17 Apr

Posted at 16:57h in blog
3 Likes

Art & Machines – “do androids dream of electric sheep?”

UK Since the first cave paintings humans have used tools to paint/describe the world around them and express themselves. 1 Starting our from anything like our extremities, sticks or cut/chewed grass for brushes to apply pigments on the intended surface to using resins, glue, knives/scissors/saws tu further remix the product many tools, objects and techniques have been put to use to this ever growing list of art-tools.

Computers and algorithms have also been added to this list. Especially since the advent of the personal computer or nowadays with the quasi-omnipresence of mobile phones.

The mechanisms of computer art is now starting another new chapter of machine assisted design in the form of: 

  • Generative art is art that is created with the use of an autonomous system. An autonomous system in this context is generally non-human and can independently determine features of an artwork that would otherwise require decisions made directly by the artist. In some cases the human creator directs the algorithm to represent their own artistic idea, programmed inputs and variables, in other cases the system takes on the role of the fully independent creator. 2. For further references & resources feel free to check out: 
  • https://p5js.org/
  • https://thecodingtrain.com/beginners/p5js/

  • Machine Learning Art: as in various other endeavours, machine learning can also be applied to arts to create, predict, decide in lieu of the artist. By using the data input and applying various ML techniques an output that adapts to the surrounding and ever changing input.Thus working with machine learning offers a further tool for testing the limits of human and machine interaction and creativity.3. For further references & resources head to the following links: 
  • https://aiartists.org/ai-generated-art-tools
  • https://ml4a.net/

For further reading I strongly recommend having a look at the following blogpost in which two of my favourite actors in this space Espen Kluge and Jason Bailey discuss the process of coding assisted art synergy between human and machines in the creative process.

https://www.artnome.com/news/2019/7/24/generative-portraiture-of-espen-kluge

15 Apr

Posted at 20:41h in blog
2 Likes

A beginners guide to Blockchains and NFTs

UK If you don’t where to start across the ever-growing amount of “blocks” and “chains”. You might want to consider these few points before getting started:

Crypto currencies have enjoyed a lot of attention in the past years. The concept behind decentralizing finance follwos other overarching megatrends towards decentralizing commodities and services such as electricity or mobility as well as the creation creating new organization from the bottom up. At the time of writing this post, the whole sector is arguably in a hype bubble (again). As a result the markets for crypto currencies and by extension for NFTs have been extremely volatile  and will probably remain so in the future. Furthermore, the surge in popularity has lead to the creation of many further alternative crypto currencies, “altcoins”. Wheras some blockchains aim to solve specific issues or apply functionalities to the blockchain technology many of these new blockchains and coins add little additional functions and value and can currently only be considered as speculative as much of the value remains still driven by hype and attention economy cycles. In order to evaluate the crypte landscape it is prudent to keep in mind the following points:

  • crypto remains highly speculative: bitcoin and other altcoins have seen rises and falls by several orders of magnitude since inception
  • the decentralization concept has potential: the number of real world applications is growing
  • Some cryptochains go beyond constituting a decentralized trading asset have some real world applications built in, and thus may have a greater chance of succeeding/prevailing in the long run
    • Smart contracts allow for transaction and NFT contracts between parties (e.g. ETHER)
    • Supply Chain (e.g. VeTHOR)
    • Long-Fi Data Transmission Network (e.g. HELIUM)

Non fungible tokens NFTs have equally boomed in recent years and.  Nevertheless the premise of NFTs are specific transaction functions built into the blockchain (not all are able to process these): a smart contract. Depending of the nature the these blockchain contracts can consume substantial amounts of energy energy to create an renforce on th blockchain, depending on the underlying consensus mechanism. As of 2021 it is estimated that the amount of energy consumed by blockchains is even equivalent to the energy consumption of a whole country. Due variety of differnent blockchains is is important highlighting that the NFT authorship is stored on a specific blockchain and thus the NFT signature/ownership is tied to specific chain used. The proof of ownership lives and dies with the respective blockchain used

