About this Project

A Token Gesture is an exhibition and research project to introduce, explore and critique new public interactions and ownership of digital art via ‘non-fungible tokens’ – more commonly known as NFTs.

In this project, members of the public in Edinburgh will be able to:

• Generate unique pieces of digital art through a street-level, walk-up interaction
• Register their artwork for display in the exhibition via the InSpace City Screen
• Mint, claim and own a non-transferable NFT, representing their piece of art, that will allow them to control how their piece is displayed

We have worked with two Scottish generative artists Sasha Belitskaja and Cameron “Gingey” to create a system where anyone can generate a unique piece of digital art simply by presenting a colour to a fixed camera. Participants are then carefully guided through setting up a crypto-wallet to claim and mint an NFT representing their piece. This NFT – a unique, digital token – cannot be transferred, or exchanged. However, it serves to register the artwork, evidence an individual’s contribution, and will allow them to control when the artwork is displayed on the City Screen projectors.

A Token Gesture is an academic research project, led by researchers at the Institute for Design Informatics, part of the UKRI DeCaDE centre. The project is wholly non-commercial – it won’t cost any money to take part, and neither participants, nor anyone in the research team, or at the University of Edinburgh, will benefit financially from this project.

As a critical research project, our aims are to:

• Offer hands-on opportunities for the public to learn about, experience and reflect critically on generative art and NFTs.
• To study users’ experiences, practices and understanding of creating and managing NFTs
• To explore how NFTs can (or cannot) offer audiences new ways to connect with and ‘own’ digital art and content.

To find out more, please read our detailed FAQs or contact us at: designinformatics@ed.ac.uk

About the Research Team

A Token Gesture is an exhibition hosted at the Inspace Gallery led by researchers at the Institute for Design Informatics, where we design systems for better human data interaction, in diverse settings such as health, culture, mobility and finance. We explore design from, with, and by data: the central concern is the design of flows of data which sustain and enhance human values.

At the Institute for Design Informatics we have been studying, exploring and critiquing blockchain technologies since 2014, through projects that seek to understand and communicate the potential social and societal implications of blockchains, distributed ledgers and smart contracts. In particular, we aim to broaden participation, debate and the imaginaries, social implications and engagements facilitated by these emerging technologies. You can read more about our previous research and design with blockchain technologies here.

This research is funded via UKRI, through the DECaDE: Centre for a Decentralised Digital Economy, a 5-year National Research Centre exploring how emerging data technologies such as Distributed Ledger Technology (aka `Blockchain’) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) could transform our digital economy through decentralized platforms.

Research and Development Team

Design and development of the exhibition is led by Dr. Evan Morgan, with the support of Martin Disley.

The research programme is led by Dr. Chris Elsden, alongside Prof. Chris Speed, Prof. Burkhard Schafer, and Dr. Dave Murray Rust.

The exhibition was produced and co-ordinated by Jane Macdonald – research projects producer for Design Informatics and the Inspace Gallery.

The generative artworks commissioned for this exhibition were produced by Sasha Belitskaja and Cameron “Gingey”.

In addition, we would like to thank Ross Macdonald, Jonathan Rankin and Peter Tilley for their support in developing this project.

About the Artists

Sasha Belitskaja

Sasha Belitskaja is an Estonian architectural designer, NFT artist and UX developer whose work centers on novel interactive design models and the interplay of new emergent aesthetics. Her projects focus on utilizing computer graphics and game engine technology to explore new forms of connectivity between audience, creator and community. Her experimental work and proposals have been published internationally. Sasha has taught workshops on building dynamic spatial conditions through custom built game design environments and experimental 3D modelling softwares. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Dundee, graduating with distinction, before continuing her masters' studies at Die Angewandte in Studio Greg Lynn. Throughout her professional career, Sasha has worked for award winning internationally-known design offices in Stuttgart, Vienna, London and Los Angeles. Sasha is a co-founder of mixed reality architecture studio iheartblob and has recently authored iheartblob - Augmented Architectural Objects : A New Visual Language.

Title: Pick n Mix

Artwork description: Pick n Mix presents you with a collection of 10 digitally sculpted elements that come together in a uniquely coloured composition with each minted NFT. Pick n Mix explores the potential of generative art and the ability of customization of the artwork by the spectator. Each artwork is composed out of the same family of components but with each mint it outputs a unique allocation of parts and its materiality.

Cameron "Gingey"

Cameron "Gingey" is a digital artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Gingey is a self-taught artist with a love of creating a variety of different styles which create a unique and satisfying loop. He experiments with different styles such as abstract or simplistic flowing motions, while tying in a form of generative art. From these different ideas and pieces of digital art, he also tries to implement interactive features to allow viewers of the art to be more involved, or even change how the art looks.

Gingey only recently got involved in NFTs around March 2021, which accelerated his creativeness and got him more involved in other artist communities. He has only been selling his art as NFTs on the Tezos blockchain as it is more accessible to everyone from all backgrounds, and is vastly more eco-friendly compared to other blockchains used for NFTs.

Title: String

Artwork description: The piece is created by taking a hex colour value and transforming this into an ASII array. This array is then separated into individual values to affect the shape and animation of a spline.

The flowing spline will gradually transform over time by certain values being affected by the month, day and hour of the viewer.