Pak (creator)

Pak
The logo for Pak.
Other namesMurat Pak, The Nothing
OccupationDigital creator
Notable workArchillect, Merge

Pak, formerly known as Murat Pak, is a digital artist, cryptocurrency investor, and programmer. Pak is known for creating the curation platform Archillect, an internet bot which reshares media based on user interactions with content hosted on various social platforms[1] and for launching a platform for burning (permanently removing from circulation) NFTs to receive tokens of the cryptocurrency Ash.[2]

Pak is best known for working with non-fungible tokens. Pak's highest-selling NFT, "Merge", generated $91.8 million in sales in December 2021 and is one of the most expensive non-fungible tokens.[3] Pak's NFTs have been sold on platforms including Sotheby's, Nifty Gateway, MakersPlace, SuperRare, and Async Art.

History

The identity of Pak is unknown and some speculate that it may be a team.[4][5] Pak is also credited for having introduced Beeple to NFTs in October 2020.[6][7] Between February 2020 and April 2022, more than 180,300 NFTs by Pak were sold across the primary and secondary markets, raising $394.9 million.[8][9]

Archillect

In 2014, Pak created Archillect (a portmanteau of archive and intellect), an internet bot that acts as a curation platform. It searches through social media and posts images to several social media platforms.[4] Posts are selected in order to be shared as widely as possible, adapting to provide more of the content people are sharing.[10][1] Archillect has been compared to AI composer Emily Howell as examples of "artistic bots".[11] It has also been described as a mood board.[12] Pak described Archillect as a "digital muse" and refers to it as "she".[1]

The account has been criticized for sharing content without attribution or with poor attribution.[13] A second account was created to post attribution or sources for images when available and Pak has claimed to take down images on request, though this reactive approach has also been criticized.[13][14]

NFTs

Style

Pak is known for a style that takes advantage of blockchain technology, specifically its smart contracts, described as an appeal to cryptocurrency fans.[4] The images associated with Pak's NFTs use geometric shapes or programmatically generated images. Pak frequently embeds hidden messages into NFTs, and uses social media platforms in a candid way to promote and discuss them.[4] Pak's use of NFTs has been described as challenging the concepts of value and ownership.[15]

Works

Pak, The Pixel, 2021.
Pak's "The Pixel", an NFT of which sold for $1.36 million at Sotheby's.

Pak's first NFT, "Cloud Monument Dark", was released on February 3, 2020 on SuperRare, an NFT marketplace.[16] In August 2020, Pak released project "X" on NiftyGateway, an "open edition" sale of NFTs with a scarcity mechanism based on time rather than volume. Thirteen NFTs were offered for sale in multiples for a window of twenty-four hours.[17]

In March 2021, Charles Stewart, CEO of Sotheby's, announced a partnership with Pak to launch the auction house's first NFT sale.[18][19] This partnership resulted in "The Fungible", an open edition which generated $16.8 million in sales across 6,156 NFTs over two days.[4] The Sotheby's sale and subsequent press raised Pak's public profile, specifically with regards to the role of NFTs in the art world.[18][4] As part of Pak's partnership with Sotheby's, Pak also auctioned "The Pixel", which sold for $1.36 million, and "The Switch", which sold for $1.4 million.[20]

On October 15, 2021, Sotheby's launched the "Sotheby's Metaverse", a digital art platform for selling and curating NFTs, which offers users a unique personal profile picture generated by Pak.[21]

On December 2, 2021, Pak launched the sale of "Merge" on Nifty Gateway. "Merge" was made available for 48 hours, with buyers able to purchase "mass units" rather than individual copies of an NFT edition. Buyers received a single NFT with its associated image generated based the transaction metadata and the number of "mass units" purchased. In total, 312,686 mass units were sold to 28,983 buyers generating $91.8 million.[22]

In February 2022, "Censored", a series of NFTs, were auctioned as a fundraiser for the legal defense of Julian Assange. One NFT, "The Clock", was sold for 16,593 ETH ($52.8 million) to AssangeDAO, an online community of 10,000 people who pooled cryptocurrency for the bid.[23] A second auction as part of "Censored" raised 671 ether, or $2.1 million, for separate organizations. $1.9 million in cryptocurrency from the Censored sale was donated to the Ukraine government.[24]

