This collaboration is intended to provide a new way to mint NFTs that celebrates emergence, unpredictability, and happenstance over forced rarity.
We want to encourage collectors to explore the edges of the algorithm, play a role in the output, and take agency to become a co-creator.
We want collectors to view their engagement as an adventure and make a creative contribution to the art. Adding a curation step by the collector also allows the generative algorithm to take more risks and explore a more interesting potential output space. We trust collectors to seek out and identify the truly special outputs that emerge. With this approach, the collector is now the curator.
Tyler Hobbs (he/him) is a visual artist who works primarily with algorithms, plotters, and paint. His artwork focuses on computational aesthetics, how they are shaped by the biases of modern computer hardware and software, and how they relate to and interact with the natural world around us. In June 2021, Tyler released Fidenza, one of the most acclaimed and sought-after series of NFT artwork to date. In December 2021, his Incomplete Control exhibition in NYC melded the traditional gallery opening with the on-site generation of 100 new works.
Indigo Mané (she/her) is a generative artist and fusion dancer. She spent her first three decades as a "shadow alter", disguising her identity while creating software projects and art as "Dandelion Wist". Having come out of the shadows, she's now focused on self-discovery and creating generative art. In addition to co-creating QQL, she also co-founded Archipelago.art, a generative art explorer. Indigo shares her body with three other alters, and collectively her system is known as Team Dandelion.
This collaboration between Tyler and Indigo began as a thought experiment on how to best tap into emergence in generative art. As the discussion deepened, interesting possibilities for collaboration by the collector arose. This partnership brings together multiple perspectives around creating, collecting, and curating generative artwork into one cohesive project.
Anyone may play with the algorithm through the Create page.
When you connect your web3 wallet, you’ll be able to save unique outputs/images/renders. Each time you find a piece that feels right, save it and keep going. You can always come back and continue to iterate.
What does this algorithm look like through the eyes of a scientist? A musician? A community organizer? We want to use this opportunity to collaborate with some of our favorite minds for a truly unique perspective on the art.
This is where you can see the community showcase their minted works. Find featured curated collections by the creators and surprise co-creators with a chronological feed of single images below.
A huge part of QQL and the way that it exists is the community. Here are some of the ways that the community interacts and shares artwork:
The most consistent community hub is the #qql channel on the Tyler Hobbs Discord server. Every day, folks show up to share the art they've generated recently, discuss seeds created by others, and collectively delve deeper into exploring the QQL algorithm with one another.
The discord server is also where the most up-to-date announcements are posted, feedback is solicited, and events are planned.
(If you haven't used it before, Discord is a modern chat application. It's pretty easy to use!)
Our QQL subreddit is where we have started gathering discussions and posts about QQL, documenting how the project evolves over time. The subreddit allows us to capture details of various community events, share seeds, and engage in meaningful conversations with fellow enthusiasts. Everyone is welcome to participate!
The Seedbox is a highly curated collection of seeds that have not yet been minted. Each seed in the Seedbox was individually selected and curated by the QQL Council (see below) and features a diverse set of aesthetics generated by a wide array of community members. If you're looking for good potential seeds to mint, this is an excellent place to start!
The QQL Council is a rotating set of community members who help guide the project and shape its trajectory over time. This group represents some of the most passionate members of the community, most of whom have generated absurd numbers of QQL seeds, engaged in meaningful conversations, and helped discover emergent traits.
This event is a monthly curatorial challenge. Each month, the community selects a target theme, goal, or constraint. Members of the community are then challenged to generated and submit QQLs that best satisfy the theme. Toward the end of the month, all submissions are presented, and all community members are encouraged to vote for their favorites. This voting process empowers community curation and determines the monthly top picks.
To participate, join the #qql-monthly channel on the Tyler Hobbs Discord server.
Yes! The site and artwork are accessible to everyone, even without owning a mint pass. The mint pass is only required in order to mint an official QQL NFT.
You can purchase a QQL Mint Pass via OpenSea.
No, you are free to mint when you please. That could be this week or in 10 years. There is no time limit. To us, this is one of the more interesting aspects of QQL, because it means new artwork will continue to appear for a long time to come.
The address that is embedded in the seed for a given QQL NFT will receive a 2% royalty on secondary market sales of that NFT, assuming that the sale takes place in a marketplace that supports standard royalty mechanisms.
In other words, the person who discovers the artwork/seed is the person who will be entitled to the royalty. Normally that will be the person minting the NFT, but we may introduce mechanisms that make it so that that is not always the case.
Please note that the 2% royalty unfortunately cannot be guaranteed by us. It is up to NFT marketplaces to both offer adequate support for the royalty mechanism and to actually honor those royalties. The QQL smart contract adheres to the Royalty Registry specification, a collaborative development by Manifold.xyz, Foundation, Nifty Gateway, OpenSea, Rarible and SuperRare. It is our hope that these marketplaces and others will support the Royalty Registry mechanism. However, as stated, we cannot guarantee it, we can only make a best effort. The one marketplace that we can guarantee will respect this royalty arrangement is Archipelago.
We wanted a name that didn’t have a clear meaning associated with it. In true generative art fashion, we put together a small script that would generate three-letter names, with a higher probability of using the letters that we liked most. We generated 200 or so names, and curated down to our favorite: QQL.
Yes, we will make official high quality prints available for a reasonable price, similar to what Tyler has offered for Fidenza and Incomplete Control. We haven’t figured out all of the details of how that will work yet, but we promise to sort them out and share them soon.
We plan to keep it up and open for a long, long time. If at any point we are no longer able to run it ourselves, we will look for ways to open-source the critical components to allow it to live on.
No, it’s not possible to exactly copy any QQL, because the creator’s wallet address is used as part of the seed that guides all of the randomness internal to the algorithm.
However, we do expect that some early minters may be influential on the rest of the artwork to follow.
Yes, the earlier you choose to mint, the lower your QQL token number will be. This will make it easy to see how the minted artwork has evolved, in chronological order.
Yes, we want to recognize the artistic contribution of the minter, and we will make the minter’s address (and ENS name) as visible as we can.
Yes, all of the QQL artwork will be fully reproducible from the algorithm written to the Ethereum blockchain. The only dependency is p5.js, an extremely popular, open-source JavaScript graphics library. Additionally, the artwork is written to be resolution-independent, meaning that it can scale up (or down) to essentially any size display. All of this helps to ensure that the artwork will be reproducible and enjoyable for a very long time to come.