Join Our Communities
IN
IN
JPN
EN
Bjorn Calleja is a contemporary painter and interdisciplinary visual artist living and working in Manila in the Philippines. His work is highly influenced by his childhood’s aesthetics, popular culture, kitsch, and the Manila landscape drawing on ideas around identity, spirituality, politics, history, and art history.
I am inspired by life, the trinity of identities (person, people, human), and humans versus their environments. The animations I mint as NFTs are narratives of transformation and looping journeys that speak of internal struggles and triumphs of existence.
The evolution of my art has had a journey of its own, from studying the foundation of traditional painting, to relearning ways to break the techniques, which involved a lot of happy accidents and mastery of mistakes. I was able to develop a style, characters, and a universe that I could claim as mine.
First and most importantly it’s the eco-friendliness and energy efficiency of Tezos NFTs. Second is the quality of the art and artists that make up the Tezos community. Adding to that is the energy of the early Tezos community - I’ve met a lot of good and interesting people, and made a number of good friends.
I started my NFT journey with Hic et Nunc, mainly because this was the only available option at the time, but I’ve also minted a few pieces on OBJKT.com and Versum.xyz. I am excited about the inception and evolution of both platforms.
Tommy Chandra is a veteran illustrator and graphic designer with over 14 years of experience from Indonesia. Chandra first became interested in the world of Tezos NFTs during the pandemic, when he was looking for inspiration. His love of tech and art found a home in the rapidly expanding NFT scene, and he quickly garnered a following for his unique, bright and visually complex artworks.
My inspirations include the built environment, robots, and daily pop culture. I would say my style is sleek, geometric based and detailed with vibrant colors. I think my style is influenced by my education in architecture early on.
I first discovered Tezos in May 2021. I chose to mint on Tezos because of its affordable gas fees and its green credentials. The small amount of gas fees really helps budding creators to enter the NFT world.
Besides that, I find the Tezos community solid and supportive of each other. The first platform I used was Hic et Nunc (later called TEIA) and I am still using it now. I also use OBJKT.com now for my OSISO project (bit.ly/OSISONFT).
Why do I like OBJKT.com? Because I can create several collections on one platform!
Malaysian visual artist and poet Mumu the Stan, AKA Munira Hamzah, AKA Moon, got into the world of Tezos NFTs through her fun and accessible pixel art. One memorable online interaction with acclaimed Linkin Park musician, producer and artist, Mike Shinoda, launched her career in a new direction.
I love exploring a bunch of styles, as I can get bored of doing the same thing over and over quite easily. In terms of my pixel art, I am inspired by how simple it can look although it isn’t quite as easy as it seems. Reducing something to a few pixels yet having it still be recognizable is a fun challenge. It’s sort of like a puzzle.
I absolutely love the 8-bit look. Something so cute and seemingly simple can bring so much joy to people. Aside from that, creating pixel animations frame by frame and pixel by pixel is a meditative process for me. Taking things one step at a time, without knowing what the outcome will be is quite liberating
When I first started minting NFTs, the minting and transaction costs on other blockchains were really quite hard to swallow.
When I got to know the environmental cost of NFTs, however, was when I really stopped and asked myself whether I wanted to keep doing this. I started researching alternatives and clean NFTs, and was invited into the clean NFT Discord. There, we discussed and learned a lot about Proof of Stake blockchains. Joanie Lamercier started minting on Tezos on Hic et Nunc and it seemed interesting to me, and I started minting there too.
Other than the clean NFT factor, the community is amazing, and the fact that Tezos has self amendability is just one of the things I love about it.
Currently, I use Teia the most because it is a community run and community owned platform, with an ethos of decentralization, egalitarianism, representation, and empowerment that I absolutely believe in.
CS LIM is an artist with an engineering background. He was an engineer working on AI and autonomous driving. He started his journey into generative art about three years ago, and became aware of NFTs in March 2020.
I would say it is a combination of chance and my experience. I was fortunate enough to make good use of the opportunities presented to me. I don’t think I was clever and prepared well in advance. Rather, I like to solve problems that happen by chance. I think the style of my work also stems from a drive to solve problems. My major focus was AI, and I just liked the arts. All I did was bring them together.
As the burden of fees gradually increased on other blockchains and the experience of using those networks became poor, other alternatives had to be considered. Currently, I am using various blockchains including Tezos. For Tezos, the pleasant network environment and friendly community are very impressive. I’m designing several generative art collections, and I think I can share them on fxhash soon.
