1,000 True Fans, 2023
Javascript, WebGL, GLSL, Display P3 wide-gamut
Longform generative series, variable dimensions
1,000 True Fans refers to an essay by Kevin Kelly from 2008, considering how the internet impacts dynamics between creators and audiences. Blockchain and social media add a new angle to the same question: What is the size of an audience that makes an artistic practice sustainable? These numbers are moving as new chains emerge and more art becomes available to bigger audiences. High speed, low cost transactions and onchain art expand the space towards millions of new collectors and more accessible cultural production.
The interactive realtime animation creates a garden as metaphor for the beauty of an audience that is decentralized and distributed, but connected by chains and communities. As it grows with each transaction, a complex ecosystem emerges: Smaller than the scale we know from mass media, but bigger than the handful of collectors enabling artistic practice in the context of contemporary art before the internet. Shaped by technology and multiple dynamic value systems, seeded by the first 1,000 True Fans.
Beyond contemplation of networks and shifting modes of patronage, the work was inspired by the way we experience flower gardens as children. These new models are still in their infancy and those of us early enough to experience it all stand like children watching huge flowers bloom and sway around us, pointing to beautiful possibilities ahead.
