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Quote from CohentheWriter on 24. July 2022, 21:22Museum Link: https://app.museumofcryptoart.com/collection/the-permanent-collection?collection=0x2a46f2ffd99e19a89476e2f62270e0a35bbf0756&token=29024&page=4
Source Link: https://makersplace.com/0xd9FF1Fbd68e910392dc404F8df0FCD23a64921c3/the-harvest-1-of-1-32878/
Date Minted: September 15, 2020
Artist Description: “An anthropomorphic figure stands, wide eyed, staring at the viewer; its body masculine, muscular, and humanoid. Its “mind” dissociates into a conglomerate of structures resembling feathers, grain, teeth–as well as a radial flower ‘node’, casting linear rays throughout the composition. To his left, a vat of bodies gesture and writhe in a kind of amniotic soup, attended by a video game robot. The bot's red display reads ‘uWu. Behind the robot and filling the left side of the composition is an archaic figure composed of a variety of vintage objects and symbols. Among them are a hardbound book with ancient cuneiform scripts, indicating barley, beer, bread, ox, house, and sky, behind which is a grimacing, salivating jagged toothed maw; and an old Commodore floppy drive. The figure’s head tilts toward an illuminated crescent moon, suggesting the Egyptian Sacred Bull. The archaic figure is composed of a variety of mutating cells, which shift in color, and pattern; eventually breaking free into an ephemeral broadcast of bubbles which move across the background. The work came into being against a psychological introspection, which included associations to pop culture such as alien abduction and pod people, as well as quite a bit of reflection on grains as a symbol of civilization, agriculture, sustenance, life, and imbibing (mainly whiskies).”
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
“An anthropomorphic figure stands, wide eyed, staring at the viewer; its body masculine, muscular, and humanoid. Its “mind” dissociates into a conglomerate of structures resembling feathers, grain, teeth–as well as a radial flower ‘node’, casting linear rays throughout the composition.
To his left, a vat of bodies gesture and writhe in a kind of amniotic soup, attended by a video game robot. The bot's red display reads ‘uWu.
Behind the robot and filling the left side of the composition is an archaic figure composed of a variety of vintage objects and symbols. Among them are a hardbound book with ancient cuneiform scripts, indicating barley, beer, bread, ox, house, and sky, behind which is a grimacing, salivating jagged toothed maw; and an old Commodore floppy drive. The figure’s head tilts toward an illuminated crescent moon, suggesting the Egyptian Sacred Bull.
The archaic figure is composed of a variety of mutating cells, which shift in color, and pattern; eventually breaking free into an ephemeral broadcast of bubbles which move across the background.
The work came into being against a psychological introspection, which included associations to pop culture such as alien abduction and pod people, as well as quite a bit of reflection on grains as a symbol of civilization, agriculture, sustenance, life, and imbibing (mainly whiskies).”
That lengthy explanation comes directly from artist Cody Seekins’ Artist Description for his piece, The Harvest, on MakersPlace. It’s actually kind of ironic that Seekins would go to such lengths to decode this piece for us. Looking at it for the first time, it’s easy see how it’s been influenced by the surrealists of the 1930s, Dali and Miró and Max Ernst, for instance. The dream imagery here, that which is barely held together by logic, is arcane and wide-ranging, drawing from recognizable objects and licensed characters —that “video game robot” Seekins mentions is actually known as Claptrap, from the phenomenally successful video game series Borderlands— while descending elsewhere into the kind of grotesque body horror loved by filmmakers like David Cronenberg. And yet, in a piece that aesthetically seems inclined to overwhelm us, pique our associative minds, and assault us with unrelated objects, Seekins provides us this written codex. Why? Is it from a desire to be known? Or the inherent irony of explaining an outwardly unexplainable piece? Is it self-sabotage?
It certainly spits in the face of accepted surrealist intentions. That class of initial surrealists working in the mid 1900’s sought to create unknowable work that remained as unknowable as its subconscious sources, just a series of connections and associations that would spark autonomous reactions in the minds of audiences, and which relied heavily on symbology that was deeply personal, as it sprung from the individual subconsciouses of its artists. The Harvest is what happens when that same associative styling meets the consumerism of the 21st century. It’s no wonder Seekins didn’t just include disparate objects, but opted to include characters and brands. We dream of the worlds we live in. And this is the world we live in.