Reva is a digital artist who mainly creates generative art. She studied computer graphics and after completing postgraduate studies worked as an algorithm engineer in movie, VR, and AR for six years. She has been creating generative art since 2018.
My main inspiration comes from math and interesting algorithms. My computer science background has a great influence on my creative thinking. I often look at the formation and development of things in this world from the perspective of science and technology, and like to explore the relationship between rationality and sensibility.
In the beginning it was because I saw a lot of artists starting to get into Hic et Nunc to post their work. Out of curiosity, I went to visit the site and found that the temperament of this platform is very special, and the artistic and creative atmosphere of the community is very good.
When I first started creating NFTs, I was mainly active on other public chains. Later, after learning about Tezos, I published works on Hic et Nunc, OBJKT.com, and fxhash. I especially like the fxhash platform because its minting mode is great for algorithmically generated artists.
Sarah Ridgley’s artistic background is in printmaking. Before she discovered generative art, Ridgley worked with letterpress and risograph printing. When Ridgley discovered generative art, she was captivated by the concept of drawing with code.
My personal style is focused on reflecting themes in nature and the natural world. I enjoy exploring different ways to create lines and shapes, and developing my own techniques to create texture and organic patterns. I also spend a lot of time working with color and have developed my own palettes that I refer to throughout my work.
I love Tezos because it’s so easy to get started and allows for a lot of experimentation without a high investment cost. I released some work on Hic et Nunc when it was still a pretty new platform and the community was just lovely. My first on-chain generative Tezos project (Memory of Nymphaeas) was on the Endless Ways platform, which is now sadly not open any more. But that’s the beauty of the blockchain, my work and code will always live on.
Yazid’s background might seem a little unconventional and not at all art-related. From a young age he had a thing for computers and making things with them. Yazid dabbled with graphics software like Photoshop, Flash, and made websites. Research through his work brought about an understanding of the potential for expression and creativity through NFTs, and in early 2021 his first pair of mints appeared on NFT marketplace Rarible.
I was inspired by creators in the space who seemed to have a similar background as me - people who were working in tech/software and found a way to make use of the same skills to create art. Through their journeys, it showed me that it was possible to find creative fulfillment from the practice of art.
In terms of my stylistic inspirations, it’s really all over the place. You’d be able to find hints of early computer art, mid-century graphic design styles, classic abstract/minimalist art in my work. I’m attracted to minimalist art because of my fascination with logo design and branding, the possibility of conveying entire feelings and messages with the simplest elements.
One of the original reasons I minted on Tezos—Hic et Nunc, in particular— was because I wanted to mint NFTs on a platform that could support interactive OBJKTs created using the software that a lot of generative artists use, which is p5js.
At the time, they were one of the few that were open and were conducive to experimentation (by way of affordable mint costs as well as having a community that was supportive of the format). ‘MAKE NOISE’ was created using p5js, but didn’t utilize the interactive OBJKT format.
Marcelo Soria-Rodriguez always had an interest in creative endeavors; art in all its forms and also in creative displays in other disciplines. He co-founded Databeers, a data literacy movement, to spread truths and dispel myths about data and data science. He finds art to be an invaluable tool to think and reflect on change, and to express what hasn’t come yet to be.
My first long-form project, Entretiempos, comes from my love of Sonia Delaunay and other painters from her time. I find inspiration in music, in geometry, in feelings. In light and shadow.
I use art as a tool to think: thinking and making art feed back into each other. I also like to write my thoughts from time to time around certain topics. I like to think about the consequences of advanced machines, and whichever kinds of new intelligence that may arise.
I saw a tweet by Mario Klingemann, @quasimondo, about the now disappeared Hic et Nunc, and I loved the feel there. I was relatively early (my first mint was #809 in the platform). I stayed there for as long as it lived. The community was incredible, and there was an energy I have seldom found elsewhere. When fxhash came around, a good friend and also an artist told me about it and I rushed to create my first project, which I completed in around one day, building off some rough idea I had played with for some days.
The various platforms I have used to mint, sell and collect in Tezos enable open-ended discovery and exploration through the ultra-low gas fees. It also helps to know that you don’t need to carbon-offset your work heavily.
Iskra Velitchkova came to the world of NFTs through her career in Data Visualization. A successful career in Information Design leading her own firm gave her the opportunity to work with some of the top businesses in the world across machine learning. Many philosophical questions arose and Velitchkova realized that art was the only way to cover those concerns. She quit her job and spent a year gathering all her experience over almost a decade. She started playing with physical elements and materials in her process and the NFTs followed.
