Art that lives on a blockchain has now proved its worth also in the brick-and-mortar art world. Digital but scarce, NFTs revolutionize the way art is produced, the way it is displayed, accessed and collected.

What if the artists were no longer the only ones in control of the art?

AI art and generative art have made history by pioneering unexpected uses of the nascent technologies, which they have emerged alongside. Mutagen makes the most of the blockchain technologies that are transforming not only culture but also the economy in its entirety, to offer a revitalized experience of art and its collecting.

Four internationally acclaimed artists — Tommy Cash, Ilja Karilampi, Nik Kosmas, and Katja Novitskova — teamed up with gallerist Olga Temnikova (Temnikova & Kasela, Tallinn) and tech entrepreneur and long time NFT collector Edgar Aronov, to produce a series of artworks that create their own value ecosystem.

At first, each artist creates ten Genesis NFTs. These NFTs have the capacity to mutate thanks to embedded layers, creating the possibility for 256 variations for each of them. These mutations are triggered by the owner of the Genesis NFT with the introduction of Mutagens, the second type of NFT artworks. There will only ever be 4096 Mutagens, which ensures a limited number of mutations of the Genesis NFTs.

When acquired, Genesis or Mutagen NFTs are allocated from a blind pool in order to ensure the randomness of the system. Similarly, mutations happen randomly according to the combinations of the parameters encoded in the artwork. While Genesis NFTs are described as rare, one out of the ten produced by each artist is ‘very rare’, as it includes a ‘golden’ element. In addition to these rarities, two of the variations are also considered rare, opening possibilities for different degrees of rarity in the mutations. Within this process, it is possible to stop time, so to speak, and to create Snapshots of the state of a Genesis at any moment.

Mutagen coordinates randomness with fairness, in that the project revolves around a new value attribution model: an Expected Value Pool. Initially, each Genesis is valued at 8 ETH while each Mutagen is valued at 0.08 ETH. Each purchase price is set according to the total value of the pool, which adjusts to the values of the remaining tokens, counteracting the usual pricing mechanisms that reward early investors, based on a fear of missing out. A phenomenon at play in both the crypto market and the art market.

Combining institutionally established art with the possibilities of the expanding boundaries of the art market provided by the Ethereum blockchain, Mutagen brings these two worlds together in an unprecedented way.

Mutagen is supported by Edgar Aronov, Temnikova & Kasela, and Sten Tamkivi.

Evolution is not random but it’s also hard to predict.

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