Nfts
The film “What The Punk” traces the history of Ethereum’s iconic NFTs, CryptoPunks
The story of crypto art’s most iconic project begins in a shady Brooklyn neighborhood. “The most polluted waterway in the country,” Matt Hall says of the environment that inspired his work with Larva Labs co-founder John Watkinson in the new documentary “What the Punk.”
This 80-minute tale of counterculture follows two humble Canadian programmers who began experimenting with technology and art in 2005 and is now on display at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where CryptoPunk #110, donated by current IP owner Yuga Labs, has been on display since 2023.
In the late 2000s, while developing mobile apps, Hall and Watkinson began working on the Pixel Character Generator, a fun feature for creating unique profile pictures with overlays of basic pixel elements.
Then came the rise of EthereumLongtime sports card collectors, they sensed that blockchain offered enormous development potential that could help them create a digital equivalent to their childhood passion: a new type of collectible.
Composed of 10,000 algorithmically generated pixel images with 87 unique attributes, CryptoPunks inspired the ERC-721 standard and gave birth to the profile picture (PFP) movement which then spread across Yuga Bored Ape Yacht Club and countless other spiritual successors.
Matt Hall and John Watkinson launched CryptoPunks in June 2017. The first week the release went almost unnoticed in the proto-art-tech community. Mashable The article drew attention to the free stock. Within days, all stock was sold out.
The secondary sales gradually gained momentum, eventually culminating in a number of sales worth over $10 million worth of ETH. The hype and influx of money would help boost the emerging scene of NFT.
“What The Punk” brings together some of the most prominent figures who have helped propel blockchain’s momentum in art history: Former Head of Digital Art at Christie’s Noah Davis (who later ran CryptoPunks under Yuga), art expert Yehudit Mam Since Dadacollector Dan Polkoand long-time moderator of Punk Discord Tschuuuly.
Erick “Snowfro” Calderon also acknowledges how his experience as a punk collector and active member of the community helped him imagine Art Blocksthe successful Ethereum generative art platform.
In counterpoint, “What The Punk” highlights the practice of RobnessOne of the first crypto artists. Robness disapproved of the hype surrounding CryptoPunks, which diverted attention from the artistic aspect of the project to fuel speculative investments. So, in 2021, he purchased Punk #2317 and immediately burned it as an artistic gesture.
Still enamored with the artistic heart of the project, Robness called Punks the “Warhol of crypto art,” adding that it represented “a movement – we’re just at the beginning.”
Behind the film
Passionate about the history of CryptoPunks, director Hervé Martin-Delpierre, who previously helmed “Daft Punk Unchained,” and producer Marc Lustigman spent three years uncovering the Punks’ secrets and interviewing big names in crypto art. From artists to gallerists, collectors to auctioneers, they captured a rich tapestry of voices that reveal how this collection revolutionized the art world.
Lustigman said Decrypt that the concept for the documentary was born in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, before the NFT craze of 2021 that Supercharged Punks Prices.
“A friend told me, ‘This is the future of art, you should buy some.’ At first I thought he was joking,” Lustigman recalls. “I was only interested in the visuals. Little by little, something started to draw me in, to obsess me! Six months later, I understood the genius behind this work, and the story I discovered was so crazy that I wanted to make a film about it.”
“It was the Punks who introduced us to crypto art,” Martin-Delpierre added, noting that their use of smart contracts to enable on-chain art projects “allowed digital art to flourish. They were the genesis of what followed: the development of an entire artistic ecosystem.”
The filmmakers deliberately avoided dwelling on the technical aspects of blockchain, focusing instead on the impact of CryptoPunks, the voices that support and challenge them, and the growing reach of the collection within the traditional art world. Still, there were a few oddball elements to explain, such as the “V1 Punks” with a bug that have been abandoned and replaced, but continue to exist on the blockchain.
“The challenge was to explain extremely complex things – like the V1 Punks – to people who didn’t know them. [the crypto] “We looked for the right narrative form to do it, because these key moments help to [people] “We want to better understand how art works on the blockchain. This is not a film about Punks, it’s the journey of three contemporary artists.”
“From the beginning, we wanted to go beyond a simple success story, to dive deeper into the development of art on the blockchain,” Lustigman added. “Robness joined us halfway and echoed Matt and John’s trajectory: artists fighting to have their art seen and recognized. He acts as a catalyst.”
CryptoPunks launched before most people knew what NFTs were, then exploded into billions of dollars in trading volume, but have seen their trading momentum slow over the past two years, despite the huge casual sale that always turns heads and makes headlines. The documentary covers the ups and downs of this roller coaster trajectory.
As filmmakers, they also had the mission of telling the story of a relatively niche project, with the goal of both honoring and satisfying that fan base while also expanding its reach and bringing that story to a much wider audience.
“As documentarians, we take a global view and ask questions,” they said in a joint response. “We are neither for nor against NFTs. We simply want to provide this material to the general public, so that they can form their own opinions without cultural bias. This film is a snapshot of our times: creative, somewhat naive people who are either being swallowed up or struggling against overwhelming forces.”
“What the Punk” was released internationally on June 11th on VIMEO OTT for a limited 3-month run and on ARTE in France and Germany. The European premiere took place on June 11th during Art Basel 2024, as part of the Digital Art Mile, a new digital art fair format in Basel.
Edited by Andre Hayward