Hello and welcome to The Culture Project. This space has felt a bit exhausting over this last year. I’ve taken a step back from social media over the last few weeks. I went from posting every day or two to posting a couple times a week. I still check my artist lists on twittX and keep up with my favorites. Still keeping up with writers I’m subscribed to as well. I’ll be at Marfa next month and I’m really looking forward to it. I think it will provide a nice refreshing outlook for me in this space. I need an injection of a just art weekend into my life. The pace of this space can overwhelm at times and can leave you feeling jaded. You miss out on things you wish you could jump into, but it doesn’t always work out like that. This week I’m going to show a few Brush Strokes V0’s that I curated. Then I’m going to talked about one of my favorites artists that I’ve covered so many times before, talk about his past yet ongoing projects, and his new release that comes out tomorrow.
Lets dive in.
The Brush Strokes V0 curated set is complete. I’ve got all 69 pieces picked out and ready to go. I’m really happy with the selection and it was amazing to spend the time to go through so many outputs. I love this collection and am proud to finally have it coming out in the next few weeks. These will be completely free to OG Brush Stroke holders. I will start reaching out to people soon and get these out to our collectors. If your just a subscriber and are interested in one, please reach out to me. These are purely for the art.
Brush Strokes V0 - Pieces from the curated set.
Lets get to the man of the hour, Harvey Rayner. I’ve talked about him several times. I’m a huge fan of his work and the method behind his art. I’ve written articles about his projects in the past and have been lucky enough to collect some amazing pieces from a few of his projects. I met him in Marfa last year and hope to see him again this year. He is an incredibly talented artist and is always working on new projects, usually multiples at a time.
I’ve said this before, but I’ll go ahead and mention it again as I talk about this project. I was lucky enough to join Harvey’s inner circle, The Council of Elders. I got to collect an Aristocrat chatFUKR that is part of a rare subclass. It’s the classy looking Fukr above with the XCOPY glasses, whisky glass, and cigar. It’s been my PFP on twittX for a while now and probably won’t change any time soon. This was Harvey’s first foray into BTC and is an ongoing project that will have more batches come out over time. Owning pieces from previous batches will give you better chances on the new ones coming up in the future. Check out the chatFUKR Website here and the article I wrote about it, Degen PFP Culture with Harvey Rayner.
That brings me to another project of Harvey’s that is ongoing as well, but in a different way. Quasi Dragon Studies is a project on Verse that has a tile system and Composite Builder. The minting process for the original tiles happened a while back, but there are still tons of tiles that get shuffled weekly. This keeps the possibility of creation fresh and changing. They cost the original mint price of $100. These are held by Verse and Harvey Rayner to keep the project going in the hopes of bringing in new collectors and the creation of the more rare White Dragons. Which only one person has created two to my knowledge. Check out this article I wrote on Quasi Dragon Studies to learn more about it. It’s an amazing project where you can create beautiful pieces from single or multiple tiles.
This is a single tyle piece from my collection that I created. It has blank space tiles on each side to create a very close to symmetrical piece. Hoping to get this one printed and framed in the future.
This is the second rarest kind you could create called a Black Dragon. All Black Dragons have been created and no more new ones can be made. 42 in total were created.
Here is a multi tiled and incredibly rare White Dragon.
Noodlz is Harvey’s last release that came out a few weeks ago. It was a surprise release on the brand new L2 network Shape. I talked about it here in The Weekly Roundup #71 if you want to learn more about Shape and this project. I sadly missed out on this one and wasn’t able to mint. I’m really happy for the success though as this is a wonderful project and came out of the blue. It had a very organic mint out process that was slow and steady and has now been completed. I really wish I could of minted one as these look so damn good. When I look at them I think Harvey Rayner. They feel like they have his signature style that he’s developed over time.
Presented on Art Blocks
Mints on Monday - 1000 pieces in the set.
Price: Mints open to some Station3 Holders & the Council of Elders
We first started to see glimpses of this project back in August of this year, but it’s origins go further back than that. A quote from Harvey on X.
This simple algo has a fair bit of variety. I built it just after Photon's Dream and my method of building algos was quite different then. I've been working on it this week but its now at a stage that if I wanted to take it further it would be quicker for me to completely rewrite it using the new practices I've developed over the last 2 years, but I don't plan on that. Just as it is I think I have a good use for it.
Photon’s Dream was released on Art Blocks back in June 2022. So that means Deco Echo has been in waiting for a long time now. It’s crazy to think something like this is just in waiting and has been rediscovered for release. What else does Harvey have hidden away I wonder? He’s already talked about new projects for the future like Monty Carlos and a new card or domino style game that is tied to it.
I’m really curious to see what we get from Deco Echo as it’s pushed to 1000 mints. I’m loving what I’ve explored from it so far.
This Art Deco inspired project is the first project for me that explores what I'm calling pseudo symmetry. This is where two mirroring outputs are generated simultaneously with slight variations. There are also more wild layers that can be entirely different from their neighbor. Symmetry is by nature ordered and balanced and is therefore typically more calming in art composition. However, pure symmetry often lacks tension, so this method is an approach that aims to get the best of both worlds. This is also what we see in nature in a face or tree - there is both symmetry and asymmetry simultaneously.
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Enjoy Marfa this year, man! I wish I could make it.