ISSUE 1
PIXELZINE THE PIXELMIND COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER
EDITED BY STEVE HUFF
COVER ART BY @KANARD
INTRODUCTION By Adam B. Levine, excerpted from Pixelmind Unlisted Ep 4| Art by Lina Condes & Pixelmind
Hey folks — I'm Adam B. Levine, CEO of Tokenly and 330ai, the company behind Pixelmind. There have been many questions and to a lesser extent, confusion around what exactly Pixelmind is and what people are being whitelisted for. Here I'll answer that question... and I'm also pleased to share with you the first artist collaboration and Pixelmix™ drop where most of you will have the opportunity to go hands-on with an early version of the Pixelmind product itself. If you're on Discord, you've probably seen the CreationCat channels, where those who have been whitelisted are able to interact directly with Pixelcat, our bot that allows you to create new and exciting images within discord itself. Although the bot is pretty incredible, it's actually just our research and development tool. It's something anyone can learn to use well, but it does require learning and sometimes even setting parameters or other complex things that a lot of people just aren't comfortable with. The Pixelmind product, the one we've been working on since long before we started the Discord and met all of you, is designed to let anyone harness that creative power without needing to go through the process of learning how to use it. it's like a self-driving car for creativity. Pixelmind allows collectors and creators to collaborate in creating unique, one of one images and NFTs. Owning those NFTs will be key to accessing even more exclusive collaboration and creation opportunities, so you'll want to hold onto most of what you create. 1 || INTRO
You'll select the series you want to create within, then have a number of attempts where you're asked to complete a sentence or answer a question.
You'll then watch as your piece is created in front of your eyes, and also be able to see the images being created by everyone else, allowing you to draw inspiration and hone in on your perfect piece. At the end of the process, you'll select your favorite one or potentially multiple creations, which you'll then mint into an NFT, your part of that particular series on either Ethereum or Polygon, depending on your personal preference. Collector memberships grant first access to everything we do, and free access to all standard series, which are series created in-house at Pixelmind, and of which there'll be quite a few. You'll be able to participate, create and collaborate within each standard series and mint your favorite at no additional cost. Having a membership is enough. For all other areas of the product, the memberships act as multipliers, granting discounts when we collaborate with popular artists and even allowing you to mint additional tokens in many series at a discounted rate. There's more to it than that, but for now that's what you need to know. 2 || INTRO
Lina Condes
Lina Condes is a popular artist whose iconic sculptures have earned her a growing legion of collectors. She is the first artist to use Pixelmind to collaborate with collectors (see several examples in these pages), and you're invited along should you want to get a sneak peek at our still-in-development experience. You'll have the ability to Pixelmix™ six of Lina's iconic sculptures. Then you can pick your favorite to mint as your NFT in our inaugural series. The cost of the experience and the NFT is $350 retail, $200 if you've already provided your Ethereum address in the Gen1 collector membership area. To get the discount, use the Ethereum address you added to the whitelist as your coupon code. As I mentioned earlier, this is a tech preview, not the final design and not the final product but that's close and coming soon. And understanding that this is just a preview, we'd love your feedback on the experience. As you've figured out, you're reading the first edition of Pixelzine, an imagery and implications-focused magazine for the Pixelmind community. These digital editions will play a growing role in the community as we go, but for now, I'm pleased to share that regardless of membership or whitelist status, everyone who pixelmixes and mints a token in collaboration with Lina will get a first edition NFT celebrating the launch of Pixelzine. 3 || INTRO
Finally: This first series takes place on Create.Miami, an NFT marketplace that the City of Miami engaged us to build. It'll be rolling out with more items later this week but Lina Condes's series is available there now. So to get started, head over to https://create.miami (that's the real URL) and find the Artifizl Figz series. Participation in this series can be purchased with your credit card, Bitcoin or Ether.
4 || INTRO
GALLERY ART BY WXLL
ABSTRACT 9
"BUBBLE CITY" 5 || GALLERY
GALLERY (CONT.)
"MUSHROOMS"
"GIGER TEMPLES"
"I am not strange. I am just not normal." ~ Salvador Dali. 6 || GALLERY
WELCOME
"PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN IN A PALACE,DRAWING" BY ARCHITECT
Welcome to Pixelzine: The Pixelmind Community Newsletter. Each week we’ll feature amazing new artwork — and news about how we’re developing tools that make it possible for anyone to create their own. In addition to mind-blowing imagery from our Discord community artists, we’ll: Keep you informed with announcements and updates; Feature interviews and profiles of community members as well as members of the Pixelmind team; Solicit submissions from the community on what this is all about — what are the implications, and where can we go with this powerful melding of technology and inspiration; Recaps of founder and CEO Adam B. Levine’s podcast about the project, Pixelmind Unlisted.
"GARDEN" BY WXLL
7 || WELCOME
EDITOR'S NOTE The first time I asked an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and neural network-powered app to create art, I had no idea what I was doing. Stumped, I looked out the window. It was a chilly October day in New England, where I live. Bright yellow-orange leaves fluttered from a tree across the street. The light was steely, clouds promising cold rain. So, I randomly asked the AI to show me a “landscape painting featuring all the emotions autumn brings.”
