On Wednesday, digital art collective Art blocks is ready to release the latest collaboration to come from her partnership featuring iconic New York-based modern art exhibitor Pace Gallery: “World Flag,” a collection of 195 fine art Ethereum NFTs by Irish contemporary artist John Gerrard.
Each “World Flag” piece features another nation’s flag being billowed out like a stream of smoke, interspersed with a variety of desolate, dystopian desert backdrops. The works, which appear as looping videos that can be viewed from different angles by dragging across a screen, are all in fact miniature, constantly evolving virtual worlds powered by game engine technology.
A combination of WebGL – modern computer code for interactive 3D graphics – and on-chain mechanisms ensure that each ‘World Flag’ piece appears in the same daily and seasonal lighting conditions as would be experienced locally in the geographic centers of each country depicted.
World Flag envisions a shared future where continued governmental and legislative failures alongside environmental mismanagement have made the state a ghost, an apparition unto itself.
Read Adam Kleinman’s essay on @john__gerrard’s World Flag:https://t.co/NC7bKE1f7f pic.twitter.com/cvHZXBolSn
— Pace Gallery (@PaceGallery) June 27, 2023
That kind of immersive fusion of physical landscapes and digital elements is essential to Gerrard, whose works have pioneered the use of simulation in contemporary art for nearly 20 years. With “World Flag,” Gerrard, a well-known environmental advocate, hopes to draw attention to the futility of national borders and tribal mentalities in an era dominated by global challenges such as climate change.
“If we continue to come together under these national flags and continue to compete across borders, we are not going to tackle climate change,” Gerrard said. Decrypt. “We fight at climate change conferences over resources. No one comes to a conclusion and we burn 100 million barrels of oil a day.”
One of Gerrard’s previous installations, ‘Leaf Work’, on display at the 2020 Galway International Arts Festival. Photo: Ross Kavanagh
The 195 “World Flag” pieces will be released on Wednesday in each country’s order included CO2 emissions, from highest to lowest. That means that it will be China’s turn first, then the United States and then India. Fiji, the world’s only carbon negative country, will be the final release of the collection.
As with all Art Blocks collections, ‘World Flag’ also contains generative elements: it is not until the release of the collection that the flags of each country are linked, through randomized computer code, with different desert backgrounds, each representing the dire state of the earth if they are decisive. collective action on climate is not being taken quickly. There are four possible desert backgrounds for “World Flag” pieces, each with different rarity levels.
Gerrard does not consider himself a generative artist, nor an NFT artist; he is a contemporary artist who uses advanced technology as a toolkit to communicate about contemporary issues. However, that does not mean that the medium of his pieces is incidental; far from it.
“Artists must use the most contemporary tools to critique contemporary conditions,” Gerrard said. “A hundred years ago [“World Flag”] painted, I have no doubt. But there’s no way you’re dragging me to the canvas screaming and kicking right now. Because data is the most contemporary language, the most powerful language we have right now.”
For the artist, there is a clear synergy between the challenges evoked in “World Flag” and the technology used to convey the project. The promise of digital technologies such as the blockchain and WebGL, Gerrard believes, is that they will instantly remove borders and make any resource — be it political will or art — universally accessible.
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“The NFT mechanism is so much more democratic than where I’m from, it’s been showing work at Art Basel for decades,” Gerrard said. “The browser is probably the most important public art space we have right now because it’s accessible to people all over the world.”
“World Flag” pieces will be on sale starting Wednesday at noon EST via Dutch auction, with a starting price of 11 ETH, or about $20,374 at the time of writing, each. The price will gradually drop over the course of the sale until each piece is sold, with each buyer eventually paying the same price as the final buyer.
In addition, 10% of proceeds from the artist’s sale will benefit Hometree, a charity dedicated to renovating and restoring Ireland’s temperate rainforests.