Fade is Pak’s latest thought-provoking venture to grace the NFT space. Pak, the omniscient designer/developer/wizard, uses their work as a means of grappling with the fundamentals of the blockchain as a medium. An innovator of art through code, this work represents the epitome of Pak’s style both aesthetically and philosophically.
Fade is a digital timepiece that will disappear over a year, making one full rotation every 60 seconds. The basis of the work revolves around themes of identity and permanence – resetting and regenerating every time it’s passed on to a new owner. Pak’s artful use of code allows Fade to remain ever dynamic in its yearly lifespan per wallet holder. Furthermore, each time the evolutionary NFT is transferred between wallet addresses it will take on a new color gradient. Fade will never be static. The work lives fully and eternally on chain as a procedural infinite resolution animated vector file, as opposed to a hosted pixel-based image sequence.
To concentrate thought and attention solely on their output, Pak absolves themselves of all identity. The creator's indefinable character is reflected in their alias, with the term "Pak" allegedly referring to "The Nothing." Cloaked in anonymity, the ingenious creator has spent over two decades working with digital art, becoming a figurehead of the NFT movement. Pak’s stealthy, ultramodern attitude to the art world canon must classify them as one of the most cutting-edge artists of our time.
Pak has also been known to use social media as an extension of their art, constructing a labyrinth of hidden clues in their feed, challenging their followers to a seemingly indecipherable game of hide-and-seek. The interrelation of Pak’s cryptic methodology and the blockchain medium itself creates an eternally bound connection between artist and movement. These themes are inextricable to Fade.
Pak’s enigmatic disposition was most recently exposed in the aftermath of The Fungible Collection, a sale collaborated by Sotheby’s and Nifty Gateway in April 2021. Following the sale, Pak announced on social media that purchasers of his 'Cubes' would have the option to 'burn' their NFTs in exchange for a custom-made ERC20 cryptocurrency token, ASH. Furthermore, wallet holders of this newly devised token would be granted exclusive access to certain future Pak works, only available to purchase with the newly minted currency. In The Fungible Collection, Pak’s revolutionary use [or discovery/creation/invention] of digital alchemy challenges the psychology of ownership. Buyers have been forced to decide between keeping their original work or destroying it for future investment in Pak’s artistic journey. The so-called ‘Cubenomics’ epitomises how Pak cryptically engineers his work to generate ambiguity, discussion, and controversy. Pak’s art should rarely be taken at face value.
