Mat Callishaw & Danil Krivoruchko / El-Gabal / Snark.Art / 2023
HETEROSIS
Dynamic digital collectibles that combine genetic algorithms with blockchain technology to facilitate the hybridization of mutable digital flowers.
The art project is composed of a collection of breedable, dynamic flora that exists in the digital wallets of their respective owners and collectively in the ‘Greenhouse’ — a virtual rendition, post-apocalyptic space of London’s National Gallery.
Heterosis is an unprecedented flower hybridization experience in which participants can cultivate their bespoke animated flowers.
Collectors are invited to become breeders or collaborative artists, creating increasingly exotic and elaborate blooms, either for their own pleasure or as means towards predicting a future value and stimulating speculation.
Each token functions as a seed embedded with its genetic code. Flower hybridization occurs when a collector’s flower's genetic code is combined with another's genes. From this union, an updated hybrid blossoms, adopting attributes from both parent flowers. In addition to the visible characteristics of each parent flower, the new blossom may also inherit invisible recessive genes or “hidden traits” which contribute to the flower’s rarity.
Additional materials are available at the OG.ART platform and Mat Callishaw's site.
1. Upon minting, each collector receives a Heterosis flower with unique DNA and a combination of traits. The collectible's primary look is the result of random luck. Each flower has a unique title generated by AI, using words from ‘The Library of Babel’ a short story by Jorge Luis Borges.
2. The owner of a Heterosis flower can select any other flower in the collection as a second parent, and to hybridize, they must pay that second parent's owner a fee.
3. When the child flower is generated, the owner can decide to either replace their current flower with the new generation or keep the original one. The second parent flower is not affected in any way by this hybridization process.
4. Partner collections and projects give Heterosis flowers their unique traits. If an owner has a partner collectible in their wallet, unique features may show up on their flowers when they breed them.
5. Initially, the flowers in the collection have only a few basic traits. But through the hybridization process, collectors can discover new rules that activate mutations and unlock new species and advanced characteristics.
All flowers will be visible in the Greenhouse zone, a recreation of London’s National Gallery as it may look if abandoned and overgrown with vegetation; a collection of Europe’s finest artworks supplanted with new digital manifestations of beauty.
The Greenhouse is an immersive, social, and persistent digital environment where collectors can adopt an avatar, meet with others, and chat while perusing all Heterosis flowers in their current iteration. A single flower can be selected, and its properties and value ascertained in OpenSea Marketplace.
The National Gallery in London was a pioneer of social networking, providing a hub from which citizens could gather and share intelligence. Similarly it transpires that plants have been communicating unremittingly through underground fungi networks, conveying warnings of impending insects swarms for example. The centralised “Greenhouse” zone in Heterosis is a tentative step towards the impending transition into a world of total immersion inside the digital realm. Additionally, the National Gallery collection belongs to a culture of cross-pollination; certain paintings are the unmistakable ancestors of earlier work, whilst others bear more discreet traits of bygone paintings.
Credits:
Co-creators:
3D Artists:
Production:
Mat Callishaw & Danil Krivoruchko
Dmitry Kulikov, Danil Krivoruchko
Snark Art, El-Gabal