David Lynch, the American filmmaker beloved for his darkish, surreal, and decidedly authentic physique of labor, handed away this week on the age of 78. An avid experimenter and experimentalist, Lynch was at all times open to the brand new—even when it got here to blockchain expertise.
In 2021, again when NFTs had been new and unusual to most individuals, Lynch labored with the indie rock band Interpol to create a sequence of eight audiovisual collectibles on the Ethereum blockchain.
A decade prior, in 2011 Lynch had—at Interpol’s request—created a sequence of visuals for the band’s efficiency at Coachella. These visuals grew to become the five-minute animated brief movie “I Contact A Pink Button Man,” which accompanied Interpol’s then-new track, “Lights.”
For the NFT sequence, that collaboration was revisited to create a number of immersive, psychedelic-feeling clips of “Pink Button Man” located in rusty tv displays—and uploaded onto the Ethereum blockchain without end.
Excited to announce the Lynch X Interpol undertaking by @DAVID_LYNCH and @Interpol
This collaboration will drop seven distinctive one-of-one NFT artworks each two days for 2 weeks on SuperRare as timed auctions.
The first NFT “I Contact A Pink Button”
Bid now: https://t.co/kKLoN5oEqy pic.twitter.com/VnJthg1bug
— SuperRare 💎 (@SuperRare) October 26, 2021
“To be frank, Interpol is loopy about David Lynch, and we’re over the moon to have ever been capable of align our identify along with his in an inventive discussion board,” the band’s frontman, Paul Banks, stated in a press release on the time. “Humbly, we imagine that as digital artifacts go, these are worthy of preservation within the infinite digital realm.”
When the gathering went reside in late October 2021, it instantly struck a chord with collectors. One of many NFTs, which featured the video’s title sequence, offered inside hours for 20.7 ETH—a sum price over $82,000 on the time.
Lynch was no explicit evangelist of crypto or digital artwork. He by no means labored with blockchain tech once more. However he was famously onerous to pin down, and of the various traits that outlined his singular life and profession, one was a continuing willingness to discover and embrace the unusual and new.
Edited by Andrew Hayward