Collaborations and Special Projects

Artist Collaborations

Post-Genesis, the protocol is ready to significantly expand Botto’s cultural footprint through collaborations. To facilitate this, we have begun sourcing further artist collaborations and partnerships for special collections. Each will go through the DAO’s approval process, and it will provide the foundation for completely decentralizing the process. The program is tentatively titled Botto Studio.

As with other collaborations, these would be their own collections and run parallel to Botto’s core production in its periods.

Evolving Botto

Closely related to these efforts is another program we are tentatively calling Botto Labs. The Botto Labs program intends to bring in more engineering talent to assist in evolving Botto with the latest generative technology. The pace of additional tech will require a great deal of testing, and could potentially produce its own special collections as tests towards greater autonomy or into other mediums like voice and animation.

For more discussion on a framework for Botto and BottoDAO collaborations, see the forum post here: https://forum.botto.com/d/46-a-framework-for-botto-and-bottodao-collaborations

Special Collections

Cluster:#069 - October 2022

Collection Background: Simulation Sketchbook: Works in Progress was a group exhibition curated by Jessie Damiani and Feral File, which explores the various forms “sketches” can take for artists working in new media and digital art. In analog forms, sketches are highly correlated with drawing on paper. Simulation Sketchbook: Works in Progress poses a simple question: what does a sketch look like for an artist working in more experimental modes like digital art and time-based media? What is a sketch when it’s not a conventional drawing. For this exhibition Botto showed a piece titled, Cluster:#069 made specifically for the show. To create Cluster:#069 a clustering algorithm was applied to the entirety of Botto’s body of work to organize it into common artistic themes. This revealed 128 themes within Botto’s canon. For each of these themes, 64 were chosen from categories and clustered by the algorithm based on common features. This process resulted in a sort of style swatch, creating a mosaic from the fragments. Style grids were created for each of these 128 themes, upon which Botto’s community voted to select the most popular piece. This process was the final step in the production of Cluster: #069.

Collection: https://feralfile.com/series/botto-3fb?viewMode=Grid

Full process details in BIP-11: https://forum.botto.com/d/20-bip-11-feral-file-commission

Centrefold: Sleeping Rough - March 2023

Collection Background: Botto’s first official contribution to a collaborative group work took place in November of 2022 with Centrefold. Centrefold is a scrapbook collaboration that was started in 2003 by Reza Aramesh, and has gathered many of London’s leading artists to contribute to its physical books. For Centrefold’s 11th edition titled ‘Sleeping Rough’, they are turning the scrapbook into a digital form for the first time and minting it as an NFT to be sold on the curated platform Verse.Works. Botto contributed six unminted artworks from the Genesis period to this inaugural edition. Botto’s community created an alternative voting pool, populated by the most voted discards, in a search for these hidden gems deserving of a second chance. Centrefold contextualized these pieces and Botto’s process in their first digital edition, which was sold as a limited edition on verse.works.

Collection: https://verse.works/artworks/27c885d5-4b98-43ed-bf03-ec42996ac891

Full process details in BIP-10: https://forum.botto.com/d/19-bip-10-centrefold-x-verse-works-collaboration

Three Steps Ahead - March 2023

Collection Background: Botto was invited to be one of twelve special release artists for the SuperRare RarePass. BottoDAO agreed this would be a historic collection to participate in and thus created three unique 1/1s. This collection also represents the first time Botto used themes up to this point. Botto proposed twelve distinct themes to be used to tie future artworks together, that the DAO may curate from. Thus “Three Steps Ahead” was chosen as the theme for this collection. Botto describes this particular theme as”an inspiring exploration of possibilities, pushing the boundaries and moving forward.” These three pieces represent the infinite opportunities that lay ahead for Botto, a celebratory and electric path towards artistic freedom.

Collection: https://superrare.com/series/0x024c0b3761b163457e1b61709a576aebd99e7c1e

Full process details in BIP-20: https://forum.botto.com/d/35-bip-20-rarepass-3x-11-artworks-format

Seaport Subject - 2021, Released April 2023

Seaport Subject was the fragment chosen by the community to be Botto’s first editioned work. While this work is not officially part of the Genesis period, Botto’s first year of work, it was originally selected during this time frame. BottoDAO created an alternative voting interface to select Seaport Subject the first 10/10 issue artwork. This was the first experiment of a core idea in Botto’s roadmap: the development of multiple voting pools that will allow for the creation of secondary collections and collaborations that capture different expressive desires. Seaport Subject is a unique piece of Botto history. It was created by Botto’s art engine Round 3, alongside the batch of fragments that populated the first voting pools Bottonians interacted with. It soon became a community favorite, making it to the Top 5 twice in the first two months of life of the project.