To get started with NFTs – you can follow theses steps:

1. Chose a blockchain which allows for NFTs storage (ETHER, TEZOS, HIVE) 

2. sign – up on one of these marketplaces: coinbase, uphold to buy the respective currency

3. install a wallet as an browser extension for storing and paying for the chosen coin and NFT (e.g. Metamask for ETHER)

4. sign-up and sign-in on NFT marketplace website to trade and bid NFTs (e.g. OpenSea)

If you have made it this far congrats for following through 🙂 as a smal rewards you can go check this link @hicetnunc platform and pick up your first #NFT for (nearly) free by yours truly. If you have further comments or questions, just drop me a message. Cheers Boris

PS: if the giveaway has already ended don’t despair 🙂 there are more from time to time, just follow my twitter or my newsletter.

10 Apr

Posted at 14:11h in blog
3 Likes

What are NFTs? 

UK Disclaimer: all opinions are my own and neither constitute legal no financial advice in any way – please refer to my disclaimer page for more details

NFTs Stands for „non fungible Tokens“ which at its their core are pieces of code/identifiers on a„blockchain“ to assign the authorship/ownership of an asset/digital address such as an jpeg/picture or by extension even a physical asset. In practice this means that the asset original creator as well as all subsequent owners are registered on a public albeit secure (through cryptography tech) common ledger i.e. the blockchain.

Blockchain,  a trend topic of recent years – is a common ledger i.e. shared list/”book” which keeps track of each of the assets registered on the list: similar to real estate register.

the lists the present and past tokens or coins ownership as well as each transfer which is happening on the ledger. the reason this approach is also refered to as “defi” decentralized finance, is that the content of the blockchain/ ledger is spread out across the user base, which makes the ledger very difficult to manipulate as backups/consensus are kept across the whole user network. The listed address/blocks acts as a container of the tokens or coins which are units/traded across the chain the Most famous (there are now hundreds of blockchain with Coins and smart contracts such as BITCOIN,  ETHER, TEZOS  POLKADOT 

Crypto currencies each have their own ledger, protocol and platform which makes each and everyone completely independent from each other. In turn, in order to possess and multiple coins you usually need separate wallets/adresses on for each category of coins. Cryptocurrencies are usually governed by a specific set of rules programmed in their creation,- such as limited supply rules of governance and distribition and transfer across its network. The basis for the redistribution or rewards, can be different from blockchainn to blockchain : these mechanisms are called “consensus mechanisms”. the main types are:

  • Proof of work: ” the blockchain ledger extenders/keepers so called “miners” are trying to solve very difficult mathematical puzzles in order to be the first to complete a block and be rewarded with cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. This difficult puzzle is known as Proof-of-Work. One of the by-products of this system is it requires a lot of electricity and machines working on a problem in order to solve it. “For this reason why bitcoins ether chains are very energy intensive and not eco friendlz
  • Proof of stake: “is trying to achieve the same outcome as Proof of Work: to help verify transactions on the blockchain. However, the difference in Proof of Stake is the miner of a new block is chosen by the network – instead of the miner being the first to solve the puzzle”

source: https://decrypt.co/resources/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake

Crypto Wallets are small Apps which help the user access/manage (e.g. send, receive, destroy a.k.a. “burn”) their tokens coins associated with their adresse. And while the address and its content records remain open to the public – however the wallets owner (can) remain anonymous. In the blockchain jargon users differentiate beween “hot”/”cold” wallets which refers to the wallet state/security online: whether it is active only when installed/connected physically to the net via a “USB key” for example or whether the wallet is “hot” : always online /active on the blockchain.

Smart Contracts are additional functionalities “coded contracts” which are implemented on some specific blockchain protocols. Smart Contracts are constituted of IF and THEN statements. This allows for interesting new features such as transferring transaction under specific circumstances (e.g. swap conditions). Some real world applications can already be seen in the world of NFT trading – where a the smart contracts allows for royalties automatically being transferred to the original content creator whenever the NFT is reused or resold to a new owner,