Pak, formerly known as Murat Pak, is a

digital artist Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various names ...

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...

investor, and

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

. The identity of Pak is unknown and some speculate that it may be a team. 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 and for launching a platform for burning (permanently removing from circulation) NFTs to receive tokens of the cryptocurrency Ash. Pak is best known for working with

non-fungible tokens A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the b ...

. 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. Pak's NFTs have been sold on platforms including

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...

Nifty Gateway Nifty Gateway is a digital art online auction platform for non-fungible token (NFT) art founded by Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster, and has since been acquired by the Winklevoss twins. Nifty Gateway has sold NFTs by Beeple, Pak, Refik Anadol and ...

, MakersPlace, SuperRare, and Async Art. Pak is also credited for having introduced Beeple to NFTs in October 2020. 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.

Archillect

In 2014, Pak created Archillect (a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsarchive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

and

intellect In the study of the human mind, intellect refers to, describes, and identifies the ability of the human mind to reach correct conclusions about what is true and what is false in reality; and how to solve problems. Derived from the Ancient Gree ...

), an internet bot that acts as a curation platform. It searches through

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

and posts images to several social media platforms. Posts are selected in order to be shared as widely as possible, adapting to provide more of the content people are sharing. Archillect has been compared to AI composer

Emily Howell Emily Howell is a computer program created by David Cope, a music professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Emily Howell is an interactive interface that "hears" feedback from listeners, and builds its own musical compositions from a so ...

as examples of "artistic bots". It has also been described as a

mood board Mood may refer to: *Mood (psychology), a relatively long lasting emotional state Music *The Mood, a British pop band from 1981 to 1984 *Mood (band), hip hop artists * ''Mood'' (Jacquees album), 2016 * ''Moods'' (Barbara Mandrell album), 1978 * ...

. Pak described Archillect as a "digital

muse In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...

" and refers to it as "she". As of 2022, the account has over 2.8 million followers on Twitter. The account has been criticized for sharing content without attribution or with poor attribution. 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.

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. 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. Pak's use of NFTs has been described as challenging the concepts of value and ownership.

Notable works

Pak's first NFT, "Cloud Monument Dark", was released on February 3, 2020 on SuperRare, an NFT marketplace. 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. In March 2021, Charles Stewart, CEO of

, announced a partnership with Pak to launch the auction house's first NFT sale. This partnership resulted in "The Fungible", an open edition which generated $16.8 million in sales across 6,156 NFTs over two days. The Sotheby's sale and subsequent press raised Pak's public profile, specifically with regards to the role of NFTs in the art world. 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. On October 15, 2021,

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. On December 2, 2021, Pak launched the sale of "Merge" on

. "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. In February 2022, "Censored", a series of NFTs, were auctioned as a fundraiser for the legal defense of

Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army inte ...

. One NFT, "The Clock", was sold for 16,593

ETH (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

($52.8 million) to AssangeDAO, an online community of 10,000 people who pooled cryptocurrency for the bid. 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.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official website

Archillect
Living people People associated with Ethereum Year of birth missing (living people)