When we came across XCOPY's artwork, we thought that this must be what blockchain art is about: Glitched and pixelated moving images on the aesthetic level, and digitally created, distributed and experienced on the structural level. Though we have seen many more blockchain backed artworks in the meantime, we still think that XCOPY's works explore the transition from static art to moving image and from IRL to digital experience of art very well, and can be seen as representative of one of the genres which the blockchain art field is informed by. And we love the fact that XCOPY provided details about his influences and his art here at B.A.D!
What is the name by which blockchainart and cryptocollectibles community knows you?
XCOPY
What is your professional background and career?
Pixel pusher.
Please give a short statement about yourself, your work, your art, your aesthetics, your vision, and everything else you want people to know about you as a person active in the blockchainart and cryptocollectibles space.
I create experimental visual art. Usually in GIF format and best experienced in your feed. I hope to be an authentic voice floating on the superficial sea of social media.
Which is your medium?
Pixels on screen.
How would you describe your art?
Dystopian, near future portraits of the apathetic and distracted.
Which artworks, artists and styles do you admire the most, and which shaped you the most?
Growing up, cartoons, toys and video games influenced me more than art. I worshiped my Amiga 500 - playing games like Flashback, Xenon 2 and Syndicate. I’ve always found inspiration in music, books and comedy as much as in art.
One of your recent artworks
URL to one of your artworks you love most.
What led you to the blockchain?
A friend was talking about bitcoin and I got excited.
Since when are you active in the crypto space?
Late November 2017. I bought a small amount of bitcoin and stupidly lost half of it on transaction fees when I transferred it. I got obsessed and eventually read about ways that crypto could be used to create digital art editions.
What is your contribution to the blockchainart, cryptocollectibles and NFT field?
I’m tokenizing my art as NFTs - I think of them as signed editions. As someone who grew up collecting, it’s exciting to offer digital art as a collectible. I’m interested in the ways NFTs can be used across platforms or within games. I also run XERO Gallery, a crypto art gallery based in the 3D world of CryptoVoxels. Our mission is to turn artistic creativity into positive real world action - through charitable donations.
Which tools do you use to create your blockchainart?
Notes. Photoshop. Wacom. MacBook.
By using which tools do you tokenize your artworks?
Mostly SuperRare and KnownOrigin. I've also used Digital Objects and RARE Art Labs.
Further info you'd like to provide re the creation process?
Everyday I make notes - concepts, titles and to do lists (usually on the tube). This helps me focus when I am at the computer. I don’t like to start with a blank canvas, I open a previous piece in photoshop and paint over it. Often I spend as long in the exporting of a work as in the drawing. I tend to bring the exported GIF back into photoshop several times to paint over. This process creates many variations, snapshots of the evolving piece. The hard part is knowing when to finish or even abandon a piece. I delete my working files regularly and find it helps keep things fresh.
On which platforms and dApps are your contents available?
XCOPY kindly answered all these questions by filling our portraits form on June 18, 2019. The portrait was published on www.blockchainart.directory on June 20, 2019. Thank you very much indeed for providing us these insights, XCOPY!