The first newsletter of 2022: maybe it was all about the jpegs we made along the way
Happy new year everyone! We’re thrilled about this new year, especially with our new release coming up very soon.
During the past two weeks we have been building, as we previously said, to deliver an “open closed beta” allowing new curatorial tools, better UX, and a brand new architecture. We’ll delve deeper into this in the following newsletter edition though, since we want this first newsletter of 2022 to be all about the people that have supported JPG and/or are part of our universe and we’re part of theirs.
TLDR, after seeing the (mostly cringe - we loved a few of them and you know who you are because you’ll probably find yourself in our Twitter frens list) 2021 recaps, we also want to jump on the bandwagon and do ours. We’ll streamline it a bit more and deliver something slightly more useful than a platitudefest, and hopefully something that will help inspire your future creations on JPG and help others discover projects and people that are constantly contributing to our cultural landscape.
First off, we are proud to announce that the landmark exhibition The Digital that took place at Miami Art Basel, now has found an on-chain home at JPG.
Curated by ARTXCODE founder Sofia Garcia and Kate Hannah of Art Blocks, The Digital finally gave generative art the exhibition it deserved after a year where the medium’s breakthrough into popular consciousness was accompanied by several lazily conceived, poorly-lit, badly-ratioed displays by people who really should know better. Sofia and Kate’s stunning production was the talk of the town at Miami beyond the NFT folk, and it showed how great a difference deep knowledge and appreciation for an artform makes when putting on an exhibition. We’re incredibly proud to be hosting its digital afterlife on JPG for everyone to see.
Secondly, we have been working on a Twitter list of Frens of JPG where you can find the culture movers and shakers, the critics, the creators and the shitposters we love and follow. Everyone can follow this list by clicking here. We hope that this will help a bit in reducing noise in the NFT industry, but first and foremost, we hope that following what our frens have to say will inspire you and stir new discourse and conversations. Disclaimer: the list is still in construction, so if you’re a fren and not included, don’t despair - i’m on it!
Before wrapping up this edition, let’s do a roll call for drops and interesting stuff the frens have been up to:
Figure31’s new drop - featuring a custom smart contract and once again, a very intelligent concept
Brian Frye gifting Andy Warhol pantry tokens to token holders and new buyers - back around November he did a uni lecture on NFTs and featured this collection, and then put it for sale.
DEAFBEEF new and much anticipated new drop, Degenerative, is finally here
Aurèce Vettier’s drop on OBJKT that I got to see IRL in Paris a few weeks ago during the A Magazine Curated By event (Paul if you can read this, id love that photo you have with me with three gift bags)
One Arm Bandit by Distributed Gallery’s up for sale on OpenSea - the authors of one of my earliest favorite blockchain based physical art pieces are back at it!
We were mentioned on the Interdependence podcast a couple times! Thanks Simon and Mat :)
Mat’s latest Twitter thoughts on web2 vs web3 are incredibly on point
Outland finalized their series on NFT people (thank you for featuring me and sam <3)
Micol from VerticalCrypto Art’s excellent feature on Whitewalls
Copyright, appropriation, satire, and everything in between - thus, everything I love. Thanks Brian for sharing Phublic Domain.
Finally, we want to make our closed beta quite open because we contain multitudes. We’ll be whitelisting everyone that fills out this typeform and you’ll be able to create on JPG very soon. Make sure to fill out the form and stay tuned for the launch email!
See you all soon!