Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
The Back Story:
This piece was created shortly after my first Sale of crypto art. The whole sale really blew my mind. At first i didn’t notice the sale, because it turns out Rarible doesn’t have notifiations. So i was like 4 days too late, but i reached out to the collector on twitter and told him how much it meant to me. He was very excited about it, and said it made him very happy. And he really liked my work and wasn’t planning on selling it.
And that feeling of someone buying you work for just itself, not to use it to sell later, or to promote some other product. To me that was amazingly enjoyable.
Because in my job, i mostly get paid to create stuff to help people sell other stuff. But here what i made was the end product making some one happier. To me that’s just so beautiful.
At the same time i was talking to some people in slack about conceptualism in art. And Duchamp came up in comparison to some modern crypto artists. And we joked about all making and minting Duchamp’s urinal. And someone asked about it’s significance, and i explained. And as i was working on my urinal piece, i got to thinking how amazing is what Duchamp did, and not only him, but all the Incredibly intelligent people who made all this possible. Starting from the ancient greek mathematicians like Pythagoras ( hence the gold triangle), the unknown architects and engineers in ancient Greece and Rome ( the pillar ), to the Phenomenal developers that made all the software i use, especially Maxon and Otoy (logos). And obviously can’t forget about Ethereum developers who made this crypto art market possible, and it just all added to me selling this slightly silly Egg with genitals, that encourages people to “Be Anything”. There is just something to magical and beautiful about it. Which is why I made this piece.
The astronaut is me, just moonwalking on all the great achievements oh humanity 🙂 And the style is obviously reflective of the general trend in Mograph we have right now of astronauts and palm trees. So in the future, when people look back on this work, they can be like: “oh yeah, i remember that time”
This work will be available to Foundation.app you can find my profile here: https://foundation.app/aleksey
Extra Reading
Duchamp’s Urinal
When i was first introduced to Duchamp’s work, i wasn’t impressed. I was a kid in high school, and we were always told that “Hard work” is the most important thing. We had to study hard, play sport, put in effort etc.. yet here.. this guy was being praised for taking something someone else made, signing it and going “this is art, be impressed!”.
Kinda rubbed me the wrong way. But now being slightly more mature, i can see what his point was. He wanted to liberate artists from worrying about what tools they use to create an idea. I often talk to artists who worry about using purchased assets for their work. And i always tell them: “The most important thing is what is the message you are trying to send?”. Especially if it’s a client job, you are being paid to produce and end product which lets the client or the clients client tell a story, deliver a message. As long as you are not claiming to have created the asset and seeking praise/renumeration for it. For example Duchamp wasn’t claiming to have made this piece of ceramic sculpture. He was trying to deliver a message. We don’t have to mix all our paints, produce all the paper from tree’s, write all the software from scratch, develop the computer hardware ourselves. We can use existing stuff to tell our stories.
If you want to demonstrate your lighting and camera skills, don’t worry about modelling and texturing everything yourself. Similarily if you want to demonstrate your sculpting skills, don’t worry about doing all the lighting yourself, use an HDRI, or a preset light setup. Just make sure you are clear about what you trying to tell with your image.
Personally i’ve always struggled with this. Most of my work i try to make as much as i can from scratch. In recent years i’ve really put an effort in to reduce that. i try to collaborate with people who are better at certain things, and maximize our individual strengths, and i really like the results.
In this specific piece. i didn’t really model anything, everything was pre-fabricated, just like Duchamps urinal. I did what i enjoy doing, putting together the composition, doing the materials and setting up the lighting.
Assets:
Astronaut: https://www.behance.net/gallery/50179455/DISCOVERY-(FREE-3D-MODEL-DOWNLOAD)
Tree’s : https://cgaxis.com
Urinal: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/rmutt-2019-3155c6044fce413aad82ba2b778b2660
column: https://3ddd.ru
Pythagoras
Pythagoras didn’t only figure out how to deduce the length of triangles sides, but he also had a cult. A MATHS cult. To join you had to stay silent for 5 years. And apparantly he killed a guy for discovering irrational numbers.
The more you know 🙂
Gold triangle is for this specific crazy one 🙂