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Sam Spratt

@SamSpratt83,504 subscribers

Creating from rupture. Paths forward from past missteps. Masquerade and the Masks of Luci

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The best way to explore masks is the map.

The best way to explore masks is the map.

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Much of the design of my new site was made around rabbit holes. To start with the surface of something simple, say a skull, then slip between (and into) each artwork, collection, person, psalm, their contributions, and how each piece fits together.

Much of the design of my new site was made around rabbit holes. To start with the surface of something simple, say a skull, then slip between (and into) each artwork, collection, person, psalm, their contributions, and how each piece fits together.

52,675 просмотров

A very good morning. Welcome to The Council Benji This marks the third Skull in a little run. The first went to a fund I've never met. The second: through Eli Scheinman to a new collector/foundation who has been quietly entering the space in a very significant way across a number of collections whom I’ve never spoken to. Their new entrance enabled a wedding and start of a new married life for Conviction. In my very first conversation with him, we spoke about curses and commitments to the people we love. Since meeting got to talk through each step on that path, from letting go, what is imbued in the ring and ceremony of it all, a proposal, and on the way to the most important of the steps in pursuit of a blessed life. It is easy to get a little cynical on the over-leveraged exit stories that spring up from time to time, so it is a treat to watch one go towards a celebration that’s been building up in his life since the Skull was first acquired. And now: this. The third Skull and the first I can really write about as a shared story across both source and destination. An exit and an entrance. The exit: The Skulls of Luci were awarded as gifts 4 years ago. But before I'd minted Birth of Luci or painted the other 49, the first person in this space I showed the sketch of The Blueprint Skull to was actually Casey💎, when he was working at SuperRare . Casey was the very first person who onboarded me to NFTs, helping me navigate the early days of whatever it meant to even mint something. I explained the idea of gifting one to each person who bid in my first auctions. Though most of the Skulls went to the bidders, Casey's didn't. He didn't ask for one. I didn't tell him I'd give him one. But he helped me take my first steps here, and it's hard to imagine any of this making sense, or unfolding the way it has, without him. Since then, we've broken bread across continents, seen quite a lot of chortling margarita consumption, watched the rise and fall of a lot around us, weathered inter-Council dramas. He brought Laura El into The Monument Game, played as a Player, wore a Mask. Most of the vibe that started all of this, the wild west of it, feels faded in the broader space at times. But every Skull has a story and a person who helped us get here. Casey will always be the one who was there before any metric muddled the reason to care. The entrance: Last fall, Benji came over for a studio visit. We walked through Luci, the works, structure, and dream, as anyone who visits does. But we mostly talked about being a father and having a father. We discussed the very idea of "collection" stripped of accumulation, value, or signal, located more in the act or ceremony of it. What it was to grow up with a curious father who studied the edges of each thing he saw to know the next layer beneath why anyone might look or ignore it. That to pass this on is to pass on questioning, more than it is to pass on any kind of answer. The process of collecting can be perceived as an individual act of hoarding. For some it is maybe. But at its best, it's a way to bind through shared questioning, to bond in cooperation and competition with friends and family, it is the swapped story and meme of it all, and each object gathered along the way carries some shared memory that can, often does, and with intent: should; drift out of the object entirely. All in the psalm, always has been. The studio visit came and went. Soon after, a package arrived in the mail with two of the softest stuffed animals added to my daughter's own collection, now among her favorites. The Skull is a bonus to that, in the scheme of shared memory. For Rachel and I, while we are heads down making a body of work that unsettles us and excites us but demands unknown time to accomplish, it means a great deal to have this kind of support from long term people in the quiet process of making work we want to leave behind ourselves. Enormously grateful to Casey for the many years of support and friendship, to Benny for being a true patron, and to Benji for entering the arena for what I'm working on next. Welcome.

