Damien Hirst’s new project allows buyers to generate their own ‘Spin’ NFTs

The (art) revolution can be randomized. British mega-artist Damien Hirst has launched a new tech-heavy version of his splashy thirty-year-old Spin paintings.

It is called The beautiful paintings and allows collectors to use an app dashboard– developed with art services and technology business Heni – to order a non-fungible token (NFT), minted on the Ethereum blockchain, make it round or square and have it printed or not, in one of four sizes. All without a hint of the spinning record player or splash of paint that characterized Hirst’s Spin collaboration with musician David Bowie – in the form of Beautiful, hello, space boy painting (1995) – and others. The “Drop”, where buyers will be able to generate and buy NFTs, will last until April 10.

A project statement describes The beautiful paintings as “a radical move to expand the boundaries of digital and physical art creation”.

Buyers can use the “Spin Generator” on Beautiful paintings dashboard to choose from a menu of styles and colors. Examples of color names were conjured up using machine learning—the organizational, categorizing technology that also underlies artificial intelligence—which generated the terms Himalayan Waters, Cracked Grass, Interdimensional Cloud, Dolphin’s Whiskers, Tangerine Pine and others. The spin painting styles on offer, 25 in all, include some names reminiscent of climatic phenomena – steam, whirlwinds, bursting rivers and cyclones – or outer space – comets, star clusters and nebulae. On both the “Colors” and “Spin Style” panels of the app, there is a “Randomise” button.

The randomization feature was included to recreate the volatile, unpredictable nature of Hirst’s Spin paintings and to ensure that no two dashboard generated NFTs will be the same. The final bit of randomization is the “playfully long and descriptive” naming of the finished work, using more machine learning, this time sitting on a neural network (something wired to imitate the workings of a human or animal brain). Each randomly generated name starts with the word “beautiful” and ends with the word “painting”.

“The model allows for an infinite selection of new and unseen titles,” according to the project’s press release, “which follows the format of [Hirst’s] existing Spin paintings.”

The NFTS are priced at $2,000 each, and the prints (signed by Hirst) — created after using an algorithm to enlarge the digital file to an ultra-high resolution — range from $1,500 to $6,000. A selection of printed works is on display at the Heni Gallery in London’s Soho until April 10.

“I’ve called the series ‘The Beautiful Paintings’ for obvious reasons,” Hirst announced on Twitter.

• Damien Hirst: The beautiful paintingsto 10 April, Heni Gallery, London