Captured Moment: The Master’s Process — NFTs as Living Art
Chicago, February 17, 2022 - Accursed Share announces the auction of the Master Series, the first NFT collection by photographer-to-the-stars Frederic Auerbach, starting on February 17. To participate, you must be in possession of a Process Series NFT from the Auerbach collection. Mint here.
“For me, NFTs are about capturing motion and emotion,” says Swiss-American photographer Frederic Auerbach. “The dynamic NFTs in my collection for Accursed Share are a kind of living art, they tell the story –in pictures– of how I found my way towards each Master photo of five very different stars: Natalie Portman, Sharon Stone, Mike Tyson, Zendaya, and Benedict Cumberbatch.”
Auerbach was on a train to Paris the very day he graduated from art school in his native Switzerland. “I knew I wanted to be a fashion photographer. I was always fascinated by the exchange between the unique character of individuals and fashion as a measure of time.” It’s a tension Auerbach has always sought to capture in his portraits.
In Auerbach’s view, NFTs are especially suited to show the constructive craft of the photographer, which is why this project is structured through five sets of Process photos culminating in respective Masters, each of which includes its own set of unique editions.
For the Master Series, each celebrity — Zendaya for Flaunt; Cumberbatch for GQ; Tyson for Haute Living; Stone for Madame Figaro and Portman for Dior — will have their own NFT set, including:
i) the high-res digital photo NFT of the Master (one per star);
ii) a dynamic NFT highlighting different aspects of the Master photo by displaying various edits of the image;
iii) a high-res and autographed print of the Master photo (one per star), and
iv) a 1/1 video NFT of the behind-the-scenes interview detailing Auerbach’s creative approach to each shoot (one per star), from Process to Master.
Most remarkable is the dynamic NFT, powered by Accursed Share’s proprietary smart contract, which highlights different aspects of the Master photo every few hours. It is but one way in which the ambitious NFT production studio and accelerator is pushing the boundaries of cryptoart. In referring to Accursed Share’s platform, currently in development, CEO John Connor says: “Our purpose is to unlock the creative potential of smart contracts for millions of digital artists by allowing them to make dynamic NFTs without the need for a developer.”
Access to HeadlessDAO
Owning an NFT from Auerbach’s Process Series, currently minting until the auction of the Master Series starts on February 17, imparts access and voting rights to HeadlessDAO, an art innovation engine supporting projects that explore the NFT as a new art medium.
The Master Series Auction
Between February 17-21, Accursed Share will be hosting the Master Series Auction. Bidding will start at 0.5 ETH on the Accursed Share webpage. Five Master NFT suites, one per star, will be auctioned in parallel.
The top buyer among the five will also win a photo session with Frederic Auerbach in Los Angeles. The Master photo of that session will also be made into an NFT.
Award-winning mycologist and writer Merlin Sheldrake is an expert on the social networks of fungi. He is the author of “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures”, a universally acclaimed bestseller that explores how fungi sustain life on earth via symbiotic relationships established through an underground communication network known as of the Wood Wide Web.
“There is a fundamental affinity between fungal organisms and the emergent properties of web3,” says John Connor, CEO of Accursed Share. “Plants and fungi engage in sophisticated trading strategies, striking compromises and resolving dizzyingly complex trade-offs. This astonishing cooperation inspired this unique collection of scientifically and blockchain inspired NFT artwork showing symbiotic rootscapes as they’ve never been seen before”. Sheldrake used a proprietary scanning technique to obtain the unprecedented images for it.
Sheldrake’s NFT project is a fourway collaboration between himself, Accursed Share, and Algorand – the carbon-negative blockchain on which the collection will be minted — and the Wilmore Academy, an NFT marketplace furthering research-based initiatives. Part of the project’s proceeds will go to support Sheldrake’s research into the decentralized problem-solving ability of fungal networks.
Minting
The NFT drop launching Sheldrake’s unique collection will begin at 5pm CST on February 22, on Accursed Share’s webpage.
Ars Vitae
Frederic Auerbach is a Swiss-American fashion and portrait photographer based in LA. His work has been published internationally in magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, Elle, InStyle, Numéro and GQ; working for leading fashion houses like Dior, Hermès, Cacharel, Sonja Rykiel, and Lacoste. Auerbach has specialised in producing intimate, spontaneous portraits of some of the world’s most recognisable faces, including those featured in his first NFT collection.
Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and a writer with a background in plant sciences, microbiology, ecology, and the history and philosophy of science. He received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in the tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He is a research associate at the Vrije University Amsterdam, works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), and sits on the advisory board of the Fungi Foundation. He is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and other-than-human organisms.
John Connor is a cofounder and CEO of Accursed Share, a cryptoart innovation studio. He has worked at several high growth tech startups including leading product at Upland, one of the top blockchain games in the world.
About Accursed Share:
Accursed Share is an artist-led production studio and accelerator pushing the boundaries of cryptoart. In addition to producing narrative-driven pieces and installations, Accursed Share is developing a no-code platform for the creation of dynamic NFTs. Instagram / Twitter / Facebook
Media contact: [email protected]
