Was this respect ?

This is a brief tale about a series of artworks, my collaboration with Coldie, and the weirdest cryptoart fundraiser ever.

It all started back in January of 2020. A lot of artists making cryptoart had some distinctively similar vibes because they were using Photomosh. When Coldie got wind of this, he tweeted his thoughts:

The reactions to his tweet were mixed, but I immediately found some humor in the loss of respect angle and made art about it.

I’m just saying

I minted “Lost Coldie’s Respect” on SuperRare and listed it for the 5 ETH reward price. The piece was more about humorously commenting on Coldie’s seemingly aggressive stance over the use of a tool in artmaking, so I didn’t expect to see it sell or raise much of a fuss.

Coldie actually bought the piece and contacted me about it. I think he appreciated the humor, but was also bit taken aback by my delivery. He had ideas and I was happy to hear them, though.

Let’s do a collab

At the time, the artist Twisted Vacancy was becoming quite popular on SuperRare, but had recently lost their laptop due to hardware failure. How does this even relate to Coldie, me & this artwork, though?

Here’s what Coldie wanted to do.

1. Create a new version of “Lost Coldie’s Respect” together as a collaboration and mint it from Coldie’s wallet on SuperRare.

2. Sell the new piece for as much as possible at auction.

3. Give 100% of the auction proceeds to Twisted Vacancy so that they could get a new laptop.

We are here to help

I was all about this and happy to help.

We set out working on “Found Coldie’s Respect” together, and after several revisions, arrived at a version suitable for minting from Coldie’s wallet on SupeRare.

Coldie announced the piece and set up an auction on SuperRare. WhaleSharkPro (aka “WhaleDShark”) bought the piece with a 5 ETH offer.

That 5 ETH was $11,200 at the time, plenty of laptop purchasing power if I do say so myself.

Wait what— 28 people?

It was only sometime later, news started breaking and revealing that the artist Twisted Vacancy was heavily appropriating the work of another artist, Ardneks. What’s even weirder? In an interview, Twisted Vacancy claimed to be a team of 28 different people.

“There are 28 people in Twisted Vacancy. Mistakes do happen sometimes.”

Imagine my surprise to learn that I’d just collaborated with a cryptoart rockstar to support what we thought was a lone fellow artist desperately in need of a new computer, only to find out it was basically a company of IT nerds.

Cryptoart is a weird vibe.