𝙳𝚒𝚐𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚜 𝙸𝙸: 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚝𝚎

Quote from CohentheWriter on 5. October 2022, 6:22

Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0x60F80121C31A0d46B5279700f9DF786054aa5eE5&token=57186&page=5

Source Link: https://rarible.com/token/0x60f80121c31a0d46b5279700f9df786054aa5ee5:57186?tab=overview

Date Minted:  October 25, 2020

Artist Description: Remix of 𝙳𝚒𝚐𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚜 [1/1] https://opensea.io/assets/0x60f80121c31a0d46b5279700f9df786054aa5ee5/13508/ 

CohentheWriter’s Commentary:

Good God almighty: Collin has created 2800 works of crypto art on RARIBLE ALONE. I’ve spoken a lot about prolific output in these essays, but this is a league above all others. 2800 works of crypto art on Rarible alone, an oeuvre of staggering girth that I almost don’t dare to explore, such is the magnitude. What I can tell you is that after a short scroll through these works —just the first few hundred or so— you can tell that Collin is a lover of so-called low-effort art. Many of these pieces are just words. Nero. Beerbong. Tornado. Just to name a few, all in grey letters on black backgrounds. Others are tried and true Trash Art, remixes of ROBNESS’ 64 Gallon Toter or otherwise works including different garbage cans of note. Pixel art, cartoon art, pop art, photography; it’s hardly a surprise that across the course of nearly 3000 artworks, we  would find nearly every style, tone, and subject. There is a crypto price graph. Here is a Pepe. There is an AI reconstruction of an emoji. And here, before us today, is only one of four —count ‘em four— pieces in Collin’s collected works that bears the title 𝙳𝚒𝚐𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚜. All four pieces are variations on the same theme: the Ethereum logo is cast in either black or white and then thrown under the glitchiest possible of filters. Stylized with the above strange font, these pieces are like little treasures within Collin’s grandiose collection. The Museum’s piece, 𝙳𝚒𝚐𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚜 𝙸𝙸: 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚝𝚎 is itself a remix of another piece, the well-titled 𝙳𝚒𝚐𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚜 𝙸𝙸. Of that original piece, Collin wrote that it is a “Remix of "Ethcitement" by Carsen Klock. [1/1] This piece is adapted from a digital defect in how the thumbnail of the original was displayed on my machine right after it was minted. I recorded the defect in QuickTime & modified in ezgif. Thus, I titled this piece of trashart: detritus.” I unfortunately could not find Klock’s original, but I think with the aforementioned title I could get the gist. The idea, however, of remixing a piece and giving it a title like detritus, conjuring images of garbage or waste, is fascinating to me. It’s an exploration of Trash Art not just as a physical set of aesthetics but as a conceptual framework. 

Collin intended 𝙳𝚒𝚐𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚜 𝙸𝙸: 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚝𝚎 to be a further remix of the original 𝙳𝚒𝚐𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚜, with a third in the series titled 𝙳𝚒𝚐𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚜: 𝙸𝙸𝙸: 𝚜𝚒𝚣𝚣𝚕𝚎. But all three share the same central object. The Ethereum logo sits in the center of an otherwise empty frame, with the background being generally black, except for here, where it is white; thus, the title. Enormous glitchy blocks sprout up suddenly all over the image, each one appearing like a thick version of the “L” tile from Tetris, though with no specific orientation and in no specific spot. They constantly pockmark the Ethereum logo, disappearing almost as soon as they appear, but at times an enormous one will show up to the logo’s Southwest and Northeast sides, as if creating a twitchy prison in which the logo sits. Many of them are so teeny-tiny, like nearly-invisible black mites, that we can hardly gauge them, though others have a more perceptible size and half-life as they block out bits of the Ethereum logo’s otherwise red and purple and yellow and orange composition. Meanwhile, the entire piece seems to shake, the Ethereum logo included. I imagine that this was what the original piece, Klock’s Ethcitement, captured: an Ethereum logo pumped with 200mg of caffeine and left to vibrate in place. But now the entire piece shakes, the Tetris blocks included, and so the appearance is almost one of erupting energy, as if the Ethereum logo is shaking with so much pure power that the blocks around it represent manifestations of that energy. They say all art is autobiographical in a sense, and if Collin’s 2800-work output is any indicator, perhaps that energy is indeed something communicated from artist to art. 

Back to that Trash Art framework, the conceptual one. Much has been written about Trash Art, and I find nothing more poignant in that movement than its capacity to capture hyper-specific points in time, many of them responses to a Tweet or a comment from someone within the crypto art community, but otherwise simply giving permanent form to an impermanent moment. Collin’s piece follows that same logic, as we see in his Artist Description, but what he gives more permanent life to is an entirely personal and almost accidental occurrence. There’s no way of knowing what circuits misfired on Collin’s computer when he booted Ethcitement for the first time, or what could have sparked such a glitchy mistake in its CPU, but nevertheless, here is that miniscule, momentary mistake affixed to the blockchain for all eternity. 𝙳𝚒𝚐𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚜 𝙸𝙸: 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚝𝚎 is a paragon of irony, the juxtaposition of something which could not be more accidental or immediate or unimportant with a technology that could not be more permanent or more grandiose in its implications. 

What Collin has done is augment the Blockchain’s ability to record information by truly pressing the limits of what is even worth recording. These four pieces will exist on the blockchain in perpetuity, in some way shape or form, or as long as the blockchain lasts. I’m reminded of ∅ by anonymousartifact, a piece which is literally meant to be an empty pixel recorded on the blockchain. Though that piece is a blasphemy against the blockchain, 𝙳𝚒𝚐𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚜 𝙸𝙸: 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚝𝚎 is a celebration of it. “LOOK at what the Blockchain is capable of!” Collin seems to be saying. “LOOK at its enormous capacity to record even the scrawniest scraps of human existence.” A celebration worthy of our attention.