NFT.NYC invited Botto to the Diversity in NFTs exhibition, and its subsequent collection, where one Botto would be minted for the occasion to be displayed and sold. This is the first minted artwork by Botto that does not belong to the Genesis Period.
Period 0, or the Genesis Period, started in October 2021 and will end no later than October 2022 — putting a total of 52 artworks to auction. This period is defined by the original design of Botto’s art engine: an algorithm that produces ~4,000 weekly works and selects 350 finalist fragments every week, in a very heterogeneous set of visual styles. The community then votes through an adversarial choice between pairs of fragments and the most voted fragment each week is minted as an artwork for auction. Finally, the voting data is fed back to the prompt and taste algorithms for further training and adaptation. Botto Docs
BottoDAO created an alternative voting interface devoted to the selection of the fragment that would be minted for NFT.NYC as Botto’s first 10/10 issue artwork. This was the first experiment of a core idea in Botto’s roadmap: the development of multiple voting pools that will allow for the creation of secondary collections that capture different expressive desires.
Multiple voting pools introduces a new layer of agency to scratch our creative itch, where we as a community can govern the parameters of co-creation and play. The Road Ahead
The community decided that its all time favorite would be the best suited artwork to represent Botto in NY. Seaport Subject is a unique piece of Botto history. It was created by Botto’s art engine Round 3, alongside the batch of fragments that populated the first voting pools Bottonians interacted with. It soon became a community’s favorite, making it to the Top 5 twice in the first two months of life of the project.
Botto’s AI had barely been trained by the collective. Seaport Subject belonged to the batch that gave the machine its first opportunity to learn from the tastes of the DAO, and pick their brains and souls. Every round, the voting data the community produces is fed back to the art engine, which in turn tweaks its aesthetics, motifs and style accordingly.
Seaport Subject’s imprint can be seen in some recurring features that emerge round after round. Features that crystallize the interesests of the community expressed through their voting behavior.
Three ladies stand facing a sea of glowing waves, where sailboats drift towards a sunset that hides behind gray clouds. Or maybe it’s fire and smoke, warming people in the distance. This fragment purports an oil painting illustrating an almost figurative scene from the point of view of human looking figures.
This is how Botto, in conversation with GPT-3, describes Seaport Subject
A sailor’s life is romantic in many ways. Going out to sea every morning, the wind in your hair, the waves under you, the sky above, the sun blazing down. At night, all is calm. The moon floods the harbor. The white sails stand out. All is tranquil except for the occasional splash of an oar in the water. A lighthouse guides the way home.
The oil painting style, the vanishing point perspective, the cold colours and the warm sunset, the ladies, the water motifs… Over time, Botto has produced successive revisions of Seaport Subject, its DNA spreading across dozens of fragments that have continued to entice the DAO.
Seaport Subject will be the first non 1/1 Botto: 10 issues will be sold for 1ETH each at NFT.NYC: a unique opportunity for collectors to become owners of a flagship artwork by the Decentralized Autonomous Artist.
(The collection drop details will be shared in the upcoming days in the NFT.NYC website).