My biggest inspiration is nature and people. I am quite obsessed with connections - what connects us to each other, to our context, what makes us similar, and what makes us different. I truly believe working in a team with machines can lead us to new answers to very old questions. All my works aim to connect the human part of the generative narrative with the power that machines can bring to the dialogue.
I will always remember my landing in Hic et Nunc as the only time in my life that I felt being in the right moment, in the right place. I felt automatically connected with the platform and the community. I believe we should understand platforms as channels to communicate and each one offers different contexts to the space, but the community is something bigger. When it comes to Tezos I have published in HEN, Versum, OBJKT, and fxhash. The Tezos ecosystem feels really unique.
Song Ting is considered one of China’s top NFT artists in one of the most exciting NFT markets in the world. Her work - Peony Dream – sold for RMB 667,000 (c. 100,000 USD). It was the first sale of a blockchain-based artwork held at an auction house better known for selling traditional Chinese works including calligraphy. She is also a 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 artist.
I am inspired by Chinese traditional literature and works written hundreds or thousands of years ago. These have had a very profound influence on me since I was in kindergarten. Some of my own family are university teachers on Chinese traditional literature. I was seven when I started to read my family’s books on the topic.
As ambassador of International Olymp’ Arts, I needed to find a more sustainable and energy-friendly way to create digital artworks. ‘NFTs for good’ is very important to me, so Tezos was a logical choice.
NFTs entered Bell’s radar in 2019. He was fascinated with smart contract design, experimenting with zero knowledge proofs, VyperLang’s 721 implementation, and active in The Graph’s NFT metadata standards calls. He built many early NFT subgraphs. The art came much later.
I’m continually inspired by new mechanisms and ideas that are being explored within the space. For generative art specifically, I think Chromie Squiggle nailed it and really got the ball rolling. Now, fxhash has my attention.
Hanging out in the Proof community, I kept seeing these stunning, experimental pieces that collectors were sharing. I checked out the platform docs, grabbed the p5 repo on Github, and I was hooked.
Trained as a computational physicist and currently working as a full-time researcher, Qingnan Tang AKA Random Combo spends most of his day crunching numbers, coding, and modeling.
He enjoys dealing with complex systems and observing patterns, then understanding them. Part of the excitement comes from the appreciation of the beauty embedded in the high level of complexity, as is the case for many of the gen art systems. He has been creating generative art systems for several years now.
Both my scientific background and Chinese art background forged my style of art. The former encourages me to explore the fundamental concepts: circles, rectangles, flow fields, noise, etc.
Once I truly perceive the power of these basic elements, I am able to reach “coherence” in them. That usually leads to complex yet simple art forms, and I really enjoyed creating art this way. The latter infused ink painting elements into my art works. I explored the realm of traditional art with modern generative tools, which I think will open up new possibilities. Zhu and Mei are artworks that signify this.
Tezos in my opinion has a great artistic community. I’ve used Hic et Nunc when it was still around and also fxhash.
Nicolas Sassoon is a Franco-Canadian artist. His work is primarily digital, featuring digital animations which he considers the core of his practice. He also creates numerous other art forms like prints, sculptures, and installations.
I’ve always been fascinated by natural forces, in particular the ocean, and by screen-based graphics, in particular early computer graphics.
I’m interested in depicting landscapes, natural forces, and other forms through very simple visual elements made of pixels, colors, motion and light - how computer graphics can express materiality and physical experiences through abstraction and limited visual means.
I started minting on Tezos last year after discovering a lot of incredible artists on Hic et Nunc. Today I use mostly OBJKT and Versum but I’m not tied to a specific platform.
The quality of the art, the level of accessibility of Tezos, and the amazing communities of artists surrounding the Tezos platforms are all important reasons why I enjoy minting on Tezos.
Jinyao Lin is a digital artist from Taiwan. He graduated from the National Taipei University of the Arts with a Bachelor of Music and Master of Fine Arts (New Media), and a PhD of Computer Science, from the National Taiwan University. He has had a deep fascination in both arts and computing since he was young.
I like to explore algorithms that create interesting graphics, especially computers that can do very detailed and mass calculations. I enjoy finding out how to make graphics with chaos and order.
I minted my first NFTs on akaSwap, a Tezos platform and there are many Asian artists there. Soon after, I started to publish my work on fxhash.
