Description
SEIXOS (PEBBLES) is the third curation of Dominio PubliCC0, the 6529 gallery operated by Casa NUA in São Paulo, Brazil, and the first to present an entire CC0 generative art collection to audiences IRL: the 1,000 Pebbles, created by the artist duo ZeBlocks (Arsonic and Cheaterflums) on NextGen, 6529's on-chain generative art platform. Where the previous curation celebrated 6529 Memes as cultural units built to replicate and spread, this one asks the visitor to slow down before something that looks simple — pebbles, the smooth, rounded stones that time and water polish — and to find, in that simplicity, one of the most radical gestures in the art of our time.
NextGen is the on-chain generative art contract developed by the 6529 network: a piece of public infrastructure designed so that artists can launch algorithmic collections whose code and generative logic live on the Ethereum blockchain itself, with no dependence on private servers. More than a technical tool, NextGen belongs to 6529's wider cultural project — to build public goods and to strengthen a decentralized, open, censorship-resistant art ecosystem and coordination layer for networked societies. Pebbles, with its 1,000 works, is the platform's very first collection, minted February 2024. Shown at Dominio PubliCC0 under the CC0 license, it joins 6529's technical vanguard to Casa NUA's mission: to bring decentralized digital art to as many people as possible.
Described by the artists themselves as a project that explores balance, rhythm, and emergence through algorithmic systems, each Pebble is born from a single algorithm written by the duo — a piece of code that, from a random seed recorded at the very moment the NFT is minted, scatters a set of rounded shapes, colors, and unrepeatable compositions across a fabric-like texture. The artists do not paint each work; they compose the system of rules that brings the works into being, and leave the rest to chance and to the people who mint them. The result is a dialogue between order and chaos: the rigid logic of the underlying grid coexists with the free distribution of the ellipses, just as in nature no stone is identical to another even though all obey the same physical laws. In this sense, Pebbles is a tribute to the beauty of natural simplicity, reinterpreted through a modernist gaze and the digital medium.
Like everything in Dominio PubliCC0's program, SEIXOS is an exhibition of works released entirely under CC0: by the artists' own choice, they belong to the public domain. Each of the 1,000 works can be downloaded in ultra-high resolution (up to 16K), copied, printed, remixed, and reused by anyone, including for commercial purposes, without asking permission and without paying anything. What hangs on the wall is not a reproduction guarded by scarcity, but a shared cultural good that the public is invited to take, transform, and pass on.
The curation is organized as a journey through the "anatomy" of a generative collection, revealing layer by layer what usually stays hidden beneath the surface of the image. It opens by explaining, in plain terms, what generative art is and how it is made. It then moves through the traits that compose each Pebble: twenty palettes with evocative names; five densities of color, from the faintest to the most drenched; seven sizes, from the smallest Craglet to the largest Mountlet; the presence or absence of outlines and borders; the way shapes overlap or stand apart; and the rare special elements that punctuate the set. Finally, it arrives at the question that defines this field: how rarity and value emerge within a collection where every work shares the same code.
Along the way, visitors can play with the traits to generate a new unique Pebble of their own and watch the algorithm compose a unique image in real time, standing at the exact point where code becomes art. By the end of the path, they have not only contemplated the thousand versions of these digital pebbles, but grasped the logic of an entire new field of art. A contest will also see a Pebble NFT, donated by ZeBlocks, be awarded to the most creative reuse of the public domain work by local artists, and several fine art prints raffled to visitors onboarded to the 6529 platform.
Curated by Hugo Faz and Casa NUA, SEIXOS reaffirms Dominio PubliCC0's radical commitment to unrestricted access to culture, to education about art and technology, and to nurturing the creative economy — a reminder that, sometimes, very small stones can move ideas of global scope.
This Meme Card celebrates and records on our world computer Pebbles' first IRL exhibit, and is part of Casa NUA's ongoing fundraiser for operating the gallery. Soundtrack composed by Eric Pan, from the upcoming Formosa Vinyl Record (stay tuned...!)