The Alpha
- Jack Butcher, of Checks VV and Visualize Value, has announced his newest project. Checks Elements is a 152-piece, generative art collection of hand-drawn monoprints and non-fungible token pairs, which he says explores “the ever-evolving relationship between consensus and truth.”
- The collection will feature four elements: Earth, Fire, Water, and Air. Three of the four elements will be auctioned off at Christie’s on May 16. Thirty percent of the auction proceeds will be donated to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
- Each digital piece will come with a 30” x 42” physical counterpart made by master printmaker Jean Robert Milant.
Dive deeper
Butcher’s Checks VV collection made a splash in early 2023 with one iconic sentence: “This art may or may not be notable.” The sentence, as well as the collection, is a play on the phrase, “This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable,” which previously popped up when you clicked the blue check mark after Elon Musk announced he would be selling verified check marks for eight dollars.
The Checks Ecosystem has grown considerably since then, with hundreds of Checks derivatives and even a mechanism to migrate the original editions to on-chain artwork through Checks VV Editions. After this, many wondered if Butcher would keep growing and adding utility to Checks.
Now, after months of ideation, Butcher has unveiled Checks Elements.
When asked where he got the idea of using elements, Butcher says it was conceived with his friend Martin Klipp, president of Beyond Art Creative.
“The elements concept comes from the idea of translating what Checks represents digitally into something physical,” Butcher said in an interview with nft now. “So this idea of consensus, what was consensus before we had these methods of digital communication? The four elements were basically present in every way, were discovered or arrived upon, and decided upon in all of these different cultures that had no way of communicating with [one] another for thousands of years.”
To Butcher, Elements is an extension of the idea of using Checks as a symbol of decentralization. It’s the continuation of the story. He says using elements felt like the right way to describe the physical world.
“So we essentially took those four elements, built these color palettes around them, and then used a version of the algorithm that built checks generatively to produce these 152 prints. They’ll be put together as pairs so that the instructions and immutable version of the NFT will live on Ethereum, and they basically then translated physically.”
For the physical editions, Butcher and Klipp enlisted the assistance of Milant and his gallery, Cirrus Editions.
“It takes Jean almost a day each to make these prints handmade on the lithographic press,” Klipp said. “Each piece is also hand finished by Jack, so they are both physically and digitally verified.”
“They are massive,” Butcher said. “They have to be rolled. So if you got 20 checks, it might be a case of a minimum of 20 rolls of each color on each on each piece of paper.”
What’s next
Checks Elements will be on display at Christie’s until May 23. After the first auction, Butcher’s 24-hour collection will also be auctioned from May 24-25.
The final element, Fire, will be hidden in the 24-hour collection. Physical prints for those who purchased the 152 Checks Elements pieces from either auction will be mailed out on June 24.
When asked about being showcased at Christie’s, Jack attributes this success entirely to community support. “It’s just something that I’ve not experienced before,” Butcher said. “And I’m learning and kind of getting to experience it with everybody else, which is amazing.”
If you are an owner of Checks, Opepen, and Visualize Value 1/1s, you will be able to have a special participation in Checks Elements auctions. Butcher stated in a tweet (pictured above) that you will receive “Infinity Check” bidders’ editions for each auction tier you participate in.
One Check collectors will receive a full set of editions, whether they participate or not, as will those who participate in Alpha and Christie’s auctions. There are currently only 31 “One Checks” out of a possible 250 that currently exist.
If that seems confusing, it simply means that if you aren’t a One Check holder, you must bid and own one of the collections mentioned to get a full set of Infinity Checks (all four elements).
When asked if Checks Elements will be related to Visualize Value’s other popular project, Opepen Edition, Butcher says they are separate projects. But, there is “loads of work to do” that we will all see more on that soon.
