Mysterious and bold — NFT pioneer PAK
"The Nothing" — we read on the artists' Twitter bio as their identity is cloaked in mystery. Although we tend to think of Pak as an individual, today we do not actually know if they are a single person or a collective, let alone their gender identity. I greatly enjoyed the article by Kelly Crow in the Wall Street Journal titled “Who Is Pak? The Artist’s Fans Couldn’t Care Less” (2021). It brilliantly captures the true essence of the entire Metaverse art ecosystem.
'An omniscient designer/developer/wizard' (Nifty Gateway), today Pak is also one of the most recognized NFT artists out there. Pak advanced to becoming one of the most expensive living artists ever sold at a public auction in just two years of artistic activity — they released their first NFT, “Cloud Monument Dark” (ed. 1/1), via SuperRare in February 2020. Chinese collector named Whaleshark purchased the item for (only) $787 (3.5 ETH).
Pak is very active on Twitter and their Twitter feed appears to be almost like a separate artistic project. On January 5th 2021, Pak tweeted:
“Global auction houses. This is for you. I want this piece of art. Show us all. I’ll choose.“
Sotheby's once again did not dissapoint the art world by responding: “We are intrigued…”
Arttactic claims that this seemless tweet exchange marked a significant breakthrough in Pak’s career as well as the growth of the NFT market. In April 2021 the artist released "The Fungible Collection" — a three-day sale and auction sold through Nifty Gateway, in collaboration with Sotheby’s. The collection, which mostly concentrated on open editions and auctions, raised a total of $16.8 million. "The Switch", a single edition NFT sold at auction, fetched a record price of $1.4 million alone.
During the auction, you merely had 15-minutes each day to purchase as many units of the “cubes” as you wanted. You could purchase the cubes individually and depending on the number of cubes owned, you'd receive a different set of NFTs based on the pre-determined sizes (The Cube, Five Cubes, Ten Cubes, Twenty Cubes, Fifty Cubes, etc). So if a collector bought a single cube, they would receive 1 NFT titled “A Cube”. If they bought 11 cubes, they would get 2 NFTs — “Ten Cubes” and “A Cube”. During the three day auction, 23 500 units of cubes were sold, which equalled to 6165 NFTs produced. (Arttactic)
<..> The Fungible not only provides collectors with novel assurances of scarcity and ownership, but exposes them to the unique features with which technology can endow artwork. Through this collection, Pak scrutinizes our understanding of value. What does value mean, and from where does it derive authority?
( Sotheby's)
Pak is also renowned for developing Archillect, an artificial intelligence program that s a virtual curator. The AI program goes by “she/her” pronounces and was introduced by the artist in late 2014. The AI program scans and learns what posts are popular on various social medias and reposts it on her social media feeds, seeking to reach as many people and be liked as many times as possible.
Archillect [archive + intellect] is an AI created to discover and share stimulating visual content over social media channels. She is a living inspiration archive. She is a digital muse. https://archillect.com/about
However, Pak truly sweeped the NFT and art communities off their feet in December 2021, after a $91.8 million revenue sale of the artwork "Merge".
"Merge" was on sale for 48 hours on Nifty Gateway, with buyers able to purchase “mass units,” or shares in the artwork, rather than individual copies of an NFT edition. During the sale, a collector could buy as many mass units as they desired; these NFTs would later be “merged” into a single piece and rated based on the mass volume. In theory, a single collector could have bought every unit. A total of 312,686 units were sold to 28,983 unique wallets (meaning, that 28,983 NFTs were generated). Pak broke the record for the most expensive single artwork sold publicly by a living artist that was last set by Jeff Koons’s 1986 sculpture "Rabbit" in 2019.
And finally, my personal favorite by Pak — “The Title” (2021). The entire collection was made of NFT's that appeared to look exactly the same but cost different amounts. The only difference between the aforementioned NFTs was that the title differred with each piece.
With the release of this collection, Pak has made a statement that NFTs are not valued for their image aesthetics, but rather for the mere ownership of a file that is considered a commodity. Still, I find this collection highly artistic as it wins us over with artistic daring and allure.
Pak is all about thinking outside of the cube. Even if artist shocks us differently than Marc Quinn, Damien Hirst or Piero Manzoni — Pak appeals to our sense of humor and boundaries of logic. They boldly approach everyone as equals — whether addressing auction houses, Elon Musk or Leonardo DiCaprio.
The incredible success of the artist proves that while we have a certain limitation in the physical realm, the conceptual realm is limitless and full of unrealized potential. I recommend reading Paks' interview with a contemporary art curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. While perhaps not a 5 minute morning coffee read, the interview is incredibly rich, philosophical and fun:
HUO: What do you mean when you say, “Design is hack”?
P: A design is the simplest, most elegant solution to a problem. An identifiable problem lives in a system. Design therefore corrects a flaw in an existing system. Imagine it as a bridge designed to prevent traffic congestion. I find this way of thinking to be very “hacker-like,” which is to say that designers “hack” systems by offering attractive shortcuts and attempting to hide the flaws as much as possible. Design is therefore a hack.
Pak is truly an NFT pioneer, joining the NFT community early and with great passion, not resting a day ever since. While the artists’ clientelle is 94% male, with the collaboration with Wikileaks / Assange in February of 2022, we witnessed a rise (33%) in female account activity. Perhaps design is the hack for the future of NFT community inclusion and diversity.
Kotryna Tribusinaite, 2022
©ArtAdvance
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