The alpha
- Jack Butcher, of Checks VV and Visualize Value, has announced his latest project. Checks Elements is a 152-piece, generative art collection of hand-drawn monoprints and non-interchangeable token pairs, which he says explores “the ever-evolving relationship between consensus and truth.”
- The collection contains four elements: earth, fire, water and air. Three of the four elements will be auctioned at Christie’s on May 16. Thirty percent of auction proceeds will be donated to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
- Each digital piece comes with a 30 x 42 inch physical counterpart created by master printmaker Jean Robert Milant.
Dive deeper
The Butcher’s Checks VV collection made waves in early 2023 with one iconic phrase: “This art may or may not be remarkable.” The sentence, as well as the collection, is a play on the phrase, “This is an outdated verified account. It may or may not be noteworthy,” which previously appeared when you clicked the blue check mark after Elon Musk announced that he was adding verified check marks for would sell eight dollars.
The Checks ecosystem has grown significantly since then, with hundreds of Checks derivatives and even a mechanism to migrate the original editions to on-chain artwork through Checks VV Editions. After this, many wondered if Butcher would continue to grow and add utility to Checks.
Now, after months of ideas, Butcher has unveiled Checks Elements.
When asked where he came up with the idea of using elements, Butcher says it was conceived with his friend Martin Clippresident of Beyond Art Creative.
“The element concept stems from the idea of translating what Checks represents digitally into something physical,” Butcher said in an interview with nft now. “So this idea of consensus, what was consensus before we had these methods of digital communication? The four elements were essentially present in every possible way, discovered or discovered and included in all these different cultures that had no way of communicating with each other. [one] another for thousands of years.”
For Butcher, Elements is an extension of the idea of using Checks as a symbol of decentralization. It is the continuation of the story. He says using elements seemed like the right way to describe the physical world.
“So we essentially took those four elements, built these color palettes around them, and then used a version of the algorithm that generatively built checks to produce these 152 prints. They’re going to be assembled as pairs so that the instructions and the immutable version of the NFTs will live on Ethereum, and they will actually be physically translated.”
For the physical editions, Butcher and Klipp enlisted the help of Milant and his Cirrus Editions gallery.
“It takes Jean nearly a day each to make these prints by hand on the lithographic press,” Klipp said. “Each piece is also hand finished by Jack, so they are both physically and digitally verified.”
“They’re huge,” Butcher said. “They need to be rolled. So if you have 20 checks, it could be a case of at least 20 rolls of each color on each piece of paper.
What’s next
Checks Elements is on display at Christie’s until May 23. After the first auction, the 24-hour collection of Butcher’s will also be auctioned from May 24-25. The last element, Fire, is hidden in the 24-hour collection. Physical prints for those who purchased the 152 Checks Elements pieces from both auctions will ship on June 24.
When asked if he was exhibited at Christie’s, Jack attributes this success entirely to community support. “It’s just something I haven’t experienced before,” Butcher said. “And I’m learning and starting to kind of experience it with everyone, which is great.”
If you are an owner of Checks, Open and Visualize Value 1/1s, you can have a special participation in Checks Elements auctions. Butcher stated in a tweet (pictured above) that you will receive “Infinity Check” bidder versions for each auction level you participate in.
One Check collectors will receive a full set of editions whether they participate or not, as do those participating in Alpha and Christie’s auctions. There are currently only 31 “One Checks” out of a possible 250 currently exist.
If that seems confusing, it just means that if you’re not a One Check holder, you’ll need to bid and own one of the listed collections to get a full set of Infinity Checks (all four elements).
When asked if Checks Elements will be related to Visualize Value’s other popular project, Opepen Edition, Butcher says they are separate projects. But there is “a lot of work to be done” about which we will all see more soon.