A conversation with the creator of FarCats, access to the FarCats model in SOURCE, and some links for exploring.

This week we’re bringing you an interview with artist and onchain creator 0xen. 0xen has put together some incredible works from the DAO artwork for Purple and ENERGY, to Salon 0xen his subscription works, and most notably the FarCats collection. Along with this interview and assorted hyperlinks, we’re bringing you exclusive access to a new custom trained FarCats model inside SOURCE.

HOTLINKS

• The New Meta: Onchain Points

• Brooklyn’s Crypto-Hipster Hotspot Gears Up for an NFT Rebound

• Crypto AI Agents: The First-Class Citizens of Onchain Economies

• Viral memes and $1M handbags: Is luxury fashion now a spectator sport?

• How to Recognize What You’re Really, Really Good At

• Traumer’s DJ Set at Hide&Seek Festival is master class of minimal house.

INTERVIEW WITH 0XEN

So who is 0xen?

Artist who argues with tech people sometimes.

Tell us more about the FarCats collection and what inspired it?

When I first joined Farcaster it was small and there were very few artists actively posting. I liked the community and felt it could benefit from a native NFT collection. First there was Castaways which was an exploration of the Farcaster arch motif. While I was creating that collection, prompt based consumer AI art platforms started to become more useful and dynamic. While exploring the medium I felt nobody at the time was taking advantage of the diversity-at-scale possibilities it unlocked. I wanted to create a collection that took a simple idea and then extrapolate it to the max via AI. To me this represented a new and exciting kind of art collection that wasn’t possible before. Around this time there were some posts discussing potential Farcaster mascots and I thought this might be the perfect application. A purple cat became the motif and FarCats was born.

What do you think makes the collection compelling?

FarCats leans in to the uncanny and absurdist elements of AI circa 2023 while reimagining the animal NFT PFP via genre iteration at scale. They’re also weird and deranged fun, a vital addition to a social network that has been accused of being overly serious at times. I also attempted to break the AI as much as possible, to render the most original kinds of images. 40k FarCats were created, 1661 made the cut.

nft://1/0x9340204616750cb61e56437befc95172c6ff6606/1434?showBuying=true&showMeta=true&size=medium

What have you found most interesting about its revival?

It’s been rewarding to see people taking a closer look at what on its surface might seem like an unserious collection and find there’s quite a bit more going on with FarCats. They’ve also taken their place as part of a burgeoning Farcaster meme constellation that includes the original Farcaster arch, wowow, $points; all of which are starting to see broader proliferation.

What’re some of the things you’ve noticed about the collector base?

I think both early buyers who might not be NFT people necessarily and recent buyers both appreciate that FarCats is an early Farcaster native NFT collection and that it breaks ground in both the (serious)AI and (goofy)animal mascot idioms and general art world at large.

Is there anything you hope to see come from the collection?

FarCats was a slow burn for such a long time so I’m really excited to see the recent enthusiasm. FarCats is a lot of things but one of them is a memetic engine for Farcaster. I hope people take advantage of the fact that there are 1661 outrageous cat images available to be leveraged for Farcaster memes etc. There’s a FarCat for every occasion!  If I owned the NFT that was the source of a thousand memes that would feel pretty cool.

What do you think about having a FarCats model?

Having the model creates a canonical home base for FarCats while allowing for new creation and proliferation. New work is tethered to the old and provenance can be show. While there are dozens or maybe hundreds of idioms explored in the original FarCats collections, the artist’s hand still shows, conceptually and with a collection at that scale, through selection. Simply, new cats created with this model will still look like FarCats.

Anything fun you’d like to plug?

You can subscribe to the Salon 0xen hypersub for .005 ETH a month. There are monthly subscriber editions, 1/1 raffles and more. Subscribe, here.

FARCATS MODEL IN SOURCE

Along with this interview we’re making 0xen’s custom trained FarCats model publicly available today in SOURCE. Trained on the entire FarCats image set, it’s easier than ever to create your own FarCats right from SOURCE. If you publish your own ,make sure to share your mint link in the FarCats channel on Warpcast and tag us and 0xen. Get access the the model, here.

nft://1/0x9340204616750cb61e56437befc95172c6ff6606/1438?showBuying=true&showMeta=true&size=medium

Much love,

- TITLES