Heterosis NFT art project not ‘possible in any other medium’: Mat Collishaw

Mat Collishaw draws attention to a new type of tulip craze.

The project, called Heterosis, is groundbreaking NFT-based flower collection and immersive metaverse experience created in collaboration with artist Danil Krivoruchko, snark.art and metaverse architects EL-GABAL. Snark.art is the company behind the og.art protocol, on which Heterosis and several other NFT projects are built.

The project consists of two main elements: a collection of breedable NFT flora and a virtual greenhouse – an overgrown, post-apocalyptic recreation of London’s National Gallery.

Collishaw emphasized the importance of the Heterosis project as a departure from established art forms and experimentation in a completely new medium.

“What we’re trying to do is create dynamic things that evolve, mutate and also be able to visit them in these virtual social system environments – things like this wouldn’t be possible in any other medium,” says Collishaw.

Upon minting, each collector receives a unique Heterosis flower with its own combination of traits and DNA generated based on the contents of the owner’s wallet. Owners can then participate in a hybridization game, becoming creators themselves.

Any two NFTs in the collection can be crossed, activating new mutations, colors and patterns, to create entirely new and exotic digital flower species. When a new hybrid is generated, the owner decides to either keep their current flower or replace it with the new one – thus ensuring that the number of NFTs in the collection always remains the same.

To hybridize, collectors must also pay a fee to the owner of the other parent. The price for hybridization is determined by the collectors themselves, and stimulates the creation of increasingly rare and beautiful flowers.

The embossing process started on Tuesday, and sold out in hours during the project’s “Diamond Hands pre-sale”. The sale lasts until Thursday.

Enter the metaverse greenhouse

The digital greenhouse is accessible through a variety of devices and offers high-resolution, real-time rendering of thousands of live flowers, trees and other flora.

Users can even zoom in on specific flowers for a closer look.

“You can go in there, meet other collectors, talk, and you can see all the flowers in the collection in their current iteration in this social metaverse environment,” Collishhaw said

The immersive environment and interactive features of Heterosis represent a significant advance in digital art and NFTs.

“We have created The National Gallery in London, rebuilt almost as if it had been neglected, abandoned, decayed, all taken over by organic material, as if this old analog world of painting has been neglected, destroyed, abandoned and this new burgeoning medium of digital art in the form of flowers is now taking over,” he said.