Hey fx fam!

Welcome to the 4th edition of the fxhash newsletter!

This instalment marks one month of us sharing more frequent updates with you—and so far the response has been overwhelmingly positive! Which is why it only makes sense for us to keep putting our best foot forward and continue publishing these community updates.

It’s also taken us a little bit of time to settle on a proper rhythm for the newsletter, but twice a month feels right to us! Once a month would be too long of a radio silence, and an update every single week would be too much noise. This way, we can keep things fresh without overwhelming your inbox, and still leave room for other updates in between.

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With the intro out of the way, here’s some updates about what we’ve been up to 👇

New Design & Game Plan

Although we missed the perfect opportunity to make a bunch of puns about the beloved community meme in the previous newsletter, our little platform update and discussion about price details in the new UI was still very well received. You guys also chimed in with meaningful feedback around displaying listings in fiat that we’ll gladly take into consideration.

We’ll continue to ride that wave in this week’s issue, and talk about another big change that the new website will introduce—as you might’ve guessed already from the title of the section, it’s about the new design! Some of the previous screenshots that we’ve shared already provide a glimpse of what some pages will look like, but here’s some more teasers:

Overall, the new design is quite minimalist, but that’s for a good reason: we want to let the art on fxhash take center stage.

While fxhash’s bubbly design, with the bold black strokes, and the colorful neon colors, was good enough in the early days; it’s become more and more important to present the growing body of work on the platform in an unbiased manner. While art presentation doesn’t necessarily need to be sterile, a clean and neutral environment can help create a sense of focus and lets the artworks stand on their own without competing distractions. That’s also why you see many modern galleries adopt this approach; it elevates the viewer's engagement with the piece, encourages contemplation and allows the subtle details to stand out.

Moreover, the screenshots we’ve shared here aren’t just mockups, but we’ve actually started testing our own internal version of the new website, and are currently in the process of hammering out all of the remaining details. Once we’ve got things in a satisfactory state, our game plan is to publish a public beta version for you guys to take on a test-run, and for you to get back to us with feedback.

There’s no specific date for this just yet—and we’re not going to make a big announcement—we’ll drop the beta once it’s ready. Considering that we want to wrap up the new website before the end of the year, this is going to be sooner rather than later.

CYMATIC at Paris Photo 2024

The other big news that we’ve got for you guys this week, is that we’re heading to Paris Photo 2024! We’re excited to present Erika Weitz and Thomas Noya’s CYMATIC—a project that combines generative Chladni patterns with 19th century wet plate photography.

Wet plate photography is an old photographic process from the mid-1800s, where a glass or metal plate is coated with a light-sensitive chemical, then exposed in a camera while still wet to capture an image. This process requires precision and speed to be executed correctly, as the plate needs to be prepared, exposed, and developed all in a short time before the chemical dries. The resulting “wet plates” then display highly detailed images with a unique, vintage look.

With over 10 years of experience working with the medium, Erika Weitz is an expert in Wet Plate Collodion Photography, pioneering a number of new approaches to it; for the purpose of this project she joins forces with generative artist Thomas Noya to reimagine Chladni patterns through a fresh lens.

You might already be familiar with Chladni patterns that take shape when a granular substance (like sand) or a liquid is placed on a vibrating plate while it is subjected to a sound or frequency. The substance at hand then self-assembles into an intricate pattern, settling on the quiet spots of the resonant surface.

Illustration from William Henry Stone (1879) Elementary Lessons on Sound | Diagram from the 1787 Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klanges (Discoveries in the Theory of Sound), a late 18th-century work by German physicist and musician Ernst Chladni

Thomas Noya’s generative system simulates these Chladni vibrations algorithmically as light patterns, which are then captured by Erika as wet plates. If that piqued your interest, we’re going to share a more in depth piece about the project leading up to the Paris Photo Fair, as we’ll be presenting the resulting artworks at our very own booth November 7-10. This is a first in fxhash’s history, and we’d be more than delighted to welcome you at our booth! The artists will also be releasing a long-form project to complement the physical pieces at the fair.

Olga Fradina’s INTUIT at Galerie Met

In the meantime we’ve also got another collaboration lined up, this time with Galerie Met in Berlin, presenting Olga Fradina’s newest work INTUIT—the exhibition’s vernissage will take place on the 18th of October, then open up to the public on the following day until November 9th.

Link to Exhibition Page

INTUIT is a generative artwork that takes inspiration from the notion of surrealist automatism, a technique in which the artist relinquishes control over the artwork’s creation process and allows a piece to emerge without conscious self-censorship. For example, this can be done by letting their hand glide across the canvas without exerting any intentional force on shaping the emergent artwork. Surrealist artists believed that this approach reveals a more authentic form of creativity. It also draws an interesting parallel to algorithmically generated art, as it is another way for the artist to detach themself from the art creation process and let a system take over.

