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Artist Spotlight: Ringers with Dmitri Cherniak Kevin interviews Dmitri Cherniak, creator of the Ringers project. The Ringers series comprises 1,000 generative art NFTs made up of automatically generated "strings and pegs." Dmitri discusses his early influences, how the projects are generated utilizing his p5js script, and his take on where generative art fits into the traditional art world.

BIO

Dmitri Cherniak is a Canadian artist and coder based in New York City. Above all else, he considers automation as his primary artistic medium. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Physiology and Computer Science from McGill University in Montreal, and he started using social media to share his ongoing projects in 2019.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

SHOW NOTES

  • Who is Dmitri, and for what is he best known? [00:40]
  • Dmitri shares his background and how it led to an interest in generative art. [01:32]
  • Dmitri's first foray into generative art: Taylor Swift ASCII. [04:28]
  • How Dmitri came to focus on automation as his artistic medium during his first gallery show in San Francisco. [07:06]
  • How the NFT format is, at long last, creating a way for current and future generative artists to financially benefit from their work. [10:25]
  • How many Bitcoins did Dmitri get for his Taylor Swift ASCII art in the pre-NFT market? [13:48]
  • When Dmitri was on a finance career path, how did his father feel about his detour into generative art? [16:26]
  • How long did it take for Dmitri to make the transition from generative art as a hobby to his main gig? [17:26]
  • How did Dmitri get into NFTs, and when did he sell his first? [18:47]
  • Who else was displaying their work at this 2019 showing? [21:02]
  • How did Dmitri's career escalate in the midst of a global pandemic? [22:42]
  • Where did the concept for Ringers originate, and what was the twist Dmitri added to make it his own? [28:38]
  • What's the "annoying" math behind making Ringers work, and how was it coded? [30:48]
  • The state of the Art Blocks community when Ringers was first minted. [33:21]
  • How was Dmitri thinking of attributes and rarity at this time? [34:30]
  • How did Art Blocks handle the traffic when Ringers sold out in 18 minutes? [36:25]
  • What attributes did collectors gravitate toward? [37:17]
  • How Ringers helped elevate Art Blocks and the generative art community from a niche market to a serious movement. [38:18]
  • Was Dmitri taking a career risk by associating with this yet-unproven movement in its nascency? [41:03]
  • How does Dmitri weigh the current financial value of his work against the merits of artistic expression? [42:45]
  • Dmitri would love to see Ringers displayed in the MoMA someday, and to see generative art in general brought to a bigger audience. How does he strategize progress toward these goals, and what does he see happening in the NFT space's immediate future? [45:19]
  • What is Dmitri's game plan over the next three to five years? [47:39]
  • Dmitri explains how his Wrapture experiment will work to the benefit of current Eternal Pump holders -- if they can cooperate for a whole year. [49:26]
  • Would the cooperation of the Eternal Pump holders ultimately be a loss for the generative art world? [54:57]
  • When will Wrapture happen? [55:52]
  • Groundbreaking generative artists Dmitri finds inspiring. [57:19]
  • A call to action for more diversity in the generative art space. [59:41]
  • How does Kevin feel about selling one of his Ringers for a tidy sum? [1:02:15]
  • When flipping becomes disrespectful to the artists and the community in general. [1:05:32]
  • Parting thoughts. [1:09:10]

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