A very good morning. Welcome to The Council Benji This marks the third Skull in a little run. The first went to a fund I've never met. The second: through Eli Scheinman to a new collector/foundation who has been quietly entering the space in a very significant way across a number of collections whom I’ve never spoken to. Their new entrance enabled a wedding and start of a new married life for Conviction. In my very first conversation with him, we spoke about curses and commitments to the people we love. Since meeting got to talk through each step on that path, from letting go, what is imbued in the ring and ceremony of it all, a proposal, and on the way to the most important of the steps in pursuit of a blessed life. It is easy to get a little cynical on the over-leveraged exit stories that spring up from time to time, so it is a treat to watch one go towards a celebration that’s been building up in his life since the Skull was first acquired. And now: this. The third Skull and the first I can really write about as a shared story across both source and destination. An exit and an entrance. The exit: The Skulls of Luci were awarded as gifts 4 years ago. But before I'd minted Birth of Luci or painted the other 49, the first person in this space I showed the sketch of The Blueprint Skull to was actually Casey💎, when he was working at SuperRare . Casey was the very first person who onboarded me to NFTs, helping me navigate the early days of whatever it meant to even mint something. I explained the idea of gifting one to each person who bid in my first auctions. Though most of the Skulls went to the bidders, Casey's didn't. He didn't ask for one. I didn't tell him I'd give him one. But he helped me take my first steps here, and it's hard to imagine any of this making sense, or unfolding the way it has, without him. Since then, we've broken bread across continents, seen quite a lot of chortling margarita consumption, watched the rise and fall of a lot around us, weathered inter-Council dramas. He brought Laura El into The Monument Game, played as a Player, wore a Mask. Most of the vibe that started all of this, the wild west of it, feels faded in the broader space at times. But every Skull has a story and a person who helped us get here. Casey will always be the one who was there before any metric muddled the reason to care. The entrance: Last fall, Benji came over for a studio visit. We walked through Luci, the works, structure, and dream, as anyone who visits does. But we mostly talked about being a father and having a father. We discussed the very idea of "collection" stripped of accumulation, value, or signal, located more in the act or ceremony of it. What it was to grow up with a curious father who studied the edges of each thing he saw to know the next layer beneath why anyone might look or ignore it. That to pass this on is to pass on questioning, more than it is to pass on any kind of answer. The process of collecting can be perceived as an individual act of hoarding. For some it is maybe. But at its best, it's a way to bind through shared questioning, to bond in cooperation and competition with friends and family, it is the swapped story and meme of it all, and each object gathered along the way carries some shared memory that can, often does, and with intent: should; drift out of the object entirely. All in the psalm, always has been. The studio visit came and went. Soon after, a package arrived in the mail with two of the softest stuffed animals added to my daughter's own collection, now among her favorites. The Skull is a bonus to that, in the scheme of shared memory. For Rachel and I, while we are heads down making a body of work that unsettles us and excites us but demands unknown time to accomplish, it means a great deal to have this kind of support from long term people in the quiet process of making work we want to leave behind ourselves. Enormously grateful to Casey for the many years of support and friendship, to Benny for being a true patron, and to Benji for entering the arena for what I'm working on next. Welcome.

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Together, we Masquerade.

Together, we Masquerade.

11,301 просмотров

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What is the Masquerade?

