RECYCLED

THE EXPERIMENT

The project began with SCREENWEAVERS, a collection of hand-crafted pixel animations exploring line motion and digital weaving. Each work had a different frame rate and duration but shared the same monochrome palette and resolution. Offers for each edition were open for only 24 hours. Once the window closed, any unsold editions were permanently removed from circulation, making collected works rarer while leaving behind a large pool of abandoned material.

This structure was intentional. The artwork’s value was shaped not by scarcity alone but by the presence of unsold pieces — a counterintuitive setup designed to push against the usual dynamics of NFT trading. In the end, 84 unsold works remained, totaling 4,895 frames. These became the sole source material for RECYCLED, forming a new composition made entirely from what was left behind.

On the surface, it looked like another trading ploy — something we all find ourselves doing in one form or another when trying to put value to our art and present it to the world, hoping it will intrigue collectors, traders, aficionados, or simply anyone who might take interest when the art alone fails to do so. But underneath, the experiment depended on the exact opposite outcome. It was designed to generate as many unsold pieces and editions as possible, made certain by the initial pricing and the strict time limit on offers, while still putting my work out there as an artist trying to make a living from his practice.

It might sound counterintuitive, but it was meant to address a tension that had been circling my creative process — a tension I imagine many artists share. The trade-off between art and commerce has always been an existential struggle. And although I have no issue making certain concessions in order to sustain myself, the purely digital nature of NFT trading — fast, volatile, and increasingly mechanical — had started to feel impersonal. From one drop to the next, I found myself carrying expectations that were drifting away from the work itself. Most communication with the audience happened through online text windows. A sense of accomplishment became tied to sales. Little by little, it felt as though the act of making was being overshadowed by the act of selling, instead of the creative challenges and internal progress that had always driven my practice.

So I leaned into that discomfort and treated it as part of the process. I put my work up for sale in a way that would guarantee an accumulation of unsold material — usually the dreaded outcome, often followed by pieces sitting indefinitely in the marketplace or being removed entirely. But here, what remained unsold wasn’t something to discard. It became the raw material for something else. Those “unwanted,” “commercial failures” were gathered and reworked into a single-edition piece that is not to be sold, taking its place in RECYCLED as a monument to this shared experience of art and commerce — shaped through our choices, with you and by you, in this time and space.

HOW IT CAME TO BE: Evolution of SCREENWEAVERS into RECYCLED

SCREENWEAVERS was a series of hand-crafted pixel animations built from the motion of a single line woven into a digital lattice, forming hypnotic, undulating patterns. The title was chosen deliberately. The pieces reminded me of the screensavers of 90s operating systems, and switching “savers” with “weavers” felt fitting — partly as a pun, but also as a reference to the manual, almost textile-like process behind each animation. My practice at the time was no different than weaving, only in digital form.

There was also a contextual layer to the title. Weaver birds (Ploceidae) construct intricate nests from collected materials, weaving a structure out of whatever is available. That behavior aligned closely with what I knew SCREENWEAVERS would become — the first experiment leading into what eventually became RECYCLED. The idea of gathering, reassembling, and transforming existing material was already embedded in the name.

Each SCREENWEAVERS piece was created as a standalone animation with its own frame rate and duration, sharing only resolution and a monochrome palette. Offers for each edition lasted 24 hours. Once the window closed, any uncollected editions were removed from circulation, making the collected pieces rarer and leaving behind a growing archive of unsold material.

In the end, the process left me with 84 unsold pieces totaling 4,895 frames. This became the only material I allowed myself to use for RECYCLED — no additional brushstrokes, no new animation work beyond assembling and transforming what was already there. That constraint, together with the philosophical implications of the experiment, created a direct connection between the creative journey and the conditions of the marketplace that shaped it.

The experiment stopped there. RECYCLED remained a one-time project — a single edition made entirely from discarded material, shaped by the mechanics that produced it. What emerged was a piece that sits somewhere between process, artifact, and documentation. It captures a moment when creative intention met the realities of the NFT space, when scarcity and surplus intertwined, and when unsold work gained a new purpose outside of market expectations. Rather than continuing as an ongoing system, RECYCLED stands on its own as a record of that brief intersection of art, value, and the shifting conditions of digital marketplaces, approached with restraint, and curiosity.