The A-Z of digital art: artists and terminology to know

A

AI art refers to when an artist applies AI tooling in the production of their artwork. Artificial Intelligence is a broad area of study, but at its core it utilises algorithmic systems set to find patterns in large datasets and create new content.

Algorithmic Art refers to any instance where an artist deliberately relinquishes control, either partially or fully, to an algorithm they have written that results in a completed work of art.

B

Beeple, the digital artist whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, minted EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS for Christie’s New York. The NFT, which sold for over $69 million, marked the first fully digital work of art offered at a major auction house, as well as the first time Christie’s accepted payment in cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin, introduced to the public in 2009 by a developer under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, is the most well-known cryptocurrency and the one for which blockchain technology was created. The currency reached a milestone valuation of $100,000 per Bitcoin in December 2024.

A Blockchain is a decentralised digital ledger allowing users to store information in a secure and permanent way. The data is stored in cryptographic blocks that form a time-stamped, immutable chain. The technology is widely known for currencies such as Bitcoin, but, from an art perspective, the same register can capture information such as provenance, sale history and records.

Bored Apes are a collection of 10,000 NFTs by the Bored Ape Yacht Club, created by Yuga Labs. Bored Ape Yacht Club #8746 was minted and sold by Christie’s Hong Kong in 2021for HKD 9,610,000.

Bright Moments is a pioneering digital art gallery that has reimagined how to experience and collect digital art. Through exhibitions, it transforms traditional gallery spaces into immersive installations where technology, art, and community converge. From 2021-2024, Bright Moments live minted 10,000 CryptoCitizens around the world, working with over 100 of the leading generative and AI artists to produce 10,000 new artworks. In 2024, Christie’s sold the Bright Moments 2021-2024 Complete Works, which realised £252,000.

C

With the launch of Christie’s 3.0 in September 2022, Christie’s became the first global auction house to host fully on-chain sales. Dedicated to exceptional digital art, the Web3 platform offers exclusive drops, curated by Christie’s.

Chromie Squiggle by Snowfro is celebrated for its playful aesthetic and advancement of generative art by being the first project minted on Artblocks. Released in 2020, Chromie Squiggle is a dynamic and innovative generative art collection of 10,000 unique works that exist entirely on the blockchain. It's an actual script built into the smart contract that executes the moment the mint transaction goes through.

Counterparty is a cross-platform founded in 2014 that allows for peers to create and trade their assets with others on the Bitcoin blockchain. This platform enabled the creation of digital assets that paved the way for NFTs.

Cryptocurrency is a secure digital currency based on blockchain technology. Examples include Bitcoin and Ethereum.

CryptoKitties is a digital trading game started in late 2017, one of the world’s first blockchain games. Each CryptoKitty is an NFT with unique traits and players can breed them to create cats with rare attributes that can be traded and sold through the Ethereum blockchain. 

CryptoPunks are a collection of 10,000 NFTs featuring 8-bit-style pixel-art images of alternative characters with unique, randomly generated features. Created by Larva Labs in 2017, they are considered the first community NFT. A lot of nine Punks was sold at Christie’s New York in 2021.

Curio Cards, minted in 2017, are the first known art NFT collection on the Ethereum blockchain. The full set of 30 trading cards made by 7 different artists were sold at Christie’s in September 2021 for ETH 393 or $1,202,108.

D

DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) are organisations built on smart contracts with rules set and executed autonomously through code.

Diana Sinclair is an artist based in the New York City area, working in photography, video and multimedia layering. Sinclair curated The Digital Diaspora, a Juneteenth art exhibition and NFT auction celebrating the work of Black artists and was selected as one of the most influential people in NFTs by Fortune. Diana Sinclair was the Christie’s 3.0 inaugural artist. The single-artist sale in October 2022 was 100% sold.

A drop typically refers to the initial release of a minted non-fungible token or NFT.

Digital art is art that is created or presented using computer software or electronics. NFTs provide a way for artists to trade and sell digital art. NFTs are type of digital art, but not all digital art needs to be minted as NFTs. Digital art has existed since the 1960s, with major shows such as Programmed at the Whitney highlighting the medium’s long history of pioneers. Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Musuem of American Art, describes digital art as art that ‘explores digital technologies as a medium by making use of its key features, such as its real-time, interactive, participatory, generative, and variable characteristics, or by reflecting upon the nature and impact of digital technologies. It goes beyond using technology merely as a tool for creation, instead integrating the technology as a fundamental part of the medium.’

