PROOF Signal: Week of September 25

Welcome back to PROOF Signal, your exclusive gateway to the world of all things PROOF. Let's dive into the latest updates.

TL;DR:

• Marfa Recap: Revisit last week’s Art Blocks weekend in Marfa, TX, and PROOF’s IRL event and live recording of 100 PROOF.

• Upcoming Events: Keep tabs on the upcoming PROOF events including the closing of Diamond Exhibition at Foundry in collaboration with MNTGE (Sept 29), the Outliers Showcase with Transient Labs (Oct 1), and Frieze London at Pace Gallery (Oct 11).

• Inside Look - ‘Viridaria: Alice’s Mirror & Sarah’s Brush’: Kaloh deeply analyzes Sarah Ridgley’s most recent collection: “Viridaria,” created for our recent Diamond Exhibition.

PROOF Updates

Diamond Exhibition Contest Winners

Congratulations to the "Share your Diamond Exhibition Story" contest winners! Special mention to Steve Miller, who won a Moonbird for his captivating story about "Deja Vu."

Generative Art Explorer Giveaway

Stay tuned for the announcement of the Diamond Exhibition Mint Pass winners from our Generative Art Explorer giveaway next week. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Marfa Meetup

We had an incredible meetup in Marfa, Texas, with over 100 PROOF community members in attendance. It was a fantastic opportunity to connect with you all in our little slice of Web3 desert paradise! For a ‘boots on the ground’ review of our Marfa Meetup and what went on over the week, check out Stevey’s thread below:

Upcoming Events

• MNTGE x PROOF Event (September 29): Join us in LA for the grand finale of the Diamond Exhibition residency at Foundry. This event will feature MNTGE’s vintage denim customization, an exclusive evening edition of 100 PROOF, and music by Jeremy Sole. Holders will have access to limited edition patches available only at the event. RSVP here.

• Outliers Showcase (October 1): Foundry will switch to exhibiting works from our Outliers Showcase, a collaboration between Transient Labs and PROOF. Enjoy brunch and an in-person panel discussion with participating Outliers artists. RSVP here.

• Frieze London at Pace Gallery (October 11): PROOF will be at Frieze London to celebrate the CP1919 collection at Pace Gallery. Experience new digital artwork by Peter Saville and Stephen Morris featuring unreleased audio from the Joy Division archive. Learn more.

Reminders

• Have you voted for the recent Lunar Society proposals? Visit the Lunar Society proposals page to review active, pre-vote, and passed proposals, and share your thoughts on future initiatives.

Community Updates

Command+A Contest Winner

Congratulations to Stas May for winning the Command+A contest! Kudos to the Dead Birds Society for initiating this exciting platform, and uncovering emerging Moonbird artists.

Community Council Survey

The Community Council has been a valuable resource for the team, acting as a sounding board and providing consistent feedback and ideas. Their bi-weekly meetings with the team have been invaluable and we are grateful for their support.

Community members: Fill out this survey to help the community council better understand our community demographics.

An Inside Look: ‘Viridaria: Alice’s Mirror & Sarah’s Brush’

This week’s art piece is written by Kaloh, as he delves into the complexities of generative and A.I. art through his newsletter and podcast, and is the founder of the Blind Gallery.

In today’s segment, I would like to share a brief analysis of a generative PROOF artist from Arkansas, USA: Sarah Ridgley. Her latest release, Viridaria, composed of 450 individual pieces, was created for the Diamond Exhibition and is currently on view at the Foundry until September 29th.

The whole vibe of Viridaria is inspired by Alice’s adventures in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Just as Alice had to flip her logic to escape the Garden of Live Flowers, these artworks challenge us to see things from a fresh angle.

The pieces are an Alice-esque trip, making you think backward to move forward and really see what’s going on. They’re slightly mirrored – it’s like they’re winking at you, nudging you to look again, to think again, to challenge what’s in front of you. This is especially evident when you look at Viridaria as a whole.

The spontaneous dance between paint and canvas seen in Viridaria uses a digital form of the decalcomania technique, a blotting process where paint is squeezed between two surfaces, pressed together, and pulled apart to create a mirror image. It’s closely intertwined with automatism, an art form where the artist creates work “automatically,” producing work that appears random but represents a greater message created from the deeper subconscious.

Sarah’s brush dances, creating wild flora and bold, unapologetically imperfect strokes, are common themes across her practice. Another example from Ridgley is Eyeshadow Roses. This is the first time I got hit by the Ridgley wave during Art Basel Hong Kong, 2022.

Now, Sarah isn’t just a generative artist, she’s also an asemic poet, a real maestro of the wordless word, channeling influence from the greats like Vera Molnar.

Asemic writing is, in simple terms, abstract writing. There are no real words, only lines and shapes that trick your brain into thinking there’s script on the page. Interestingly, Vera Molnar, who is widely known as a computational art pioneer – and Ridgley’s inspiration source – used to create asemics works, too. One of the most popular is the Lettres à ma mère series.

Viridaria mixes mysterious writing and generative gardens, bringing to mind the weird and wonderful world of Alice in Through the Looking Glass. Each piece seems to be a hidden door to a secret place, asking us to look closer and explore what’s hidden beneath the surface.

This Week in PROOF Media

Here is a quick rundown of some of the top highlights from PROOF’s weekly content!

PROOF Daily NFT Countdown

This week, our Director of Research, Sam, highlighted Pudgy Penguins making their way to over 2,000 Walmart locations on the PROOF Daily NFT Countdown. Catch the insightful discussion here.

100 PROOF

Don’t miss last week’s 100 PROOF recorded from Art Blocks weekend in Marfa, TX, featuring exclusive guest appearances from Snowfro and NiftyFifty. And tune in on Youtube or Twitter Spaces for this week’s live 100 PROOF, Friday at 830pm PST with special guests Terrell Jones, Gala Marija Vrbanic from Tribute Brand, and Nick Adler from MNTGE!