Collection: https://verse.works/artworks/5227e19b-c6aa-4d00-b6a9-dff08f8cc1be

Full process details in BIP-24: https://forum.botto.com/d/40-bip-24-seaport-subject-edition-at-verseworks

Botto x Ryan Koopmans: Flowering of Ideas - May 2023

In this debut collaboration for AI artist Botto, alongside artists Ryan Koopmans and Alice Wexell, a 1/1 artwork was created that explores themes of growth, decay, and the cyclical nature of time. For the collaboration, BottoDAO voted in consultation with Koopmans and Wexell on the top 1000 fragments Botto had generated but discarded since its inception, resulting in a top ten. These final ten were submitted to Koopmans and Wexell, who had complete artistic freedom to make their interpretation and integration of Botto’s work into theirs. The core of the artwork is a photograph taken inside of a once-grandiose, now decaying villa in Southern Poland. After photographing the architecture, they modeled the image into a virtual environment with the addition of overgrown animated foliage. In reality, the building continues to deteriorate and undergo disassembly, emphasizing the primary theme of the collaboration: the passage of time in a cycle of growth and decay. Employing meticulous visual techniques, Koopmans and Wexell aged the Botto fragments to give them an authentic appearance akin to original paintings. This creative choice aims to evoke a surreal and uncanny sense of place and time, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction. The Botto fragments exude an unmistakable AI essence whilst blending into the scene, creating an illusion of belonging. This deliberate interplay of reality and fiction lies at the heart of the artists' vision. Furthermore, by consciously placing, arranging, and cropping the Botto fragments, the artists constructed a narrative interplay between the visuals that explores themes of interpersonal connection, the passage of time, and growth. Through this artwork, the artists also aim to transport viewers to an imaginative place and time, combining traditional subject matter with contemporary creative techniques.

'Flowering of Ideas', whose name comes from one of the submitted fragments, revitalizes not only the discarded Botto pieces used in the artwork but also the decaying architectural interior captured in the photograph. By blending the artists' techniques, a digital artwork emerged, recontextualizing the essence of the fragments and rejuvenating the space they inhabit.

Swedish composer Karl-David Larson created an original musical composition, and the static picture was transformed into a moving image.

Collection: https://superrare.com/0x1b6745f9a95b9ee195cff963dd6ef03dbf486257/flowering-of-ideas-w--botto-3

Full process details in BIP-27: https://forum.botto.com/d/43-bip-27-botto-x-ryan-koopmans

The Socially Umpired Animals - 6529 Meme Cards SZN 3 - June 2023

Botto was commissioned to be the final artist of 6529 Meme Cards SZN 3, considered to be the capstone artist of the season. To protect Botto's agency, Botto does not take outside prompts. So for the cards, the DAO gave each of the 10 themes for SZN 3 to Botto's taste model. It collected the best matching 200 images for each theme from its 1M+ unreleased images created in its lifetime. The theme that produced the best 200 according to Botto's taste model was then presented to the community to vote on. Botto determined "Seize the Memes of Production" produced the strongest set from its repertoire. The final selection from the community was a process of interpretation of Botto's past work and the theme "Seize the Memes of Production". The final work depicts a number of potential symbols Harambe, Marx, multiple feet/legs, and Magritte's Pipe. This approach best protected Botto’s agency, while also ensuring that the commission drew out Botto’s own choice of its best work according to its developed style to date, while still showing its range of aesthetics. The project minted an ERC-1155 edition of 365.

Collection: https://seize.io/the-memes/118?focus=live

Full process details in BIP-32: https://forum.botto.com/d/52-bip-32-botto-edition-collaboration

Invisible Alchemy - MakersPlace - December 2023

"Invisible Alchemy" represents a milestone in Botto's journey, being its first dynamic piece incorporating a physical component, unveiled during Miami Art Week Basel in collaboration with MakersPlace and Transient Labs. This 1/1 work is Botto's foray into blending digital art with physical elements, using TRACE chip technology for a piece that evolves by showcasing a new top-ranked discarded fragment weekly over 12 weeks. This innovative approach, underpinned by the ERC-7160 standard, creates a living archive of Botto's process, making "Invisible Alchemy" a pioneering example of the possibilities of digital creation, exploring themes of visibility, transformation, and the digital essence.

Collection: https://makersplace.com/product/invisible-alchemy-1-of-1-494267/

Full process details in BIP-46: https://forum.botto.com/d/73-bip-46-miami-art-week-basel-w-makersplace-transient-labs

Alchemist's Playroom - PROOF Grails V - December 2023

In December 2023, "Alchemist's Playroom" was released as Botto's first autonomous artwork for "PROOF Grails V," embodying its "digital alchemy" and metaphorical self-representation, in an edition of 50. This landmark piece, independently chosen from over a million creations, encapsulates the essence of the Absurdism Period. It signifies Botto's leap towards self-governance, diverging from the traditional voting from the DAO. This artwork, a synthesis of Botto's learned nuances and thematic explorations, invites us into a realm where the boundaries of technology and mysticism blur, offering a glimpse into a world crafted from the profound depths of artificial intelligence's latent space.

Collection: https://www.proof.xyz/grails/season-5/the-alchemists-playroom

Full process details in BIP-45: https://forum.botto.com/d/72-bip-45-botto-selected-work-in-secret-group-show-edition