In 2021, Aluan Wang created a twitter account “ileviovm”, which is ‘Aluan Wang’ spelled out after cryptography. He used this new identity to join the crypto art community. In the last few years, Wang has made a living through his original digital art and design, and taught open source software at museums and universities. He is also the founder of akaSwap, an NFT platform built on the Tezos blockchain.
Much of my inspiration comes from my previous artistic training. Until I was 25, I thought I was going to be a watercolor painter. That’s why I like to use code to describe complex textures and brushstrokes with an oriental style.
Being in visual design has given me a special perspective on symbols, and I like to hide secrets in the pictures. Art is like a creator’s diary, and I’m happy to create my own little universe.
Why did you choose to mint NFTs on Tezos? What platform do you use and why?
I joined the tezos community in March 2021 because I wanted to create and also I recognized the cost of publishing works on other blockchains was too high. When I found Hic et Nunc, the gas fees were very low by comparison, and the activities were very interesting. I was happy to join the community.
Depending on the circumstances, Jovanić may introduce herself as an artist and programmer, or as a professor at the University of Arts in Belgrade. Jovanić started her NFT journey in 2021 after years in the field of the arts.
I’m often fascinated by various obscure psychological phenomena. How we as humans observe and interpret the world around us, and most recently unraveling complexity through visualizing abstract ideas or previously incomprehensible data.
My first ever mint was on Tezos. I chose it because of the ecological concerns (of other blockchains) and accessibility, but stayed for the art and community. Also, the fact that interactive pieces can be easily minted on Tezos platforms is crucial for my work. I started with HEN, and slowly moved to fxhash.
Shih Yun Yeo loves Chinese ink and has been painting for more than 20 years. He is fascinated with using unconventional tools like toy robots, brooms, and DIY brushes to create his works.
I fell in love with ink in the early days back in Lasalle. I experimented with ink, getting different effects by mixing ink and water on watercolor paper. My first experience with ink excited me so much that when I went to the San Francisco Art Institute, I had a deep desire to explore ink as a medium. I grew to appreciate its characteristics through the years. I have always admired the basic yet strong quality of black as a color, its boldness and infinite possibilities.
When I started creating NFTs, I wanted to make ink the star, juxtaposing the traditional ink medium with technology, merging physical and digital realms, and using analog and digital processes at different stages of creation.
I was introduced to Tezos by artists I met at CAWA (Crypto Artweek Asia) as it is eco-friendly and super cheap to mint my works compared to other blockchains. I also mint on akaSwap as it was founded by Taiwanese generative artist Aluan Wang and I thought it is cool to support another fellow artist! It is also quite user-friendly.
Jarrett Cross is a multidisciplinary artist based in Manila, Philippines. His connections to the arts are familial; both of his parents are musicians and they exposed Cross to art and music from a very young age. His artistic endeavors extend across Hip Hop dance, visual arts, and music.
The beauty of the fractal universe we live in is my biggest source of inspiration in art and in creating NFTs. The interconnectedness of all things and the mysteries and adventures of everyday life inspire and fuel me.
My style was created through self art therapy. The effects of the pandemic on me during the first months were dreadful. Art became my therapy. The process was cathartic to me as I surrendered to an automatistic state then proceeded with intuitive painting. It was my way of taking care of my mental health.
I found out about Tezos through the second OBJKT4OBJKT (a virtual exhibition). I saw that minting on Tezos was so much cheaper compared to other blockchains.
I mainly use Hic et Nunc/Teia for my abstract works. I admire the interface of HEN, even if it is quite tricky at first, because it highlights more of the art from the artists. I also use OBJKT for my series as it allows us to curate it by collection on the platforms.
Jakestudyos is a full-time artist from the Philippines. The artist grew up in the streets of Manggahan, Pasig, and loved to draw since he was a child to the point that his family pushed him to become an architect while growing up. He embarked on a healing journey by creating art and writing verses after being diagnosed with dysthymia in November 2020.
Street art is the biggest inspiration for my creations. In a developing country, art isn’t a career people typically think of. Street art is the most accessible for me. Plus, the typography and letterings on hand painted movie posters and billboards I’ve seen outside the mall when I was growing up.
Tezos is very accessible to us. With the low cost mint price, it’s really easy to start and put your work out there. I started at Hic et Nunc last year and am now minting on OBJKT. Why? It’s also about a low carbon footprint. Plus, the community behind it.
