Last year, we sat down with jvmi to talk about his best-selling series 'swatches', and then we had the chance to meet again on his latest release 'charts'. The pre-sale for 'charts' will start on March 20 at 9 AM Pacific Daylight Time, and the entire series will go on sale at 12 PM Pacific Daylight Time on March 20.
Note: This record has been edited for conciseness and clarity.
OpenSea: Please tell us about the inspiration behind 'charts' and the evolution from 'swatches' to 'charts'.
jvmi: After creating (swatches), I really found my style as a digital artist. Before that, I had tried many different styles that attracted me, all of which came from my previous work as a streetwear artist. Since creating (swatches), I have developed this code, and now all my artwork is fully generative. I want to adopt the aesthetics of (swatches) and build upon that; I think (swatches) clearly demonstrates what the aesthetics of (charts) look like.
The inspiration behind this comes from my feeling as an artist that, regardless of what artwork is released, people only really care about the price. For NFT traders, the image is almost irrelevant. As an artist, I didn't realize this would become such an important factor; price is something people are very focused on in this field, and I don't like that as an artist.
So, this project is basically a rebuttal of that idea because, personally, every morning when I wake up, I check my portfolio and look at the market, thinking, 'How does everything look?' I want to recreate that experience as a mimicry of that experience and turn it into an art form.
When you look at the charts—when it comes to actual money—the only thing you really care about is that the numbers are going up. But for this project, I first want to remove the concept of price from the charts, using the canvas only as an abstract artwork. In the world of 'charts', you traditionally wouldn’t like the most valuable charts in your portfolio; the most valuable charts are those that form cool or rare patterns.
For example, if my portfolio is only declining, that would be really bad. But in this project, after someone mints, as the reveals start to happen, if you see your numbers only going down, that would be a very, very rare chart because the probability of that occurring is very low. It disrupts the whole equation of how people read charts; you are analyzing these charts in a way that is different from how we used to look at them. My goal in collecting these charts is to create that experience.
OpenSea: Yes, this is really interesting. You just mentioned this, but there is a delicate balance between commerce and art in the NFT space. This feels like a commentary on that balance. How do you master this concept and create art around it?
jvmi: That's exactly what I wanted to do. If people care about the price, I decided to remove everything else from the equation except for the price. It’s actually just a chart you are looking at, which helps me. I'm curious about people's reactions and how they analyze it. I posed this question to see how people interact with it. Clearly, there is an aspect to creating in this field where price is important, and it really is.
I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all; it's just interesting to me how people perceive its proportion. When I first entered this field, this was something I was thinking about—it’s an artistic experience rather than just a collection.
OpenSea: You have now created interactive works multiple times. Why is creating this type of art important to you?
jvmi: I have been an artist my whole life, and for the past 10 years, I've been working in digital media, but 'swatches' was the first project where I felt I couldn't create in any other context. How do you sell it without NFTs? The only way to truly own such a piece of code is through NFTs. I am currently very committed to developing as an artist in this way, especially if I eventually create a new space; I will innovate on existing puzzles and technologies rather than introducing things that existed before and putting them on the chain.
'charts' is the first project I made where I actually wrote a lot of smart contract code. I'm not a Solidity developer, but I really wanted to be involved because it allows for more creative freedom. The reveal mechanism of 'charts' is shown every day to reflect my daily habit of checking my phone and portfolio. I also want to combine them and create rarity; I had to dive into the code to really achieve that, and I think it also explains why I want to create digital artworks that exist on the chain, as it has the purpose of becoming NFTs.
OpenSea: What do you ultimately hope people take away from the 'charts' project?
jvmi: First of all, I want people to have a complete experience. I want people to check their charts every day and have a full experience because, besides the mint I have in the Farcaster channel, I also developed a framework that basically just connects to my website. You will receive push notifications for chart updates every day, and for each individual checking chart updates, it will be a collective experience.
I hope people can have this experience: hoping their charts won't just go up, but they are actually thinking about what this pattern means, what it means for the value of their NFTs, and not just the price built into the chart. After the reveal, there is a burning function; initially, there is no rarity, but later, you can burn them together to create a new chart, and this new chart is rarer than the two you started with.
I hope people will do this later; the community can be involved in this, and that's a cool thing. It will keep this project relevant for a longer time. I hope people see the continuity between 'swatches' and 'charts'. The artistic style I developed starting from 'swatches' is clearly reflected in the charts, and I am trying to develop a larger body of work that relates to itself; I have several ideas.
OpenSea: You mentioned that by the end of 'swatches', you already had the idea for 'charts'. What ideas do you have for the next step?
jvmi: I think 'swatches' was released in mid-April last year, and two weeks later, in the same month, I created the first version of the chart. I immediately got back to work, but this is a journey of shaping the project's appearance. As for the next step, I have some ideas, nothing particularly specific, so I won’t say what they are, but I think the really interesting point about 'swatches' is that I built it in the dark.
I just built it and released it, and now there is a group of collectors who own 'swatches'. Testing it with them and getting feedback has been very helpful. So, I didn't have the idea to release the charts, but I released the visuals, and people seemed to like the aesthetics. That made me say, 'Okay, I think the audience now will like this thing.'
I made a post asking, 'What if you could use the same mechanism you use for the charts to engrave them together into color palettes? What would that look like?' It was cool because the community actually didn't like that, and getting that kind of feedback is great because I used to spend six months finishing something, but now I get immediate feedback, which is very helpful. It is more interactive with the community, and I really enjoy that.
OpenSea: What other ways do you interact with the community, especially between airdrops?
jvmi: I find that the way to interact with the community is to sincerely create things and show them to them, to see what feedback there is because most people actually don't want to dive deeply into a very strong community (committing to a roadmap or future utility). That's not how I collect projects; if I like it, I mint it and then loosely monitor what's happening.
OpenSea: Many of the technologies you use have emerged in recent years. Have you seen any interesting new technologies that you hope to incorporate into your art in the future?
jvmi: Yes, absolutely. When building this project, I relied heavily on AI. I'm not saying I want to make an AI art project, but it would be cool to create something that somehow utilizes AI.
However, the most helpful technological unlock for my artistic creation is a lot of Layer 2 stuff built on Base, and the way contracts are written doesn't require saving gas like on Ethereum. All the metadata of 'charts' is fully stored on-chain, so if I were on L1, doing this would be very expensive.
The fact that this is on Ethereum's Layer 2 unlocks what this project could be because it also makes collecting in this way cheaper. As this project evolves, the contracts I create in the future may become increasingly complex, and there will be no actual cost to the user, so I'm excited to explore this further.
OpenSea: This means more possibilities.
jvmi: Yes, it really is.
The following interview took place in May 2024: Conversation with jvmi
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