References

  1. ^ a b c "The Most Interesting Curator on the Internet Knows Exactly What You Want to See". www.vice.com. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
  2. ^ "Why brands are burning NFTs". voguebusiness.com. February 8, 2022.
  3. ^ "Top-selling NFT creators of 2021". Washington Examiner. December 24, 2021. Retrieved December 24, 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Crow, Kelly (April 21, 2021). "Who Is Pak? The Artist's Fans Couldn't Care Less". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
  5. ^ Brown, Abram (April 6, 2021). "Anonymous Artist Pak Will Test NFT Market With An Elaborate Sotheby's Sale". Forbes. ISSN 0015-6914. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  6. ^ "Beeple gets real | Christie's". www.christies.com. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
  7. ^ @beeple (October 15, 2021). "massive thank you to the amazing @muratpak for patiently answering all my noob questions that day, you helped chang…" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  8. ^ ArtTactic (May 6, 2022). "PAK - NFT Artist Market Report 2022" (Press release). newswire.com. Retrieved May 7, 2022.
  9. ^ "Not so metadiverse: women account for just 16% of NFT art market". The Art Newspaper - International art news and events. November 3, 2021. Retrieved January 20, 2024.
  10. ^ "LaStampa_AI, le foto su Instagram scelte dall'intelligenza artificiale di Archillect". lastampa.it (in Italian). November 15, 2018. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
  11. ^ Woolley, Samuel (April 10, 2017). "Bots aren't just service tools—they're a whole new form of media". Quartz. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
  12. ^ Watkins, Jon (October 15, 2017). "Mechanical Curation: Spotify, Archillect, Algorithms, And AI". University of Minnesota Law School.
  13. ^ a b Ardis, James (March 15, 2021). "What We Know (and Don't Know) About Pak". Auction Daily. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
  14. ^ "Archillect, the digital curator invented by crypto artist Murat Pak". Art Rights. April 12, 2021. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
  15. ^ NFT, Artnet (December 16, 2021). "The Artnet NFT 30 Report: Meet the Artists, Innovators, and Collectors Who Built Our New Crypto-Art Era (Part Three)". Artnet News. Retrieved February 9, 2022.
  16. ^ Tomaino, Nick (September 13, 2020). "Who is Pak?". The Control. Retrieved December 13, 2021.
  17. ^ Nifty Gateway [@niftygateway] (August 27, 2020). ".@muratpak's project 'X' on Nifty Gateway is a format that's never been tried before. There are unlimited editions of 13 of the works, limited by time instead - an unlimited number can be purchased within 24 hours. After that, no new ones can be created" (Tweet). Archived from the original on August 27, 2020. Retrieved November 28, 2021 – via Twitter.
  18. ^ a b Stankiewicz, Kevin (March 16, 2021). "Auction house Sotheby's enters NFT world through collaboration with digital artist Pak". CNBC. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
  19. ^ Kay, Grace. "Famed auction house Sotheby's is getting in on the crypto-art craze". Business Insider. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
  20. ^ "Crypto-artist Pak's single grey pixel NFT sold for $1.36 million". artreview.com. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
  21. ^ Kinsella, Eileen (October 15, 2021). "Sotheby's Launches Metaverse, a Dedicated Digital Art Platform, With a Little Help From Pak, Paris Hilton, and Time Magazine". Artnet News. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
  22. ^ Mattei, Shanti Escalante-De (December 6, 2021). "Mysterious Pak NFT Project Generates $91.8 M. in Sales on Nifty Gateway". ARTnews.com. Retrieved December 7, 2021.
  23. ^ Howcroft, Elizabeth (February 9, 2022). "Digital art auction raises more than $52 mln for WikiLeaks' Assange". Reuters. Retrieved February 27, 2022.
  24. ^ Ponciano, Jonathan. "Ukraine Receives $4 Million In Crypto Donations Within Hours—Including $1.9 Million Tied To Pak, Julian Assange NFT Collection". Forbes. Retrieved March 4, 2022.

Further reading