As I mentioned in the article I wrote shortly after releasing my first params project, my experience as a params collector left me both exhilarated and frustrated.  There were two major drivers behind my response.  The first was the parameter space itself.  The second was the tension between having controls to use, and thereby expectations about the output, and the randomness of the actual minted result.  Both had a significant impact on the decisions I made in developing my second project.

Regarding the parameter space, some projects that I explored exposed straight forward controls that supported an interesting exploration of the design possibilities.  They were immersive and fun.  By contrast, some projects sported controls that were too obscure in meaning and impact for me to sustain interest.  Some had so many controls interacting in such a plethora of ways that they proved too complex to use with any real sense of intentional design.  Some rendered too slowly for my patience to endure.  And, often, no matter the skill of the artist in providing a pleasurable exploratory experience, the mint disappointed.

I began thinking hard about what to param and what not to param, asking myself where the fine line was in allowing the collector to collaborate in the creation of the minted edition without setting expectations that could not be assuredly met at the time of mint.  I wasn’t the only one having these thoughts - there were lots of discussions in the community that took up the question in various ways.  I engaged in the conversations.  I experimented, pushing and pulling my use of params and evaluating my emotional response to the results I produced.  I continued to explore the published params projects of other artists.   I tried, and failed, to code a WYSIWYG project.  What I didn’t know is that in the background, the fx(hash) team was hard at work adding a WYSIWYG option.  Shortly after that option was announced, and following a hearty Discord conversation, I had an epiphany.  What excited me about fx(params) was not some glittering vision of exposed controls, but the promise of minting the result that spoke to your own deepest self.

As this realization grew, I began stripping params from my WIP.  I removed, I added back, I removed something else, and slowly the final state of my most recent release took form.  My current point of view is one of a hybrid long form/short form endeavor.  One in which it is my responsibility as creator to provide the long form output space, and it is the collector’s responsibility to curate.  One in which discovery is simple, fast, and fun, and minting free of disappointment.  One based in collaboration - a dance in which I establish the door to a world of possibilities and my collectors give my incipient work life and being.  While this, clearly, is only one way of using fx(params) and the reaction of my collectors is still an open question, I think it might be the Way of Params for me for some time to come. 

I invite you to explore my first two params projects using the links below. And if you want to talk about params and how best to use them, I am always ready.

Love and creativity always,

Wanda

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