Erick Calderon (Snowfro)
send/receive #8506
2025
- Artist / Artist group
- Erick Calderon (Snowfro)
- Title
- send/receive #8506
- Year
- 2025
- Category
- Computer-based
- Material / Technique
- on-chain NFT
- Dimensions / Duration
- installation dimensions variable
- Collection
- ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
- Description
- Imagine a work of art consisting of as many individual images as there are participants—and one that changes every time someone makes a decision. That is exactly what send/receive is: a digital network in which everyone who has purchased a piece collectively shapes the overall image. The starting point is a small self-portrait. Each collector designs their own figure from tiny pixels, a so-called "sprite". Optionally, a short melody consisting of four tracks can be composed to accompany it. Both are stored in a decentralized digital network—not on a single server that can be shut down, but in a system that remains permanently and publicly accessible. Once their own figure is created, the collectors make a choice: Do I send my figure to the network, do I receive the figures of others—or both at the same time? This decision influences what everyone else sees. Those who receive see a stream of unfamiliar figures moving across the screen. Those who send see their own figure calmly at the center, occasionally spreading outward. The network reacts immediately: the figures distribute themselves among everyone who is currently receiving. The more people participate, the slower the flow becomes for each individual. The starting point was an English idiom: “sending thoughts and prayers”—meaning “I’m thinking of you.” The work translates the essence of this gesture—care, attention, presence—into a digital medium. send/receive makes this invisible exchange visible: as a network that shows in real time how individual decisions shape a community.
Author
MR