DeeKay is a Korean animation artist with over a decade of experience as a motion designer. In May 2024, Christie’s sold a 30 second playful video-based work by the artist in the Post-War and Contemporary Day Sale, which achieved more than four times its low estimate. The work was accompanied by a lot essay supplied by the artist; a short seven line poem, which opens, ‘Time is ticking and my life is racing.’ Driven by an inclusive art-for-all ethos, his work is often playful and relatable.

E

ERC-721, finalised in 2018, is the standard smart contract that made it easy to create verifiably, cryptographically unique tokens. It underpins many non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.

Ether, or ETH, is the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain.

Ethereum is a blockchain platform that allows for securely processing peer-to-peer transactions. Many popular art NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain due to the platform’s smart contract functionality.

F

Victor Langlois, known as FEWOCiOUS, was born at the turn of the millennium and has created five digital works for Hello, I’m Victor (FEWOCiOUS) and This is My Life, offered by Christie’s in 2021. The NFTs combine text and detailed imagery from his personal journal entries, which record his experiences as a young transgender person.

G

GANs, or Generative Adversarial Networks, train on datasets of existing images to generate original visuals with realistic characteristics.

Generative art is an umbrella term for code-based art. Artists utilise a predetermined system to produce a controlled set of outcomes. Generative works typically have a geometric, pattern-driven appearance.

GIF, which stands for graphical interchange format, is a digital file format developed by Steve Wilhite, a software writer, in 1987. Simply put, it’s a soundless looped animation of images in a small, easily shareable file size.

Gucci sold its first NFT, Aria, at Christie’s New York in Summer 2021 for $25,000. Gucci teamed with Offsetra to mitigate the environmental impact of minting and auctioning, ultimately making its NFT participation carbon negative. In July 2023, Christie's partnered with Gucci in the Art + Tech Summit to offer an innovative sale surrounding Generative Art and Fashion, titled Future Frequencies. Christie’s and Gucci collaborated again in November 2023 on another sale titled Parallel Universes, which highlighted the Gucci Cosmos.

H

HUMAN ONE (b.1981) is a continuously evolving sculptural digital artwork by Beeple, which sold at Christie’s New York in 2021 for $28,985,000. HUMAN ONE is described as dystopian, involving hallucinations nodding to the past, present, and future. It has since been exhibited at major international institutions including Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Deji Art Museum.

I

InterPlanetary File System, or IPFS, is a decentralised system for peers to store and access their data. This is a common storage choice for digital artists.

J

Jack Butcher is a digital artist and founder of Visualize Value, known for his minimalist visuals that distill complex ideas into impactful designs. He presented Checks Elements on Christie’s 3.0, which consisted of three select works from a 152-piece collection exploring the relationship between digital and physical art, created in collaboration with master printmaker Jean Milant and Cirrus Editions. In May 2023, the three works from the project achieved a total of 50 ETH.

JPEG, an acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group, is the most widely used digital image file format. It is compressed without significant quality loss, allowing it to be shared on the Internet quickly and efficiently.

Justin Aversano is a photographer, as well as a cofounder and CEO of Quantum Art, an online space focusing on digital photography and the curation of digital culture through NFTs. His work Twin Flames #83, from his first collection comprising 100 images of identical twins, sold for $1,110,000 in Christie’s Photographs auction in October 2021.

K

Kevin Abosch, a conceptual artist, created YELLOW LAMBO, a sculpture referencing the Lamborghini as a symbol of success in the crypto community, for Christie’s debut ART+TECH Summit in London in 2018.

L

Larva Labs is a New York-based software company founded by Matt Hall and John Watkinson. They created projects such as Cryptopunks, Meebits, and Autoglyphs, among others.

M

Mad Dog Jones, born Michah Dowbak, is a Canadian NFT artist. In January 2021, he partnered with the Grammy-nominated musician Deadmau5 to release a series of NFTs combining music and art on Nifty Gateway. He was first part of Christie's Trespassing sale in 2021, where his work Bag of Oranges, a video NFT of multiple technological realities in an oversaturated environment, realised $212,500.

