| Apr 10, 2022 |
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(Nanowerk Spotlight) We’ve spent a lot of time recently researching and writing the articles for our Smartworlder section here on Nanowerk – about cryptocurrencies, explaining blockchain, and many other aspects of smart technologies – for instance non-fungible tokens (NFTs). So, we thought: Why not go all the way and try this out ourselves?
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As many organizations continue to push the boundaries as to what is possible within the web3 ecosystem, producing our first-ever collection of nanotechnology-themed digital art on the blockchain seemed like a natural extension for our brand and we hope that these NFT collectibles will be cherished by our reader community.
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To start with, we created two inaugural Nanowerk NFT collections in a series we are calling Giants of Nanotech in order to honor the great minds of science in this field.
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The digital artwork has been created using the artificial intelligence (AI) image creation algorithm Neural Style Transfer. This technique takes two images – a content image and a style reference image (such as an artwork by a famous painter) – and blends them together so the output image looks like the content image, but ‘painted’ in the style of the reference image.
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For example, here is a video clip that shows how the AI transforms the Feynman content image into a painting inspired by Victor Nunnally’s Journey Man:
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In this way we created our inaugural collections with 64 different digital artworks each for Richard Feynman and Harry Kroto, inspired by 64 different popular and famous works of art from van Gogh to Warhol. The video clips that show each creation process, like the one above, are available as NFTs as well.
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The NFTs are tokenized on the Polygon Blockchain as a collectible on the OpenSea marketplace, the world’s first and largest digital marketplace for crypto collectibles and NFTs.
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If you want to jump right into it, here are the Harry Kroto collection and the Richard Feynman collection on the OpenSea marketplace.
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The first one is Richard Feynman – details about the Feynman collection here – and you can see a collage with all 64 NFTs below:
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The second one is Harry Kroto – details about the Kroto collection here – and you can see a collage with all 64 NFTs below:
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We priced our initial NFT offering at the equivalent of about US$20 at the time we set this up; of course, these prices can fluctuate wildly.
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You can hang on to your Giants of Nanotech NFT or – maybe it’ll become a valuable item! – sell or trade it later on.
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Have fun with our NFTs and please remember, your purchase helps fund Nanowerk and we are very grateful to you!
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Also note: NFTs are an extremely volatile market. This article is not financial advice. Invest in the crypto and NFT market at your own risk. Only invest if you fully understand the potential risks.
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By
Michael
Berger
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Michael is author of three books by the Royal Society of Chemistry:
Nano-Society: Pushing the Boundaries of Technology,
Nanotechnology: The Future is Tiny, and
Nanoengineering: The Skills and Tools Making Technology Invisible
Copyright ©
Nanowerk
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