Hey fx fam!

Welcome to the second installment of fx(news), the official fxhash newsletter.

With September rapidly coming to an end, it’s been another super busy week for the platform! We’ve just closed tabs on our involvement in Entangled, one of the biggest projects we’ve ever tackled. From the project's beginning to last week’s exhibition, Entangled has been a real journey.

Besides that, we also wanted to thank the community for the awesome reception of the first fx(news) edition sent out last week—we’ll continue putting our best foot forward to keep you updated with everything happening at fxhash.

If you haven’t read it yet, you can find fx(news) #001 here as an fx(text) as well as over on X in the form of an article.

If you prefer getting the newsletter directly in your inbox, sign-up with your email here.

That’s it for the intro this week, let’s get into what’s actually transpired 👇

ENTANGLED: THE EXHIBITION at Wintercircus in Ghent

This past week the Entangled exhibition took place at the Wintercircus in Ghent, concluding a big chapter in fxhash history. We couldn’t be happier with how it ultimately turned out! The private opening on Tuesday night was attended by over 400 guests, while the exhibition saw hundreds more visitors over the course of the week. Maybe we went a bit overboard, but we ended with over 300GBs of image/video material for the archives!

The installation ended up being a work of art in of itself: the robotic arm that was mounted in the center of the Wintercircus’ atrium worked tirelessly for 6 days straight, bringing to life an entangled pair on two large LED screens. Visitors were equally mesmerized by the artwork as they were intrigued by the bright orange industrial-grade robot that carried one of the displays. You don’t get to see one of them IRL every day.

You might’ve seen some of the pictures that we’ve posted on social media already, but here’s some more for reference, giving you a sense of the vibe and scale of the venue:

There was more to the exhibition than the robotics! In one of the rooms lining the central hall, some retro CRT TVs were arranged to display entangled orbs in their solitary state, and opposite those, a wall was set with prints showcasing perfect pairs (i.e., two Entangled editions with the same owner). Finally, there was a display allowing you to explore the collection map and play around with Entangled pairs in their browser-native form:

If you didn’t get a chance to attend, don’t fret, we’ve documented all of it in form of a beefy article, which we’ll have ready later this week—so keep your eyes peeled for that! In the meantime you can check out Digitaloctopus’ fx(text) that analyses some facets of Entangled.

So, in short, and after more than a year, that’s a wrap! We’re incredibly happy to have collaborated with Bjørn Staal on his Entangled journey, and we’re hoping to repeat this installation at a new location when and if the right moment arises.

Link to Tweet

Disrupt exhibition at Galerie Data in October

Although we just closed tabs on a huge project, we’ve already got the next exhibition lined up! From the 3rd till the 26th of October, we’re collaborating with Galerie Data to host a live exhibition of two stellar generative artworks, accompanied by their release as mintable collections on fxhash.

You’re very likely already familiar with the two artists, it’s none other than the prolific Aleksandra Jovanić and Florian Zumbrunn, both of them true fxhash OGs, with multiple successful releases on fxhash and other platforms. As the title of the exhibition indicates, the featured pieces revolve around the long-standing idea in generative art where elements of randomness play a disruptive role in a structured system. The aesthetics of both projects take a conceptual stab at this notion.

Aleksandra continues to impress with her signature style. Titled The Anatomy of Fracture, her project is a continuation of an idea that took shape with her line(); exhibition that used as a starting point Sol Lewitt’s 1973 piece Straight, Not-Straight and Broken Lines in All Horizontal Combinations (Three Kinds of Lines & All Their Combinations). Sol Lewitt’s work is often a reference point for generative artists because of the obvious parallels between his algorithm-like instructions and the natural randomness introduced by various factors.

Link to Tweet

With Florian Zumbrunn’s contribution to Disrupt, he embarks on an introspective journey that tackles the uncertainties of the creative mind and his relentless quest for finding meaning in art. The project emerges from a period of deep research and self-reflection:

In generative art, I feel that the place of “doubt” is quite present. One of the advantages of this practice is to be able to generate tons of outputs during the same day. Your brain sees so many things from the same algorithm, that, sometimes, the next steps become blurry. One night, you can be sure of what you want to do, and the next morning only questions remain.

Link to Tweet

We’re incredibly excited for the exhibition and we can’t wait to see the collections come to life.

Week in Review

Rob Scalera's Biomes

Following his two previous smash hits Displaced and Unmanageable, Rob Scalera returns to fxhash with his latest project Biomes, in which code comes to life as colorful ethereal cosmic landscapes. The project featured 128 editions minted on Base. Beyond the unique coral-like aesthetics, Scalera included a beautiful poetic description that accompanies the piece on its project page.

