New Athens is a suite of NFT art projects that collectively consider the roles of currency, material art, identity, and location technologies in democracies old and new. Each series of collectible NFT art seeks to explore how democracy arises out of the democratization of value-creation. More specifically, New Athens creatively investigates how tools of early democratization (coins, mass-produced consumer art, facial recognition, cognitive and physical maps) have evolved on the blockchain.
Currently, three projects have been started:
Drachma NFT
Collectible unique tokens generated by AI. Simple, clean images containing huge amounts of information. May be acquired and traded just like the ancient coin that gave Athenians the ability to determine valuation as a democratic community.
When a Drachma NFT is purchased more will be registered on the blockchain from a large, pre-generated pool. Later, these will evolve into other types of images since each Drachma corresponds directly to a unique ring pattern. Here is a small GIF of several Drachmata as well as an example of a ring:
Vases NFT
Ancient technological improvements allowed for 'mass' manufacture of plastic art in the form of pottery. As the possession of art transferred from the elite to other segments of society, the act of valuation became democratized. This same process is being perfected by NFTs that, in merging the artist with the community, decentralize the mechanisms of valuation.
AI-generated vase collections are produced on a large dataset of pottery belonging to New Athens that was documented in Greece and Italy. Every vase created by the AI is an entirely new and unique entity born of ancient material. Randomization as re-creation. Ajax plays dice with Achilles and potentiality is captured mid-throw by the artist (vase below from the Thebes Museum):
From ancient sources like these, the AI learns patterns and reconfigures vases out of noise:
Faces NFT
Democracy & scale. Seeing faces and instantly recognizing identities. Greece's small poleis thrived in an environment where familiarity with fellow citizens grounded the trustworthiness of political activity.
Does a global, decentralized, trustless democracy need identity? Should faces be masks? In ancient Greek the word for face 'πρόσωπον' can also mean mask (compare Latin 'persona'). Face as mask or key. Anonymity or instant recognition by facial detection software:
Art may be found on Rarible and Opensea.
For content updates and other info:
As I write, Drachma 4, Vases 3, and Faces II are being written on the blockchain. Expect more from these series. Additionally, look forward to a fourth project on interactive, community-driven mapping (a long post about this will be put up on Hive soon).
A note on names. In Greek, 'αἱ καιναί Ἀθῆναι' doesn't just mean a new Athens as in a second copy of the first. The word for new 'καινός' denotes something that starts anew, fresh, an innovative take, a revolutionary step even (compare Latin 'novus').
This theme of the new is the reason why the Drachma NFT is pluralized as Drachmata and not (as in Greek) 'drachmai'. The Drachma NFT is a thing that exists in the physicality of the blockchain. As such, it is fitting that the word be reimagined as being neuter (and not feminine) in grammatical gender, as is typical of inanimate objects. This also helps distinguish the NFT from the pre-Euro currency of Modern Greece (symbol: ₯).
