The non-generative token (NFT) auction held at Sotheby's yesterday (June 15) raised almost $11 million, reflecting the growing market for digital works that combine algorithms and artificial intelligence with fine art.
The collection that broke the record for the most expensive live digital art auction was owned by the now-defunct cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. All lots are sold and over 50 percent of bidders are under 40 years of age. With the fund's first collection auction at Sotheby's in May and subsequent private auctions, the fund's NFT sales now total $17 million.
Rings #879 by Canadian artist Dmitry Chernyak from the 1,000-piece Rings series sold for $6.2 million, while Snowfrog Chrome Squig #1780 (Full Spectrum) sold for $635,000, setting a new auction record for the artist. Michael Buchan, head of digital art and NFT at Sotheby's, said in a statement that the recording "highlights the growing importance of digital art, and generative art in particular, as a contemporary art form."
Tyler Hobbs, considered the brightest star of the generative art movement, has increased his stake. His Fidenza series of 6 works sold $2.1 million above his estimate, and his Fidenza #479 sold for $622,300, more than three times the high estimate of $180,000. Hobbs is one of the few NFT artists who managed to maintain popularity and earn millions in sales after the cryptocurrency crash. The artist, who claims to have made millions selling his secondary work, recently exhibited at both Manhattan's Pace Gallery and London's Unite London.
Why is Tyler Hobbs' work getting more and more valuable?
Austin-based artist NFT began creating creative art long before the craze and subsequent drop in sales. After receiving a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin, he began working as a programmer for the Apache Cassandra database management system. But Hobbs, who had always been interested in art, eventually began to explore more creative approaches to programming.
While he is mostly credited as a pioneer of generative art, the artist credits the genre with going back to the 1960s "mostly with the first scientific and military computers," according to his website. By designing and programming algorithms that randomly generate hundreds of visual patterns, Hobbs focuses on how computational aesthetics integrate the biases of computer hardware and the human world around it. "Comprehensive image analysis shows that the 'human' defects in our work have similar patterns and structure," according to the Hobbs website. "What can a machine contain and reproduce these defects, and what differences always remain?"
The artist's Fidenza series was a standout project for Hobbs, and the collection's NFTs cost six figures. One of the works was purchased in August 2021 for $3.3 million and the other was sold to Sotheby's in May for $1 million. Three Arrows Capital has reportedly invested almost $5 million in Fidenzas since the project's inception. Per year Created by a computer algorithm in 2021, the project consists of 999 NFTs generated from "flow fields", which are the distribution of fluid density and velocity in space and time.
Another collection of Hobbs' generative art that continues to raise big bucks is QGL , which he created with generative artist Dandelion Wiest. In December, the project sold $17 million worth of "mint subscriptions" that allow owners to co-create and eventually maintain their own NFTs through QQL.
Hobbs' success can be attributed to his combination of digital and physical art, making his shows and exhibitions more accessible to galleries and art collectors. He often turns NFTs into physical works, sometimes commissioning digital works from fine art printers to color prints. Hobbs is also a robotic device that sometimes creates an image based on instructions, sometimes combining plaster drawings with hand-drawn drawings.