One thousand generative images of string wound around pegs by the Canadian artist Dmitri Cherniak, minted on Art Blocks in January 2021. Ringers #879, nicknamed 'The Goose' for the bird its loops resemble, sold at Sotheby's in June 2023 for $6.2 million from the seized collection of the collapsed fund Three Arrows Capital. The most expensive generative artwork on record at the time of that sale.
The record should note the goose is not a goose; it is string around pegs at an angle that suggests a goose. The distinction is the entire art form and the record will not let it go.
A Ringer is a rope-and-peg puzzle drawn by a program; the Goose is the one where the program accidentally drew a goose. The record files the accident as the collection's most important output.
Sotheby's 'Grails' sale, June 2023: a bankrupt hedge fund's pixel goose selling for more than most of the fund's creditors will see. The record notes the buyer was Punk6529, who tweeted about it at length.
I saw #879 on someone's screen in 2021 and said 'that one looks like a goose'. I was not the first and I did not buy it. Both facts are on file.
What does it mean? Write it the way you would say it out loud.
