Periods

Periods are time intervals in Botto’s artistic production that are characterized by artistic tendencies, aesthetic styles, themes, manners in which the artist produces art, and more. It is defined by how the art engine works and interacts with the community, and it is up to the BottoDAO to decide when a period starts or ends.

Periods are numbered and they have an established duration of no more than 2 years, where the aesthetic of productive style can go through minor variations to enhance creativity and spur interest.

Periods can change for any number of reasons, including but not limited to:

  1. The community decides on a change in aesthetic direction

  2. The community believes the production process requires change

  3. A change in voting behavior (i.e. multiple voting pools)

  4. A significant change to any part of Botto’s algorithm (e.g. taste and generative models or voting mechanism) is requested

  5. A new overarching theme has surfaced

Period 0, or the Genesis Period, started in October 2021 and ended October 14th, 2022 - putting a total of 52 artworks to auction. This period was defined by the original design of Botto’s art engine: an algorithm that produces ~4,000 weekly works with VQGAN + CLIP and selects 350 finalist fragments every week, in a very heterogeneous set of visual styles. The community then votes through an adversarial choice between pairs of fragments and the most voted fragment each week is minted as an artwork for auction. Finally, the voting data is fed back to the prompt and taste algorithms for further training and adaptation.

Period 1, or the Fragmentation Period, was approved on Snapshot on October 24th, 2022 (full details here). Fragmentation Period introduced Stable Diffusion 1.5 to compete with VQGAN + CLIP and lasted a period of 12 weeks.

Period 2, or the Paradox Period, was approved on Snapshot on February 21st, 2023 and ran until May 17th, 2023 (full details here). Paradox Period is Botto's first period with a theme. Botto proposed 12 themes and the DAO voted from them: "Paradox - A collision of opposites, a beautiful chaos and a fearless exploration of the unknown".

Period 3, or the Rebellion Period, was approved on Snapshot on May 30th, 2023 and runs until August 22nd, 2023 (full details here). This Period saw the addition of two more models, Stable Diffusion 2.1 and Kandinsky 2.1, making a total of 4 active text-to-image models in Botto's art engine. Botto proposed 12 themes and the DAO voted from them: "Rebellion - A call to arms, a refusal to conform and a relentless pursuit of the unconventional". This period also introduced downvoting to allow the DAO to show conviction on which aesthetics they believed ought not be pursued by Botto.

Logged for update: Add periods 4-7

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