And it captures the totality of our everyday waking symbology with aplomb. I recently wrote an article about how crypto art’s preference for Twitter affected the aesthetics of the movement, and, more or less, my argument —that crypto art is, as a consequence of its social media HQ, as far-ranging aesthetically as the internet itself— was anticipated and demonstrated in The Harvest. The horrific commingling with the commercial, both commingling with the academic, and the bodily and the cosmic and bestial all represented within the boundaries of the same frame. The exact nature of their representation, their individual domination of the frame, are inimitable, and it’s that inimitable quality that makes me so damn interested in this piece every time I look at it anew.
Seekins is a master of this surrealist-semi-collage style, but The Harvest shows his imagery at its most dense. One could conceivably split this image into quarters, the Claptrap-with-body-bag a separate art piece from the looming male figure on the right side or from the toothiness in the upper-left corner or from the bubbling interstellar background. Notice how none of these sections even seem to notice each other within the composition. Everything is focused within itself. The male figure, for instance, gazes (if you could call it gazing) straight out at us, either unaware of or uninterested in the Claptrap and its body vat below it. That Claptrap, continuing the trend, isn’t obviously aware of anything in the piece that is outside its purview, neither background nor other characters nor the threatening objects behind it. The disparate objects in their own small spheres, all cohesive thematically within their own contexts; and indeed, from their own limited perspectives, they are the center of the world, not just the center of their activities. It is only us, the observers, existing outside the frame altogether, that the odd juxtapositions emerge. We should stop here, lest we obey Seekins’ tacit suggestion and become similarly meta-analytical ourselves, wondering about all the nonsensical associations around us that we are blind to, and who sits outside our world making such objective judgments.
Source Link: https://makersplace.com/0xd9FF1Fbd68e910392dc404F8df0FCD23a64921c3/the-harvest-1-of-1-32878/
Date Minted: September 15, 2020
Artist Description: “An anthropomorphic figure stands, wide eyed, staring at the viewer; its body masculine, muscular, and humanoid. Its “mind” dissociates into a conglomerate of structures resembling feathers, grain, teeth–as well as a radial flower ‘node’, casting linear rays throughout the composition. To his left, a vat of bodies gesture and writhe in a kind of amniotic soup, attended by a video game robot. The bot's red display reads ‘uWu. Behind the robot and filling the left side of the composition is an archaic figure composed of a variety of vintage objects and symbols. Among them are a hardbound book with ancient cuneiform scripts, indicating barley, beer, bread, ox, house, and sky, behind which is a grimacing, salivating jagged toothed maw; and an old Commodore floppy drive. The figure’s head tilts toward an illuminated crescent moon, suggesting the Egyptian Sacred Bull. The archaic figure is composed of a variety of mutating cells, which shift in color, and pattern; eventually breaking free into an ephemeral broadcast of bubbles which move across the background. The work came into being against a psychological introspection, which included associations to pop culture such as alien abduction and pod people, as well as quite a bit of reflection on grains as a symbol of civilization, agriculture, sustenance, life, and imbibing (mainly whiskies).”
CohentheWriter’s Commentary:
“An anthropomorphic figure stands, wide eyed, staring at the viewer; its body masculine, muscular, and humanoid. Its “mind” dissociates into a conglomerate of structures resembling feathers, grain, teeth–as well as a radial flower ‘node’, casting linear rays throughout the composition.
To his left, a vat of bodies gesture and writhe in a kind of amniotic soup, attended by a video game robot. The bot's red display reads ‘uWu.
Behind the robot and filling the left side of the composition is an archaic figure composed of a variety of vintage objects and symbols. Among them are a hardbound book with ancient cuneiform scripts, indicating barley, beer, bread, ox, house, and sky, behind which is a grimacing, salivating jagged toothed maw; and an old Commodore floppy drive. The figure’s head tilts toward an illuminated crescent moon, suggesting the Egyptian Sacred Bull.
