Glitch artist Patrick Amadon recently announced the launch of his “404 August 2023 Art Catalog”, a monthly decentralized chain and agnostic art exhibition to highlight the latest in digital art – by artists, for artists. The Catalog is hosted on the creative platform Joyn.xyz.
For the August issue, Amadon will acquire $3,500 worth of art submissions, alongside collectors such as Art Blocks’ Snowfro, Proof’s Head of Art Eli Scheinman, Cozomo Medici, anonymouslyand six others.
“The 404 August catalog was the second of the catalogs and featured ten collectors who generously decided to match my commitment to purchase works submitted.” Amazon said in an interview with nft now. “I wanted to create something that would be chain and platform agnostic, and just bring art and artist together without considering the influence of social media — just an equal opportunity for every artist to be seen on the same level.”
What is “Glitch Art?”
Over the years, the emergence of “glitch art” has become increasingly popular as a visual style distinguished by its use of deliberately curated digital distortions.
Think about those brief intermissions from our movies, TV shows, or video games that quickly resolve themselves and eventually disappear from the screen. Glitch Art explores what it looks like when those glitches aren’t “self-correcting,” creating a unique, futuristic design style.
Evoke Sotheby’s “Glitch-ism” collection
Amadon first made headlines in March after announcing he was retiring his art Sotheby’s then the latest NFT glitch art auction, “Natively Digital: Glitch-ism.”
The glitch artist called out Sotheby’s “Glitch-ism” collection for its lack of representation of “female identifying artists” who he says played a major role in the rise and overall growth of the glitch movement.
The first online auction of its kind was preparing to showcase 17 artists from the glitch art world, ranging from static images in the form of JPEGs to MP4s and GIFs. However, Sotheby’s soon came under fire from many in the Web3 community for not including a single female artist in the auction’s roster.
A number of female and non-binary artists who were initially excluded from the show also took offense at their exclusion, highlighting the critical role they have played in the development of Glitch art.
As a result, Sotheby’s made the decision to pause the auction, only to relaunch it two weeks later on April 19, titled “Glitch: Beyond Binary,” featuring communities of artists who “not only identify as male or female, but people exist. of any gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, language, neurotype, size, ability, class, religion, culture, subculture, political opinion, age, skill level, occupation, and background.”
“No rioters” in Hong Kong
During the same period when Amadon exposed the lack of representation in Sotheby’s originally planned “Glitch-ism” auction, he also made headlines after his digital billboard titled “No Rioters” was removed by Hong Kong authorities.
Amadon had been standing at the side of a central Hong Kong department store for a week, revealing that the glitch art actually had a secret political message invisible to the naked eye — the names of imprisoned activists in blinking text, as well as a 24-second video detailing captured pro-democracy protesters seen in photographs of the artwork.
told Amazon BBC news that the removal of the artwork “completed” the political message about the city’s crackdown on civil liberties.
What’s next for 404?
According to the announcement, interested artists and collectors can only submit one entry directly into the Amadon thread “X” (formerly Twitter) before the submission process closes at 12pm PST on July 31.
Amadon also now told nft that space will go one of two directions and that he wants to be on the right side of history.
“Either we create an inclusive and accessible art movement that can support marginalized artists and grow into the transformative movement we can be,” he shared. “Otherwise we will consolidate into a handful of artists and end up as a blip on the art history timeline – the time when art was created around blockchain and eventually lost to history.”