Metadata provides information about the digital work associated with an NFT. This often includes its title, a description of the work, and a link to its primary assets, such as the image file.

Metaverse loosely refers to a network of immersive, 3D virtual worlds that connects users with various digital experiences and assets.

Minting an NFT refers to publishing a unique digital asset on a blockchain for the first time.

Takashi Murakami and the now shuttered virtual fashion studio RTFKT created CloneX, a collection of 20,000 Avatar NFTs with unique clothing and traits with Murakami’s signature bright cartoony designs.

Memecoins are cryptocurrency named after characters, individuals, animals, artwork, or anything else in an attempt to be humorous, light-hearted, and attract a user base by promising a fun community.

N

A non-fungible token (or NFT) is a unique digital certificate stored on a blockchain that provides ownership rights to a digital asset, like a work of digital art. It cannot be replaced.

Nyan Cat is a popular humorous GIF created by the artist Chris Torres. To celebrate its 10th anniversary in February 2021, Torres sold it as a unique and unduplicable NFT, generating a bidding frenzy.

O

On-chain NFTs are tokens that are written, stored, and traded completely on the blockchain, including their metadata, image assets, and smart contract.

OpenSea, founded in 2017, is the first and largest digital marketplace to buy and sell NFTs. Christie’s collaborated with OpenSea on Christie’s first-ever on-chain NFT auction in December 2021: Christie’s x OpenSea.

Osinachi was the first Digital Artist in Residence at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, a residency that Christie’s helped produce. The work from the residency was then sold on Christie's 3.0.

Bitcoin Ordinals are assets that have had data inscribed (written to) on individual satoshis on the Bitcoin blockchain. Christie’s worked with the creators of the esteemed ordinal collectibles project, Ordinal Maxi Biz, to sell four works in March 2024.

P

PFP NFTs or picture-for-profile non fungible tokens are digital versions of yourself that you can design to appear however you would like to present in the metaverse while engaging with other avatars. Popular PFP NFTs include Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, and World of Women.

PNG, which stands for Portable Graphics Format, is an image file format that has lossless compression and can be viewed on any browser at high quality, making it effective for NFT art.

Q

Quantum, created by the New York-based artist Kevin McCoy, was the first NFT, minted in May 2014. The digital work features abstract and vibrant octagonal shapes that continuously morph in animation.

Quantum Art is a platform that makes NFTs accessible for both artists and collectors as they are focused on curating and dropping NFT collections. In February 2022, Christie’s Photographs department and Quantum held an online sale, In Ascent: Christie’s x Quantum.

R

Rare Pepes are a subset of ‘Pepe the Frog’ memes made by various artists—based on a character by cartoonist Matt Furie—that became one of the first art experiments on the blockchain before the debut of Ethereum-based NFTs. Homer Pepe, an early work from the Rare Pepe Collectibles platform, made headlines when it sold for $321,440 in 2021.

Refik Anadol is a Turkish-American new media artist and designer. He uses data-driven machine learning algorithms to create abstract, dream-like environments. His Gaudí-inspired work Living Architecture: Casa Batlló is the first live dynamic and generative NFT of its kind. It sold at Christie’s in May 2022 for $1.38 million. His new museum Dataland is soon to open in LA.

Robbie Barrat is the artist behind the AI Generated Nude Portraits, which were created for the inaugural Christie's Art + Tech Summit in 2018. Three hundred attendees were all gifted a plastic card, which provided the private key to claim a piece from Robbie Barrat’s NFT series AI Generated Nude Portrait from SuperRare. Only thirty-six of the tokens have been claimed since 2018, making them highly coveted and sought after with so many believed to be lost. While they were given out for free in 2018 at Christie’s, Christie’s has since sold Lost Robbies privately for six-figures USD.

Robert Alice is a London-based artist at the forefront of crypto art. His NFT Block 21 explores the complexity of light and dark and their relationship to the physical and virtual world; it sold for $131,250 in 2020 at Christie’s New York. Robert Alice is also the editor of the famous Taschen book, ON NFTs, and creator of the SOURCE project, Chrsitie’s first generative art drop, that launched in March of 2024.