The archaic figure is composed of a variety of mutating cells, which shift in color, and pattern; eventually breaking free into an ephemeral broadcast of bubbles which move across the background.
The work came into being against a psychological introspection, which included associations to pop culture such as alien abduction and pod people, as well as quite a bit of reflection on grains as a symbol of civilization, agriculture, sustenance, life, and imbibing (mainly whiskies).”
That lengthy explanation comes directly from artist Cody Seekins’ Artist Description for his piece, The Harvest, on MakersPlace. It’s actually kind of ironic that Seekins would go to such lengths to decode this piece for us. Looking at it for the first time, it’s easy see how it’s been influenced by the surrealists of the 1930s, Dali and Miró and Max Ernst, for instance. The dream imagery here, that which is barely held together by logic, is arcane and wide-ranging, drawing from recognizable objects and licensed characters —that “video game robot” Seekins mentions is actually known as Claptrap, from the phenomenally successful video game series Borderlands— while descending elsewhere into the kind of grotesque body horror loved by filmmakers like David Cronenberg. And yet, in a piece that aesthetically seems inclined to overwhelm us, pique our associative minds, and assault us with unrelated objects, Seekins provides us this written codex. Why? Is it from a desire to be known? Or the inherent irony of explaining an outwardly unexplainable piece? Is it self-sabotage?
It certainly spits in the face of accepted surrealist intentions. That class of initial surrealists working in the mid 1900’s sought to create unknowable work that remained as unknowable as its subconscious sources, just a series of connections and associations that would spark autonomous reactions in the minds of audiences, and which relied heavily on symbology that was deeply personal, as it sprung from the individual subconsciouses of its artists. The Harvest is what happens when that same associative styling meets the consumerism of the 21st century. It’s no wonder Seekins didn’t just include disparate objects, but opted to include characters and brands. We dream of the worlds we live in. And this is the world we live in.
And it captures the totality of our everyday waking symbology with aplomb. I recently wrote an article about how crypto art’s preference for Twitter affected the aesthetics of the movement, and, more or less, my argument —that crypto art is, as a consequence of its social media HQ, as far-ranging aesthetically as the internet itself— was anticipated and demonstrated in The Harvest. The horrific commingling with the commercial, both commingling with the academic, and the bodily and the cosmic and bestial all represented within the boundaries of the same frame. The exact nature of their representation, their individual domination of the frame, are inimitable, and it’s that inimitable quality that makes me so damn interested in this piece every time I look at it anew.
Seekins is a master of this surrealist-semi-collage style, but The Harvest shows his imagery at its most dense. One could conceivably split this image into quarters, the Claptrap-with-body-bag a separate art piece from the looming male figure on the right side or from the toothiness in the upper-left corner or from the bubbling interstellar background. Notice how none of these sections even seem to notice each other within the composition. Everything is focused within itself. The male figure, for instance, gazes (if you could call it gazing) straight out at us, either unaware of or uninterested in the Claptrap and its body vat below it. That Claptrap, continuing the trend, isn’t obviously aware of anything in the piece that is outside its purview, neither background nor other characters nor the threatening objects behind it. The disparate objects in their own small spheres, all cohesive thematically within their own contexts; and indeed, from their own limited perspectives, they are the center of the world, not just the center of their activities. It is only us, the observers, existing outside the frame altogether, that the odd juxtapositions emerge. We should stop here, lest we obey Seekins’ tacit suggestion and become similarly meta-analytical ourselves, wondering about all the nonsensical associations around us that we are blind to, and who sits outside our world making such objective judgments.
Quote from CohentheWriter on 20. September 2022, 21:58Colborn was kind enough to share with me this piece that Cody Seekins himself wrote just the other day r.e. this piece! The link is here: https://www.codyseekins.com/news/the-making-of-the-harvest/
Colborn was kind enough to share with me this piece that Cody Seekins himself wrote just the other day r.e. this piece! The link is here: https://www.codyseekins.com/news/the-making-of-the-harvest/