Sam Spratt

110,671 просмотров • 1 год назад

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Masquerade now hangs in The Toledo Museum of Art. But unlike a painting, Masquerade holds within itself: a gathering of people in the network and systems to connect us. The piece is not "A" piece. It is every Mask, every dot, every observation made and, through a new layer, every one yet to be made. I feel both stupidly lucky and genuinely honored to bring everyone who has given energy to Luci out of the network and into a place that has honored my work and the work of so many other artists I deeply admire with immense and precise care. This absurd world of masks and monkeys I love so much because of what has been shared between people through it has had my love compound through the care of people. To help to protect and preserve a story bigger than my own, not unlike what has taken place atop its surface. Much as the systems of participation echoed the systems of its creation, so too does its curation and cultivation by others help it grow. Masquerade now hangs in a museum, but it hangs alongside a cadre of digital art's giants in an exhibition titled “Infinite Images,” which sits centered inside a museum filled with the giants of art history itself. For this to happen requires a lattice frequency of care: not as a feeling, but as something intensely actionable. Care—demonstrated through sacrifice and skin in the game. It pours out of the dark blue diamond walls and the work atop them and into our orange room; it bleeds from every installation, overflowing from each and every artist, and the space between each of us within. Care is revealed through a curator who helped me understand my own work more but also learn what connects me backwards to the shoulders I stand on. Julia Kaganskiy 🇺🇦 found and presented our systems not as separate worlds, but as part of one system of life—all while bringing into life of a higher order: her first child. Care extended through a director, Adam Levine, who pushed for something quite radical and got his hands dirty to allow this show to even exist. The Museum and the people who keep its engine moving treated our new as sacred as their old. They did so not to onboard, but to remain. A portal that lifts up a movement happening in the network by seeing the need to connect our nodes rather than relegate or shut the gate behind. Doing this required the patronage of Alan Howard, channeled through the cataloging brilliance of Martina Negro, and the willingness of high‑order patronage to become a cooperative network rather than an adversarial one. In that cooperation is where Masquerade’s place in the exhibition came through Kanbas. A throughline drawn between the roles of our ecosystem. Of what can be built between us if we see each other as one ecosystem, both different and essential. An exhibition filled with cutting‑edge technology and masterful presentation does not exist with only artists or curators or museums; it is enabled through a network of generous patronage and curiosity. Kanbas helped me take what began as the orange room with a digital confessional that is Rachel and I’s studio in New York, that last year became The Monument Game boat‑dock exhibition in Venice, Italy through the genius of ScriptedFantasy and support of Ryan Zurrer, and evolve it to sit in a Museum in a way that does not just exhibit the work, but educates and invites people to come closer who may not know any of this even exists. Rather than just house the singular work, Kanbas and Amanda cared to share the network of 613 Masks and the people who wear them with it. Care came through my team who built Masquerade with me in Nifty Gateway Studio. Chrisly, Ashlin, Bob, Nirali, Tara, and all who pitched in make our interface and systems accessible to a whole new audience; to build infrastructure and enable thousands of people who have never touched the blockchain to create a wallet just by leaving an Observation atop the Masquerade is more than a feature: it is spreading the network rather than closing its gates. I feel so lucky to have such a tremendous team of people to think not as a marketplace, but as stewards to present what we have been building well and improve it with time and circumstance. This patronage enabled artistry within artistry to thrive, through a masterful exhibition design led by Richard The, technology and fabrication partners through TCI in Greg and Anthony, Jack with projections, and fabricators through Bednark. With me is my brilliant engineer, Alex Borre, who has broken apart all of this alongside me and helped me grow as an artist. By my side has been joeyL.eth, the eternal vibe check of taste, restraint, and precision - the finest eye and mind I know, and the relentless, perpetual support of El Barba Roja blue check who championed and willed this exhibition into existence more than anyone. No matter how much “this is how we build” has looped and human‑centipeded in on itself through cynical interpretations, in this case, it truly is, and his hands are all over not just my contribution, but many others in this show, as well as in the exhibition’s foundation itself. But in the end: care has been given in the highest order by my wife Rachel Spratt who has done what all new great mothers do and given life through tremendous exertion. We did not take a break after Masquerade, because it just immediately became Masquerade IRL. She has given to me, given to our daughter Syla, given to our tribe of Masks and Skulls, to this exhibition: everything. What is left after one gives all away, no matter how sweetly, can be a hollowing of self or, if met well before a break, a shedding of self. To sit in this beautiful room together, within an exhibition this magnificent, inside a building this rich with history and love of humanity, and have so much care be put in to match hers by this network around us on and offline, I got to sit in pride because I knew this very real moment for me, that began so alone and has become quite collective, would simply, unequivocally, never even come close to existing without her. So much of my life has been defined by solitude. I was not expecting having my work presented like this to move me so much. I thought it would be more of a feather in the cap or rather beautiful box to check. But it isn't that at all. It's connection to others. I fell in love with the artists' work that sits alongside my own. I saw Dmitri Cherniak's Ringers I’ve seen a thousand times, but saw them again in a way my daughter could visualize her own curiosity about the world—decisions in how these were shared served a higher purpose: to communicate. I saw Casey REAS as someone not just as a pioneer, but as someone more real—who, like my wife, cut part of himself out and set it aside to see what others could create. I saw Operator not as slick performers of the code, but as arbiters of freedom. I saw invitations to see the humanity in code in dozens of directions, and gratitude to sit even close to any of it. Talent. Sweat. Blood. Skin in the game. The artists pushed. The fabricators pushed. The docents pushed. Not one of us is like the other and no template was ever to be made to try to force otherwise. On September 12th, I will be inviting every holder of Luci: Masks, Players, Council, to come out to a small town in Ohio and leave a bit of themselves behind and get a very deep look into the world I am trying to build in the process. More on that very soon, but should you be able to come, know that there is much to care about beyond what I’ve built within this exhibition—and I hope you will fall in love with the rest of these infinite worlds as I have. We all know we aren't supposed to touch the paintings in a museum. But my daughter Syla touched the illuminated lightbox of Masquerade that she unknowingly stars in at the center of, and I smiled. Because she's not touching a world of divine objects susceptible to fingerprints and pretense; she's touching a display. A front‑end stand‑in representation for the network of humanity underneath. A place where light, code, instructions, a design that rhymes across all things has formed a very unlikely but very real gathering of strangers over the last few years to create together. I feel lucky for her to grow up surrounded by people who create and who care.

Sam Spratt

49,063 просмотров • 10 месяцев назад

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A mess of additions to the Masquerade and Mask Market we announced in Toledo are now live. I walk through them in the video but the purpose is to continue to close the distance between each mask from one another and close the distance between each mask and the Masquerade itself, creating many tunnels to slip between Mask, Masquerade, Observation, Response, and back, burrowing between the links in the network. Changes to the Mask Market: Masks are now sorted by Chroma in a long gradient Masks can now be sorted by Region where its Observation was placed Masks can now be sorted by their adornments such as which Masks have horns or tusks Masks can now be sorted by their materials such as wood, stone, ebony, or feather Reserved Masks for the Exhibition Winners have been given a new Rank A strip of other Mask thumbnails if viewable when you go to each Mask page Sped up the page performance to load much quicker Changes to the Masquerade: All Masks are now viewable within the Masquerade viewer Masks can be viewed by hovering over each, or enlarged and cycled through in a gallery viewer The default ordering of observations is now randomized, making each time you revisit the page surface someone new. Replies are now collapsed helping with legibility Added Rank badging from the Market to the Observation panel (Finalist, Seer, Council, etc) There are some additional changes and tweaks from our Toledo experience which will be making their way in soon as well but I hope you enjoy the changes. My deep thanks to Nifty Gateway Studio for continuing to support this as a living and breathing record of this gathering rather than a “drop” or marketplace and to Lanett Bennett Grant for surfacing and working with us to make it better through her amazing Mask deep dives. The work continues.

Sam Spratt

21,358 просмотров • 8 месяцев назад

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Together, we Masquerade.

Sam Spratt

11,301 просмотров • 1 год назад

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