the Scuola Crande San Giovanni, and collectors were invited to mint their NFTs within its Venetian interior spaces. The present lot stands as a complete record of Bright Moments and its trailblazing activity across the globe. Tracing the DAO’s legacy in digital and physical space, these works represent a vibrant community of generative artists, patrons, and collectors.
The 2021-2024 Complete Works not only celebrates the past but also sets the stage for the future of digital art. This collection is a testament to the power of community, the beauty of randomness, and the magic of participatory art experiences. It stands as a landmark in the history of generative art.
2021-2024 Complete Works marks a comprehensive grouping of 216 generative and AI artworks executed and minted since the inception of Bright Moments. Of the collection, 100 were live-minted across Venice, New York, Berlin, London, Mexico City, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and Paris, and reflect the organisation’s wide-reaching global ambitions. Though they are digital assets, and are by their very nature immutable and intangible, the outputs nonetheless trace a unique physical trail forged by the DAO through real time and real space. Bright Moments staged events at 150 Wooster Street in New York over four nights in December 2021, rented Kraftwerk in Berlin for ten nights in April 2022, and a few months later held exhibitions at a Soho gallery in London for several generative artists. The present grouping includes artworks by Tyler Hobbs, Mario Klingemann, Emily Xie, Claire Silver and other artists working at the vanguard of the digital art space today.
Within the Complete Works is an Ultra Full Set of 40 CryptoCitizens. Inspired by the tokenomics of popular NFT collectibles—namely the CryptoPunks project launched in June 2017 on the Ethereum blockchain, which comprises 10,000 unique, algorithmically generated characters—the CryptoCitizens are a portrait collection of pixel characters designed by artist Qian Qian. Released in batches of 1,000 and minted in each city Bright Moments visited between 2021 and 2024, each one is representative of membership in the DAO. They include CryptoLondoner, CryptoMexa, CryptoBerliner, CryptoNewYorker, CryptoTokyoite, and CryptoParisian. Within 2021-2024 Complete Works, 16 artworks come from the collaborations between Bright Moments x Art Blocks, and 60 artworks reflect contributions from each of the participating artists of the Venice Finale Collection. Concluding the DAO’s three-year and nine-city tour at the 2024 Venice Biennale, the final collection saw a new work of art created on-chain, randomly generated from sixty artists that had participated in Bright Moments projects across the world, including Maya Man, Anna Carreras and Piter Pasma. The outputs were revealed live at the Scuola Crande San Giovanni, and collectors were invited to mint their NFTs within its Venetian interior spaces. The present lot stands as a complete record of Bright Moments and its trailblazing activity across the globe. Tracing the DAO’s legacy in digital and physical space, these works represent a vibrant community of generative artists, patrons, and collectors.
The 2021-2024 Complete Works not only celebrates the past but also sets the stage for the future of digital art. This collection is a testament to the power of community, the beauty of randomness, and the magic of participatory art experiences. It stands as a landmark in the history of generative art.