Scribble Together
A Collaborative Experiment
What a better way to have fun than to scribble with friends?
Scribble Together is an experiment: I created a scribbling algorithm, but while making it, I didn't know what the eventual colors would be. Instead, I've left this for friends to choose.
Twenty artists created palettes:
Each piece had a palette assigned randomly at mint. However, to make the experiment more interesting, for a limited time, collectors could change the palette for their piece.
Scribble Together was a three week open editon, available on Plottables from June 25 - July 18, 2024. Collectors were able to select palettes during this period and for two additional days, until July 18. The majority of primary proceeds went to palette creators, and were influenced by collector's choices.
We did a pre-launch interview in the Plottables Discord, a transcript of which is available here.
Why?
I’m interested in blockchain mechanics as much as I am in generative art. Generative art allows injecting randomness into a visual output, and blockchains allow for injecting human behavior into the art. Combined, things can get really interesting.
Scribble Together brings three factors together in each piece:
- My scribbling algorithm
- Palettes by twenty artists, one of which is randomly assigned initially
- Final palette choice by the collector
Will this result in a better final collection than if I had created all the art and left the random seed at mint to decide the rest? Maybe, it’s an experiment.
This brings me to my second reason: I like experimenting. I’m curious to learn, to push myself, and to take risks. Experimenting with mechanics in particular is challenging (and therefore interesting to me), as it requires building smart contracts and front ends, sometimes handling payments, and there’s often little room to make mistakes.
Lastly, I want to do more collaborations, as with my first one for "Us". They’re a great way to make friends and work together towards a goal. Collaborations can be easy with people you close working relationships with, but to scale them up, there needs to be some clear “division of labor”. Making the color choices independent from the lines and composition simplifies the collaboration for Scribble Together.
Palettes
Each palette creator had the opportunity to create one or more palettes, using the palette creator tool. See all the palettes here.
Plots
Scribble Together is a plottable work, and I've collected plots people have shared over time. See them here.
Economics
Primary Sales
Scribble Together had the following primary splits:
- Art Blocks: 10%
- Plottables: 5%
- Palette creator pool: 63.75% (75% of the remaining 85%)
- me: 21.25% (25% of 85%)
The palette creator pool was split up, per piece, in the following way:
- If the collector kept the randomly assigned palette, the proceeds were split evenly
- If the collector chose a different palette, that creator gets all the proceeds
Collectors switched palettes for 52% of pieces in the collection.
Royalties
Royalties are directed to myself. Note that while I considered splitting the royalies of each piece with the palette creator of that piece, because the project works through Art Blocks Engine, the project can only have recipients specified for the project as a whole.
Should a piece from this collection ever go to auction or otherwise be sold in a manner that allows for manual handling of royalties, I kindly request that these payments are directed 50% to myself, and 50% to the palette creator. I will not be handling any splitting of royalites.
Technicals
Scribble Together is written using JavaScript and SVG and deployed on the Art Blocks Engine.
In order to handle the palette pool, a custom smart contract was written to handle specific functions:
- Receive a portion of primary sales
- Allow collectors to mark a palette selection (in tandem with the Palette selector)
- Calculate the splits per creator (see Economics) and distribute payouts
You can see the contract here: 0x838d967a8cc67f4fc8df5df88c4de87c36a5d138