Description
A Performance Like No Other
Alpha Centauri Kid is a multimedia artist that includes glitches, performances, 3D, motion, and many others within his art. His latest act and the focus of this article is on a piece called 'Pale Blue Death (a color study)'. Following the act, Alpha Centauri Kid introduced a new mechanism to acquire ten Color Studies.
Badge Holders
ACK released this piece for free to 'badge holders'. A badge holder is someone who owned a 1/1 from ACK before January 1, 2022 and guarantees priority access to future collections and editions. There are 69 badges in the collection and the cheapest one available is 33 ETH at the time of this writing.
Pale Blue Death (A Color Study)
Back to Pale Blue Death, there was one caveat with this piece that would move the performance forward. Until the release of his piano collection, Pale Blue Death was limited to an edition of 55. It was clearly stated that if a collector who minted it for free had listed it for sale, there would be consequences. Those consequences would result in an open edition for anyone to purchase at a price of 0.069 ETH. ACK is one with the memes, hence the funny numbers, but the art is extremely well done and unique.
The Moment We've All Been Waiting For
It has been pretty hard for a collector to get their hands on an ACK piece for an affordable price. Likewise, collectors have had to wait for an OE to collect work from other great artists that were out of reach too such as XCopy or Drift. The same goes for ACK and the time has finally come. Badge Holders had broken the one instruction they were given. It was time for a lot of people to get their first ACK piece.
Nobody Saw This Coming
Shortly after Badge Holders had disobeyed the rules and listed the art for sale, the true performance had officially started. ACK had tweeted this out, testing the waters.
I wrote this experiment off pretty quickly as I thought you'd have to be absolutely out of your mind to buy this 1/1 for 201 ETH ($327,000) and burn it. Comparably, imagine buying an Andy Warhol and lighting it on fire 5 minutes later. People would have laughed at you and shamed you with stupidity. Guess what? I was wrong, the piece sold faster than I could blink my eyes. The piece had been purchased by GVG, a well-known collector, who has "never been good at turning down a good dare". GVG followed suit and sent the piece to the burn address for it to never be owned or re-sold again. 201 ETH was an all-time high sale for the artist. What an exhilarating series of events!
GVG's Reward
GVG had followed directions with no understanding of what would come out of it. The burning of Pale Blue Death will be known as a historical work of art that represents the entirety of this performance. ACK rewarded GVG with a 1/1 which is stunning. It is a self-portrait that I believe will become more valuable over time. From my perspective, a self-portrait is a very authentic work of art, as it describes how an artist views themself through their own lens. It is interesting because there are two human-like figures present.
The Open Edition
An open edition is usually a way for an artist to expand their collector base. Often times, these are not good investment pieces and rather collector items. ACK is very calculated with every move he makes. At first, every collector had believed they were purchasing a Pale Blue Death. I was drawn to this piece for the way that it looked but more so for the narrative surrounding it. This was a great piece to own, but in fact, ACK had pulled off another magic trick. In the process of creating NFTs, there are settings within the metadata that allow you to change the image and title that is presented on your token. This is what ACK had done. Everyone thought they were receiving a Pale Blue Death but had actually received a 'Max Pain v2'. Max Pain was an OE that XCopy had put out a few months ago to describe the bearish market conditions and emotions that people were feeling. I thought to myself, "Shit what do I do now with a work that I didn't intend on purchasing and belongs to another artist".
Finally a Breath of Fresh Air
The performance seems as if it is finding an end to its means but who really knows for sure. ACK and the team at Manifold are working on a 'Burn and Redeem' mechanism that will allow owners of 'Max Pain v2' to burn their tokens and redeem a color study of their choosing. Over the past few weeks, ACK had teased 10 color studies each better than the next. The piece of art was created using new modeling software that ACK has begun to experiment with, giving more depth than his previous work. It will be interesting to see which color study is the most popular. The most popular one will in fact become the least rare, with the most amount of editions. Each color study will have a different edition size and the set will be available if you own 10 'Max Pain v2' tokens.
Final Thoughts
ACK is one to watch with a unique glitch style and appreciation for fine art. The performances are fascinating to watch and happen more frequently than you would think. ACK has made it clear that he wants to experiment further than just blockchain and disrupt the contemporary art market. This is something I will be keeping an eye on. I am thoroughly impressed by the silkscreens that he has produced and hope to see these become available to collectors in the near future. This performance needs to be documented and stored on the blockchain forever which is what I will do. You can collect this article here. Collecting the article shows your support for me and that our views align towards Alpha Centauri Kid.
Credit: Alpha Centauri Kid, Seelawrie, GVG and Comfydevil.