Objkt.com onchain minting prototpye via ONCHFS

NFT Protector of the Objkt.com team recently shared a prototype page that allows the minting of tokens on the platform directly onchain, turns out that this is based on fxhash’s Onchain File System (ONCHFS) standard.

Link to Tweet | Link to prototype page

The Generative Art Fund

The biggest news for generative art of last week was arguably Jeff Davis and Erick Calderon announcing the launch of their Generative Art Fund. The idea for the fund took shape in 2021 following “Natively Digital” auction at Sotheby’s, where the proceeds of a full set of Artblocks Curated pieces (1-3 at the time) went into the start of this fund. They provide insight into this matter through two tweets of theirs.

Link to Tweet #1 | Link to Tweet #2

Currently the fund is supporting the Electronic Op exhibition at the Buffalo AKG that will launch in just a couple of days on the 27th of September. You can learn more about the fund over on the official website.

Artnome chats with Aleksandra Art of Trilitech

This one’s going to be interesting for the collectors among you. Club NFT recently released a new discovery tool. Artnome recently sat down for a chat with Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, who was appointed as head of arts at Trilitech earlier this year, to go over it.

The chat is also interesting because they talk about how NFTs have democratized the role of the collector, especially with the community that emerged in the early days around hicetnunc. We also learn a little about what both Artnome & Aleks have been up to in the past couple of months.

Kusamehewa returns with Amara

Kusameha’s recent collection Amara brings together vibrant colors and intricate patterns, all generated with a unique approach to coding in p5.js. Despite the digital medium, there's a strong sense of craftsmanship in how the details come together, almost as if each piece is woven or stitched.

Across Kusamehewa’s different collections, there’s a consistent balance between order and chaos—some areas feel carefully controlled, while others give way to spontaneity and flow. What ties this body of work together is how Kusamehewa draws you in, revealing new layers of complexity the longer you look.

Coming up

Humanbydefinition's ASCIISHIFT8

Following their fxhash debut ASCIIMATA16, Humanbydefinition has doubled down and already lined up a stellar new next project. ASCIISHIFT8 features intricate animated ASCII patterns that continuously change and morph as time goes by:

Lammetje presents Dare

Opening in two days as an open edition on fxhash (base), Dare is a personal project by the artist that:

…reflects how I approach my work starting with an idea for an algorithm, then refining it through endless choices and adjustments. If I revisited this piece, the outcome would likely be different. It’s less about having a clear vision, and more about exploring the possibilities within the code.

Nicholas Lebrun warms the pen plotter with Barrage

Coming October 1st, Barrage is a radical experiment inspired by François Morellet's research on frames and dashes, as well as more recent work in Visual Poetry. While more details about the collection are forthcoming, what we do know is it’s arriving on fxhash 🤝 and looks amazing in test plots!

Bassil Taleb's Wujoud

Wujoud emerges as an exploration of emotional presence in its raw and flowing evolution on a digital canvas. Inspired by the visceral artistry of Kazuo Shiraga, this project delves into the essence of how our digital footprints trace the contours of our being, leaving behind intimate marks that are both personal and universal. Available to mint on fxhash (tezos) in just under 24 hours.

Third Installment of FEMG3N

After the previous two successful installments in 2022 and 2023, FEMG3N makes a return this year! The event will taking place on the 12th of October during Frieze week at the V&A (the Victoria and Albert museum if you’re not familiar) as part of the museum’s digital art season. You can learn more about it here:

Link to Event Page | If you're in London at the time you might want to stop by!

In brief, the event will feature the two artists Licia He and Anna Ridler to inform us about their practices, and also discuss how new generative approaches are redefining the relationship between art and technology. Peter Bauman from Le Random will also be making an appearance to present important contributions women have made in the realm of generative art over the years.

And that’s pretty much it from us this week. This newsletter was meant to be a brief update… but it ended up being just a bit longer than expected. We hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

If you have feedback for the structure and/or content of this newsletter - let us know how we can improve; you can keep up with us over on your favorite social media:

• Tag us on TwiX via @fx_hash_ #fxhash
• Follow us on Instagram and Threads @fxhash
• Connect with us on Warpcast @fxhash and join our Farcaster Channel

Did we miss something important? Is there an interesting project you think should be featured on here? Any particular topics you’d like us to cover? Come join the discord and let us know! The fxhash discord is where the community regularly gathers to discuss all sorts of generative art related topics.

Cheers, see you in the next one ✨