"AUTUMN/MEMORIES" BY STEVE HUFF
The original “standby'' image for PixelmindAI was a cartoon cat head, Pixelcat. I watched Pixelcat’s face fill with flickering images. Old maps, stained-glass windows, and strange, many-eyed faces flashed by as the vast neural networks behind the cat worked their magic. Machines calculated and crafted—and created. Drawing from countless sources of visual inspiration, Pixelcat crafted a prosaic yet surreal image that immediately had me flashing back to my childhood home in Tennessee, then across time to my first fall in New England a decade ago. The software wasn’t taking the job of creating art away from me. I had just used words as colors on a palette. Pixelmind was my paintbrush. And as exciting and fascinating as this technology is, presenting an entirely new way for users to find their own inner artists, it’s only the beginning. Pixelmind empowers creativity in everyone. It helps erase the barrier between inspiration and creation. With tools like this at our disposal, the doors to the future of art are wide open. Who knows where we can go from here?
Steve Huff, Pixelzine Editor
8 || NOTE
NEWS
"TEMPLES" BY WXLL
We kicked off our community discord on October 30th, that's exactly ONE MONTH but it feels like a lifetime. Even with so much still to come, here are a couple things worth celebrating. Check it out: As of November 30, 2021, the Pixelmind Discord Community was more than 1,700 Pixelheads strong. We introduced you to Pixelcat, who started off commenting on images, then started to .imagine her own with your help... Oh and .diffusion happened too! We partied in decentraland and talked about art with members of the community in the first of many virtual gatherings. Community donations (which we didn't ask for or expect but definitely appreciate!) helped double our processing power. That means more amazing works of art. Here’s a big shout-out to the Pixelmind community patrons helping to shepherd new magic to life: @FuzzyWizDum @NeoTokyo CTZN 38 @Discrok @The Ratfather | Mischief @Citizen 1971 | RCK @PixelKnight @Annie
"What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it." ~ Salvador Dali
PAGE FOUR| JOURNEY
9 || NEWS
VISIONS Merriam-Webster says "visions" are what we "see or dream especially as part of a religious or supernatural experience." Discord stalwart @Konturenspiegel has been curating visions for us from the community (including cover art by Kanard) and the following are selections from November 18 through November 22, 2021.
"GREAT WAVE" BY @WMIV
"UNDERWATER WORLD" BY @PIXELZUL
"LAYERS OF FEAR" BY @ISABEAU
10 || VISIONS
VISIONS (CONT.)
"FUTURISTIC '67 VW IN NEO TOKYO" BY @GARRISONP
"A GOD OF ABSOLUTE WRATH" BY @SWIFTYLARUSSO
11 || VISIONS
VISIONS (CONT.)
"MULTICOLOR OCEAN WAVES" BY @STEVEYBABY
"ETERNAL FLAME" BY @PIXELZUL
"MOVIE POSTER WITH BLUE SMOKE" BY @LYRIC
"DARKNESS BIRTHING LIGHT" BY @KANARD
12 || VISIONS
VISIONS (CONT.)
"WOOD CARVING FUTURISM" BY @HONESTLY
"NIGHTTIME / A DARK FOREST" BY @ISABEAU
"CREATIVE JUICES" BY @RATLOREMASTER
13 || VISIONS
PIXELMIND UNLISTED PODCAST RECAP
We’ll be seeking writing submissions from the community for future newsletters. Discord user @Funkobits, AKA Robert Stevens, was kind enough to assist this inaugural issue by recapping episode 1 of Adam B. Levine’s informative and fascinating podcast, Pixelmind Unlisted. Pixelmind Unlisted is a community-focused podcast in which Adam B. Levine provides input and answers your questions on the Pixelmind AI-generated art project. He covers everything from its nebulous beginnings to the far-flung imaginings of what's to be expected in the following years.
Adam put down roots in the crypto community in 2011 with a series of podcasts which by 2013 became the Let's Talk Bitcoin podcast. He is the founder of the Pixelmind project, a venture of his company Tokenly and 330 AI.
"THE GLOWING PORTAL" BY ADAM B. LEVINE
The first episode of Pixelmind Unlisted delves into the project’s origins. Adam opens the podcast with a flourish: "We think that the stuff that we're working on are the first tools created with the knowledge that the world changed in 2021...and that change comes with it, implications that are far-reaching and incredibly important."
"I love technology,” Adam continues, “...what it can make possible for people." Regarding his inspiration for the project, Adam cites his early experiences with OpenAI's GPT-3 which he first came to know through the blog posts of Manuel Araoz, the mind behind blockchain-based virtual reality world Decentraland. Adam began exploring the capabilities of GPT-3 by feeding it writing prompts. He soon discovered that it could inherit a writer's style and continue writing on the prompt in a logical way for "paragraphs and paragraphs." Eventually, Adam found the Discord channel of an AI-focused community working on a project called 'GPT-J,' a less "evil" alternative version of 'GPT-3' with a smaller dataset. Adam recalls his first experience in that Discord channel with "AI art that anyone could create without any technical knowledge" and describes it as "a form of literal magic." He also references another OpenAI project called CLIP — a neural network that learns visual concepts from natural language.
14 || RECAP
PIXELMIND UNLISTED PODCAST RECAP, CONT.
"LIGHTNING STRIKING SHIP IN HEAVY STORM" BY @ISABEAU
"Tokenly as a company was not really focused on AI at all,” Adam says, “it was just a hobby of mine." But the more Adam picked up the tools that AI offered, the more "addictive" it became. It was "literal magic" that could be wielded by anyone with the technical prowess to recite the "incantation." He closes with, "This technology could be just as empowering for everybody else, if we could remove that barrier of expertise and the learning curve that was required."
"APOCALYPSE ROBOTS" BY WXLL
15 || RECAP
"PSYCH FOREST 2" BY WXLL