How Chromie Squiggles pioneered generative NFT art
Surprisingly, the origins of Chromie Squiggles, Art Block’s most notable NFT collection—and arguably Art Block’s NFT marketplace itself—can be traced back to Coachella. When Art Blocks founder Erick Calderon, better known as Snowfro, caught Amon Tobin’s set at Coachella 2012, he immediately fell in love with the art on display that night.
What he saw was generative art – projection mapping, to be specific. And that got Snowfro thinking about how its limitless potential could help foster artistic expression. “If I had to find a moment in time when I realized that I could be an artist myself, it was there,” he said in an interview with Bright moments. “The way projection mapping and light were used in Tobin’s show made me think I could do something similar. Art didn’t have to be manual, it could be immersive and technology driven.”
So how did Snowfro go from an overwhelmed fan on the Coachella festival grounds to an author of one of the most important generative art collections NFT Space has seen so far?
A ripple and a keystroke
Before emerging as Art Blocks’ creator and manager, Snowfro held a 9-to-5 job in the tile business, as described in an article on Right click Save. In his spare time he practiced coding and building models to produce generative art. However, it took him years to learn how experiments in generative art can lead to a full-time career in art.
After discovering CryptoPunks (back when it was only $35 per coin in gas fees), he realized that NFTs held the key to unlocking the full potential of generative art in a modern, democratized context. Mixing his desire to create a truly blockchain-native experience with his love for generative art, he began work on what eventually became Art Blocks – a mainstay today in hosting cutting-edge generative NFT art. Fittingly, funding this venture involved selling 34 of the CryptoPunks he had originally minted after the launch of Larva Labs.
However, Snowfro had another hurdle to overcome after the launch of Art Blocks. He needed a project to demonstrate its truly unique user experience. Unlike most NFT marketplaces, pieces sold on Art Blocks do not technically exist until they are purchased and minted. What collectors receive when they purchase a piece from a collection hosted on Art Blocks is an unfiltered output that corresponds to the generative script originally provided by the collection’s artist. It means that plays are not “plays” themselves, but the result of a script. Collection sizes are limited by the number of times a script is set to produce an output, and the rarity of each “piece” in it can only be truly revealed once the minting is finished.
Unpacking the Chromie Squiggle NFTs
That’s how Chromie Squiggle’s NFT collection came to be, which at the time of writing is one of only two generative art collections created by Snowfro in existence. After all, who better to demonstrate Art Block’s capabilities than the founder himself? Ahead of the launch of Chromie Squiggles, Snowfro prepared the script for this collection himself, giving collectors 9,000 chances to claim output from his script at launch. But if you want to make a new Chromie Squiggle, the only option is to go straight to the source. At the time of writing, there are only 756 Chromie Squiggle NFTs left to be minted, with all keys for mint currently in the possession of Snowfro to “spend as he pleases,” according to the Chromie Squiggles website.
Fortunately, the Chromie Squiggles website also notes a healthy secondary market for these NFTs. However, they don’t come cheap. While not every Squiggle will sell for anywhere near the $2.44 million price tag a buyer bought Chromie Squiggle #3984 for, floor prices for the collection are north of 13.5 ETH at the time of writing (remember, this doesn’t take into account Chromie Squiggles’ rarity ). At the highest end of the Chromie Squiggle value spectrum are the twenty “perfect spectrum squiggles” that display exactly 256 hues. Despite the collection’s deceptively simple appearance, Snowfro’s code has enabled a number of possibilities for would-be coiners after minting a Chromie Squiggle.
Although even the site admits that Chromie Squiggles can’t always match the conventional (museum-based) artistic experience, this collection nonetheless spearheaded the development and recognition of one of the most important scenes in NFT art today. Through its DAO, users can join the Chromie Squiggles community via a fractional purchase of a Chromie Squiggle, joining the ranks of a community centered on mentoring tomorrow’s generative artists to continue developing this growing subset of NFT art.
