ART then, surely, is just a necessity, a consequence, a corollary, a masquerade of the revolutionary. The lofty guffaws of self-congratulatory, self-referential self-satisfaction; the smug understanding of the ‘codes and conventions’ of the chess board is surely nothing but an erogeny of pawn. Surely, the superior glance and the ‘semi-colon of the head’ manoeuvre after ‘correctly and knowingly’ identifying some subtle visual cue oh so deftly quoted from another work is just a masturbatory act. The titillation of a spenny Femme à la Montre, touting around Sotherby’s for a meagre hundred million, is a dalliance between expression and dirty cash that surely makes it vulgar. Is this why Picasso’s faces don’t ever quite know which way to look?

Andrew Lee, Oxford Art critic
Quoted from DAMzine issue #17 – Analogue Nomad by @hersoid

As a “gamificated“ approach reshapes art distribution standards (see Ourzora, DRiP Haus, RARE protocol), there is a growing demand for more active engagement from the community. This trend is indicated by the merging of “Crypto Art“ with “web3“, which integrates the so-called “NFT space“ with the prevalent “content culture.“ Notably, the recent migration of even established artists from Ethereum Mainnet to more affordable networks signals a broader shift beyond mere financial benefits, catalyzing such phenomena as the “SPAM art“ movement.

On another front we have the burgeoning field of “AI Art“, often dismissed as “lazy“ and “worthless,“ and recently even accused of contributing to what’s known as “engagement farming“ (as seen in the posting rules of Farcaster’s /aiart channel, for instance). AI art’s extreme output efficiency makes it appear well-suited to the enduring click-bait paradigm, where quantity often trumps quality.

Paradoxically, when the domains of blockchain and AI art intersect, the former—despite being touted as the “most advanced“ financial system, suggesting a possible natural affinity with other innovative expressions—shows limited curation effort that aims to dismantle the narrow-sighted myths plaguing the latter. DAMAI seeks to change this by promoting a more nuanced understanding of the potential for AI art in a landscape defined by the blockchain by featuring work conscious of the presented issues while giving the opportunity to anyone to express their take in a novel, data-driven and decentralized kind of Gesamtkunstwerk.

grebenshae

Founded by @culturehacker and @lowbrownative, DAM – a decentralized art zine, as it’s defined on damzine.xyz – operates as an on-chain curatorial platform.

Similar to open events in the Tezos ecosystem, DAM zine utilizes hashtags to track artists’ releases during various happenings. Unique in its approach, DAM remains strictly chain-agnostic and prioritizes documenting and archival, with many issues already published.

Singles is a DAM project that invites external curators to prompt (🎉) the event, with yours truly taking on the role of curating DAMAI — the first-ever cross-chain festival dedicated to generative AI art and spanning a series of both open and curated initiatives across various platforms and blockchains, including:

TEZAI — an open event where all artists are welcome to contribute. (Find details below on how to.)

• Curation on COLLECTOR.SH — we are celebrating the contribution Collector brought to Solana based art in its time of operation with a curated drop of unreleased work from exceptional AI artists:

Culturehacker, Evelyn, Ilya Bliznets, Ilya Shkipin, Kapstone, L’Bank, Lowbrow, Santiago Ney, Stephan Vasement, VonSoul, Yuma Sogo

• Curation on OBJKT.COM — in addition to Tezos-based artworks presented for the event by curated artists, DAMzine’s curation team will select outstanding artworks from the openly submitted ones during the course of the event to be included in this section, for a ‘half open’ type of curation.

release party: 6/14/2024 12 PM EST – damzine
farcaster channel: /damai

 

With the kind support of Collector.sh, NFTBiker and Objkt.com

 

HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE DAMAI // TEZAI OPEN EVENT

If you’re an artist wanting to participate, follow these simple steps:

1. Make a genai themed piece (no worries if you work with traditional media, nobody will notice!)

2. Mint a 1/1 or multiple edition on any chain/marketplace you want.

3. Price however you want & add the issue’s hashtag (#DAMai / #TEZai) to your title, description and/or tags – the choice is yours.

4. Share what you make & collect by tweeting with the issue’s specific hashtag.

All the pieces minted on Tezos and including an event’s hashtag will be indexed in a NFTBiker‘s hosted EVENT and have the opportunity to be featured in the DAMAI Curation on Objkt.com alongside the artworks from artists selected for the curated section of the event.

As part of its community-driven ethos, DAM also maintains wallet addresses to which participants can voluntarily donate a portion of their proceeds. These donations support the ongoing collection of works from other artists. Here are the addresses:

SOL Wallet  fhdhBKw8qhZK4CSk6ehM64BLAgMT3xF2kJazLC4e8xH (damzine.sol)

TEZ Wallet  tz1YEUWNDMLxg25PYpJzYaUDjTG2KYrZ4SCp

ETH Wallet  0xE2e831Dd4fdc773457C52b52fCC0856A7Bc85230

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