Olga Fradina is a Ukraine based interior designer turned generative artist, and has had a meteoric rise in the scene over the past couple of years. After releasing a number of successful projects on fxhash, she’s also joined the exclusive circle of ArtBlocks Curated artists with her piece Naïve.

Olga’s profile on fxhash | There’s an insightful interview with her about Naïve over on the Art Blocks blog, where she also sheds some light on her background and artistic process. Similarly to CYMATIC, INTUIT is also accompanied by a long-form project on fxhash that’s bound to release on October 24th, 11 am EST / 5 pm CET, minting as an open edition on Base.

If you’re interested in acquiring one of the physical prints, you can view the available ones here, and reach out to info@galeriemet.com to do so.

Entangled: The Story

As we’ve promised some time ago, here’s the big write-up of the entire Entangled Saga that traces the entire story, starting from the initial viral tweet that Bjørn posted back in November of 2023, up until the physical installation at the Wintercircus in Ghent:

Link to Article

There’s more than a few tidbits and sneak peaks into the behind the scenes, and it also provides a comprehensive recap of the exhibition if you didn’t get the chance to attend. In the aftermath Entangled also made a buzz in non-Web3 news, by landing not only one, but two features in Euro News:

Link to Article | Nice cap Bjørn, where’d you get it from? 😎

Week in Review

Disrupt at Galerie Data

We’ve already mentioned it in the previous newsletters, the Disrupt exhibition is now in full swing at Galerie Data in Paris, running up until the 26th of October. If you’re there make sure to pass by, the artworks look nothing short of stellar IRL:

If you’re interested in acquiring one of the physical prints, you can view the ones that are still available over in the Galerie Data catalogue. Both long-form projects have also had a successful launch on fxhash, and there’s still a couple of iterations available. If you’d like to snag one, or two, or 25, you can find Aleksandra Jovanić’s Anatomy of Fracture here, and Florian Zumbrunn’s Becoming here.

Link to Rob’s Tweet | Link to Giannis Tweet

Julian Hespenheide’s FSM wins JGAF Award

The Japanese Generative Art Foundation recently announced the winners for the 1st instalment of their Generative Art Award, a new initiative of theirs that is aimed at introducing generative to a wider audience while also bringing in new talent to the artform. You can find a list of the winning projects over on this page, it’s in Japanese, but using your browser’s translate function should quickly remedy that:

Link to Awards List

One of the winners is fxhash alumni Julian Hespenheide, with his iconic project FSM released back in July 2023. If you’re not familiar with the project, Julian also wrote this deep, deep dive on the algorithm that makes the generative patterns possible:

Link to Article

Responsive Dreams: It’s a Wrap!

With the second instalment of the Responsive Dreams exhibition wrapping up last month, we’re now still being treated to an insightful interview with Xavier Hernández, the founder of The Generative Art Museum (TGAM) and one of the key organizers behind the festival. He lets us in on his thoughts, his motivations and his approach to introducing generative art to a broader audience:

Link to Interview

One of the most compelling aspects of TGAM is its evolution from a virtual space to a hybrid model, combining the metaverse with physical exhibitions. While platforms like Cryptovoxels offered creative outlets during the pandemic, Hernández recognized the importance of in-person interactions for reaching broader audiences beyond niche online communities. By hosting physical exhibitions, TGAM makes generative art more tangible and accessible.

I believe generative art will soon become one of the most influential art forms. Introducing generative artists and projects to the broader cultural community is key for the ecosystem to thrive.

The festival’s focus on interactivity and animation is also key: by featuring works that respond to their environment and the audience, the festival invites viewers to participate in the art-making process, mirroring the interactive nature of generative art itself. This also aligns with the larger digital zeitgeist, where engagement, interaction, and responsiveness are key features of our online and digital experiences.

Project Spotlight

• dialog() 2024 is a landmark generative art exhibition that connects 4 of the major Asian cities, with a wandering exhibition that makes a pit stop in each one of them. Currently in Taipei, its next destination will be Seoul, followed by Beijing later on in November. One of the projects even made it to fxhash, from generative artists eziraros, that’s released a couple of projects on the platform already. The project dying log is inspired by Taiwanese newspapers and is only available for the duration of dialog() 2024

• Steve’s Makerspace is a generative artist and educator, with his own YouTube channel that’s a super beginner-friendly resource for getting started making art with code. Warped is his newest project on fxhash; being his second foray into shader coding it’s released as a free fx(params) project that was quickly picked up by the community.

• Last, but definitely not least, we’d like to point out that Genomes has been popping off on the secondary market over the course of the past week, with a volume of 0.53 ETH in the past seven days, and a whopping 1.89 ETH in the past 30 days.

dying log by eziraros | Warped by Steve’s Makerspace | Genomes by znah & Ciphrd

Wrapping it up

And that’s pretty much it from us this week. We hope you enjoyed reading this issue 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 X 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 here? Any particular topics you’d like us to cover? The fxhash discord is where the community regularly gathers to discuss all sorts of generative art-related topics.

Come join the discord and let us know!

Cheers, see you in the next one ✨