S

Sam Spratt is an artist focused on bridging traditional painting techniques and ancient stories into the digital realm. He began his career creating artwork for Marvel, Kid Cudi, Rockstar Games, among others and broke into the NFT space relatively recently with his series: LUCI and has since carved out a space uniquely his own. His work VII. Wormfood sold at Christie's Cartography of the Mind sale for $252,000 in June 2022. Sam’s work, The Monument Game, was later exhibited at the Venice Biennale in the Summer of 2024.

Smart contract is a computer program or protocol on the blockchain that acts as a digital contract as it assigns ownership and assists in transferring data agreements between peers in code.

Solana is a blockchain that allows for decentralized, scalable applications. It was founded in 2017 and is run by the Solana Foundation. Solana is known for being able to process a large number of transactions per second and having lower transaction fees than other blockchains. The cryptocurrency that runs on the Solana blockchain is also called Solana (SOL).

T

TokenID is the unique identifier number of the NFT.

U

Unique is a defining characteristic of each NFT, which has a contract attesting to its uniqueness like a certificate of authenticity.

Urs Fischer created a collection of 501 sculptures transformed into 3D digital models released as individual NFTs called CHAOS #1-#501. Christie’s sold CHAOS #17 Pardon for $60,000 in Summer 2021, as well as a suite of works from the series in November 2021 for $225,000.

V

Verifiable provenance is a built-in feature of NFTs, which document their proof of origin on the blockchain. A perk of collecting digital art!

W

A wallet is a device or platform that stores a user’s keys and allows them to access their cryptocurrency and tokens.

Andy Warhol created five digital works in the 1980s. They were recovered in 2014 and minted into five unique NFTs that sold for over $3.38 million in Christie’s 2021 Summer online auction. The works include two self-portraits as well as his famous flower, Campbell’s soup can, and banana motifs.

Web3, also known as Web 3.0, is the term some technologists use to describe the future of the World Wide Web based on decentralised blockchain technology. Christie’s launched their own Web3 platform, Christie’s 3.0, on September 2022. 

The Birth of Wikipedia at Christie’s featured an NFT of the first Wikipedia edit, made by the site’s founder Jimmy Wales, as well as the iMac computer he used to make Wikipedia. The sale totalled $937,500.

World of Women are a team of creators whose mission is to make the NFT space more diverse. Partnering with and educating emerging creators around the world, their collections strive to make art more approachable, authentic and inclusive for all backgrounds, while giving back to women-led and sustainability-focused organisations. Woman #5652, from their first collection in 2021, sold at Christie’s London 21st Century Evening Sale this past spring for £567,000.

X

Formally Twitter, X is a social media platform frequented by the NFT community. Twitter’s former CEO and co-founder, Jack Dorsey, turned his first tweet ‘just setting up my twttr’ into an NFT, which sold for $2.9 million in March 2021.

XCOPY is a London based crypto artist whose 2018-minted NFT ‘A Coin for the Ferryman,’ sold on SuperRare in November 2021 for $6.03 million.

Y

Yatreda ያጥሬዳ is a family of artists from Ethiopia, Kenya and Canada creating in the style of tizita-nostalgia and longing for the past. Led by Kiya Tadele, the group creates artwork that balances the new, like blockchain technology, with the old, preserving classic legends of historical and cultural significance. This blend suggests the timeline of African history doesn’t simply end, and the stories are not finished. Yatreda is about rediscovering Africa’s original self. Yatreda’s work was shown at the Toledo Musuem of Art, where Tadele was an artist-in-residence.

Yield farming is a crypto investment strategy that uses decentralized finance (DeFi) to maximize returns. Investors lend, borrow, stake, or provide liquidity using their cryptocurrency, earning yield on their assets through rewards.

Yuga Labs is the parent company best known as the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. In March 2022, they acquired the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections from Larva Labs and extended full commercial rights to the individual token holders.

Z

Zancan (b. 1976) is a former painter and longtime programmer originating from Bordeaux. His pen-plotter works and his use of the algorithm as a creative medium have set a standard in nature-inspired generative art on the blockchain. His work sold at Christie’s for 54 ETH (~$68k at the time) in December 2022.