Mitchell F Chan

SMART CONTRACTS

“We live in a very technological world, and to make art about the world today means to make art that is about technology and how we interface with it.”

Unlike most digital artists, Michell F. Chan had been a professional artist before the introduction of NFTs – 10 years ago, to be exact.

“I made large-scale public projects. Basically, heavy immobile sculptures that would be in public spaces and would never move. I also maintained a gallery practice where I created artwork for galleries and museums focusing on technology.”

Having graduated with an Arts and Technology degree from the School of Art Institute in Chicago, technology was always interwoven with Mitchell’s creative processes. “We live in a very technological world, and to make art about the world today means to make art that is about technology and how we interface with it.”

With this mindset, web3 provided the perfect canvas for him to test the boundaries of the blockchain and realize how art could intertwine within it.

“I discovered that in 1958, there was a very famous French artist named Yves Klein, and he developed a similar system that I thought would be a perfect analog for an art world that exists on the blockchain. He was the perfect referent for me in terms of understanding what blockchain could mean for art because he was not just a brilliant conceptual artist, but he was one of the only artists in history who had a very honest engagement with the fact that his artworks existed as commodities and how they were bought and sold affected people’s perception and how they related to them.”

What resonated most with Mitchell was Yves’ understanding that ownership was something that colored people’s emotional connection to his work. It inspired him to strive to translate this to the community and establish avenues for art to be permanent and legitimate without having the physical.

“And lo and behold, I created one of the first non-fungible token smart contracts, and that was how I got into blockchain; I was trying to imagine how it could be used for art.”

His first smart contract came in the form of a 33-page essay attached to his artwork, which eluded to the fact that tokenized art will enable other art forms to flourish – and it’s done precisely that.

After being handpicked by the prestigious Albright Knox Museum, Mitchell’s recent works can be found in video games and digital galleries. He has no intention of stopping – and we’re here to motivate him and celebrate this OG.