May 2025
Aesthetic Constant
Pareidolia means “false image” in Greek, and it refers to the phenomenon of seeing faces where there aren’t any, in clouds or rocks. The human mind is so eager to recognize the other that it makes faces from nothing. The animations in Jonathan Chomko’s collection Aesthetic Constant are abstractions that play with pattern recognition, though not the kind that evokes the face. The dots that bounce and bob in these animations are based on motion-capture footage that he took of friends walking on a treadmill in his studio. It's pareidolia for the body in motion. These dancing dots are minimal traces of Chomko’s friends, and yet we can recognize them instantly as a document of human movement.
In his work with performance, interactive installations, and digital art, Chomko devises systems that viewers can act within or choreographing a series of actions that make the system legible. The most immediate precedent for Aesthetic Constant is Constant (2024), an NFT a collection of NFTs that evolve as they are transferred, each work a pair of parallelograms that shift in size and position as the token moves from one digital wallet to another. As in minimalist sculptures, the abstract slabs approximate human bodies. The collector known as CSA2D7 organized an effort to transfer one token from Constant dozens of times, so that the shapes accumulated and squeezed together. It was an example of how a participant can initiate novel behaviors within a system, yielding an outcome Chomko did not expect from the conditions he provided.
Aesthetic Constant could be a springboard for a collector’s initiative, too, though its conditions are somewhat more austere. The initial sale is limited to an allowlist of 100 collectors. After minting, each of the 100 collectors has the opportunity to invite one other minter, who then can invite another. The maximum edition size of Aesthetic Constant is 10000, but the actual size will depend on what holders of the token choose to do. If they invite fewer friends to mint, then they’ll hold a rare work. But if they invite more, then the project will have a bigger footprint, and more variations in the output. Chomko has written the contract in such a way that collectors will receive a half of the sale price of minters they invite, creating a financial incentive to recruit collectors and rewarding people for building community around the project.
Since the bull market for NFTs of 2021, many collections have baked in mechanics to influence collector behavior. In some cases, these were conceptual engagements with the blockchain as a system. Others were mere marketing gimmicks engineered to maximize speculative trade. The fact is that both approaches recognize that the permissionless and decentralized framework of the blockchain needs some kind of human touch, some injection of meaning, to make people feel involved. NFTs codify and financialize relationships among people and between people and art. Adjustments to the workings of NFTs can make those relationships more meaningful.
The tokens in Aesthetic Constant use the wallet address of the first collector to generate an animation from Chomko’s bank of motion-capture data. After the initial sale, the animations will be derived from a mixture of wallet data, tying the token to the new collector and to the one who invited them. A transfer will alter the animation along the same principle. Aesthetic Constant gives a visual, material form to the way associations and memories take shape when an object changes owners, or when ownership is connected to friendship. As in Constant, the abstract forms stand in for bodies, and their ever-changing forms remind us that behind every wallet is a unique individual. This is a work about identifying something human in a technological system designed to minimize dependence on humanity—a play with blockchain pareidolia. Chomko can still recognize his friends’ unique gaits in those bouncing, bobbing dots. What do they mean to you?
Brian Droitcour is the former Editor-In-Chief at Outland, and a former Associate Editor at Art in America. Brian is currently writing Rough Idea, exploring how artists are using emerging technologies, and how these technologies are creating new kinds of artistic communities.
Aesthetic Constant is an NFT project exploring relationship on the blockchain, and is currently open for minting by invitation only at http://aestheticconstant.jonathanchomko.com/
Pareidolia means “false image” in Greek, and it refers to the phenomenon of seeing faces where there aren’t any, in clouds or rocks. The human mind is so eager to recognize the other that it makes faces from nothing. The animations in Jonathan Chomko’s collection Aesthetic Constant are abstractions that play with pattern recognition, though not the kind that evokes the face. The dots that bounce and bob in these animations are based on motion-capture footage that he took of friends walking on a treadmill in his studio. It's pareidolia for the body in motion. These dancing dots are minimal traces of Chomko’s friends, and yet we can recognize them instantly as a document of human movement.
In his work with performance, interactive installations, and digital art, Chomko devises systems that viewers can act within or choreographing a series of actions that make the system legible. The most immediate precedent for Aesthetic Constant is Constant (2024), an NFT a collection of NFTs that evolve as they are transferred, each work a pair of parallelograms that shift in size and position as the token moves from one digital wallet to another. As in minimalist sculptures, the abstract slabs approximate human bodies. The collector known as CSA2D7 organized an effort to transfer one token from Constant dozens of times, so that the shapes accumulated and squeezed together. It was an example of how a participant can initiate novel behaviors within a system, yielding an outcome Chomko did not expect from the conditions he provided.
Aesthetic Constant could be a springboard for a collector’s initiative, too, though its conditions are somewhat more austere. The initial sale is limited to an allowlist of 100 collectors. After minting, each of the 100 collectors has the opportunity to invite one other minter, who then can invite another. The maximum edition size of Aesthetic Constant is 10000, but the actual size will depend on what holders of the token choose to do. If they invite fewer friends to mint, then they’ll hold a rare work. But if they invite more, then the project will have a bigger footprint, and more variations in the output. Chomko has written the contract in such a way that collectors will receive a half of the sale price of minters they invite, creating a financial incentive to recruit collectors and rewarding people for building community around the project.
Since the bull market for NFTs of 2021, many collections have baked in mechanics to influence collector behavior. In some cases, these were conceptual engagements with the blockchain as a system. Others were mere marketing gimmicks engineered to maximize speculative trade. The fact is that both approaches recognize that the permissionless and decentralized framework of the blockchain needs some kind of human touch, some injection of meaning, to make people feel involved. NFTs codify and financialize relationships among people and between people and art. Adjustments to the workings of NFTs can make those relationships more meaningful.
The tokens in Aesthetic Constant use the wallet address of the first collector to generate an animation from Chomko’s bank of motion-capture data. After the initial sale, the animations will be derived from a mixture of wallet data, tying the token to the new collector and to the one who invited them. A transfer will alter the animation along the same principle. Aesthetic Constant gives a visual, material form to the way associations and memories take shape when an object changes owners, or when ownership is connected to friendship. As in Constant, the abstract forms stand in for bodies, and their ever-changing forms remind us that behind every wallet is a unique individual. This is a work about identifying something human in a technological system designed to minimize dependence on humanity—a play with blockchain pareidolia. Chomko can still recognize his friends’ unique gaits in those bouncing, bobbing dots. What do they mean to you?
Brian Droitcour is the former Editor-In-Chief at Outland, and a former Associate Editor at Art in America. Brian is currently writing Rough Idea, exploring how artists are using emerging technologies, and how these technologies are creating new kinds of artistic communities.
Aesthetic Constant is an NFT project exploring relationship on the blockchain, and is currently open for minting by invitation only at http://aestheticconstant.jonathanchomko.com/