GM

Welcome to the 7 new subs who joined yesterday.

You will surely be rewarded in this life and the next.

And to those that unsubbed, may you experience flight delays for the next 36 months (jk come back).

In today’s edition:

• You need to watch these Al Videos

• Updated NFT rankings

• Four new drops

More info on Mint/Watch lists HERE.

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We have a premium pass that gives you access to a directory of every drop we cover, complete with detailed information on how to get on every whitelist (including those underrated ones that aren’t already full).

And for those curatooors out there, you can get free NFTs just by finding drops that end up on the Mint or Watch list.

Lastly, hang with me and the MoS team in a private discord with weekly voice chats. The vibes are great.

You need to watch these Al Videos

Context

Fellowship’s AI gallery is launching its second major AI auction, called Post Photographic Perspectives Part II: Acceptable Realities, on July 10th.

The auction will take place across 5 days and will include 250 works of AI Video art, as well as a group showing for AI photography.

This week we got a first look at all the art being auctioned.

Full details on the sale can be found here:

Our Take

There’s something weirdly profound about seeing an AI-generated severed hand morph into various poses to the rhythm of dance music.

First, it’s a compelling visual that’s simply hard to look away from.

But also, there’s this feeling that I’m seeing early artifacts at the beginning of one of the largest arcs in art history.

Almost like watching backyard Youtube videos in 2006 while having the knowledge of what YouTube eventually grows into – except obviously on a much grander scale.

That context around this moment in time is half the story for me. Whether you like it or not, AI forcefully crashed the party this year, and we’re never going back.

In fact, this merry-go-round is only getting faster. You can look at VC spend, growth in model size and compute, objective performance benchmarks on things like the Medical Licensing exam, etc.

All up and to the right.

But my favorite test, and the most immediately convincing one, is to look at how quickly AI is consuming art.

Earlier this year we saw “Post Photography" take off thanks to apps like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.

Soon, audio took social media by storm as people figured out how to mimic the voices of celebrities.

Then, back to Midjourney, which recently added more groundbreaking features like panning and zoom outs, taking us from static images to something much more dynamic.

And now, with next week’s Fellowship drop, we’ll enter the age of AI Video art.

Of course, these aren’t the first AI Videos – you may recall the viral Balenciaga TikToks earlier this year, for example – but it’s the most prominent auction of AI Video NFTs to date.

The previews for all these videos were recently added to Fellowship’s website, and I think some of them are fantastic. Highly recommend browsing through them.

The collections are split across five days, with the first four days being exclusively made up of Post Video (AI Video art).

Day 1

Frank Manzano uses a fast twitch frame reel to make common images descend into an eerie madness.

Day 2

Irina Angles and Dr Formalyst create hypnotic gliding animations of severed hands dancing to music.

Day 3

Publikfruit uses a frame reel similar to Manzano that I believe could become a trademark of the current phase in AI art.

Day 4

Mowgly Lee sends us into a surreal spacetime resembling 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Day 5

A group of various Post Photography artists push the limits of the genre that was popularized earlier this year.

Like I said, we’re never going back

As the Day 1 artist Frank Manzano puts it: AI is less of a tool and more of an advanced collaborator.

It’s a dance partner that will constantly evolve alongside us for the next 1,000 years (if we make it that far).

That’s both cool and scary to me, but either way, I like the idea of owning a part of these extremely early, still imperfect, collabs.

Full Disclosure: I own a Fellowship Patron Pass and plan to participate in the auctions.

✨ Mint List #5 ✨

NOTE: These drops are lightly curated. Our only requirement is that they have recognizable founders. As usual, DYOR. To learn more go here.

Fallen Angel | 堕天使 by Ilan Derech

Ilan Derech, a prolific Japan-based photographer and videographer, releases one of his customary vibey urban nightlife scenes with Fallen Angel | 堕天使, a 3-day Open Edition that’s proving quite popular with collectors.

Adding to its significance, this is the artist’s first open edition, and the artwork is currently being exhibited at the FOR THE CULTURE event in Paris, organized in part by renowned collector punk6529.

Check out the rest of the event’s pieces here, there’s plenty of dope art all sold via the same open edition mechanic.

Desert Desperados by SADBOI

Emerging digital artist SADBOI is on a bit of a hot streak, captivating respected collectors with his colorful blends of mythological and crypto-native motifs, even amidst the current bear market.

He’s riding this momentum with Desert Desperados, a Western-inspired open edition that concludes today at 4 PM ET. Western Art Dept, a curation platform co-founded by popular Western pop artist Jeremy Booth, is curating and presenting the work.

As with the last drop, there’s more dope art from where this is coming from.

Aerial by RalenArc

One of the more interesting emerging art platforms on Bitcoin, /imagine/, has recently announced its fifth curated collection, Aerial by RalenArc.

Through these 50 hand-picked pieces, this seasoned artist (who recently got noticed by generative art senpai Art Blocks) presents us with generative landscapes depicting urban patterns as seen from above, adorned in various color palettes to appeal to different tastes.

I’m curious to see how it unfolds, as emerging artists have a chance to leave their mark on the fairly unexplored Ordinals art scene.

money_clicc July Drops

money_clicc, a small art collective founded in mid-2022, has been discreetly releasing drops from artists that you may know (and perhaps love?), including big names like OSF, as well as ones mentioned earlier like SADBOI and Jeremy Booth.

They recently announced their July drops featuring die with the most likes and Cowboy Killer, two artists whose works are well enjoyed by respected collectors (the former’s mint details are already out).

However, the club’s not open for everyone, as these drops, like their past ones, will be (for the most part) exclusively minted by money_clicc familia NFT holders, the collective’s lifetime access token.

The Mint List

1. Taproot Wizards. OG Bitcoin meme inscribed as ordinals

2. Project Animus. RTFKT's biggest launch since Clone-X

3. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT

4. Themes and Variations. Sotheby’s showcases pioneer gen artist

5. Acceptable Realities. Fellowship’s 2nd AI photography drop

6. Garbage Friends. New PFP from the creator of Invisible Friends

7. Dimensionals - EVE. Free gaming PFP from doxxed studio

8. 10KTF PFP. Drop from a team that includes Yuga and Beeple

9. Tony Babel x Typical Friends. Limited edition from the popular artist

10. Memeland [TBC]. High-value treasure MVPs minting on BTC