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Mercedes-Benz went wild on Twitter to reveal all the details of “Maschine,” its new NFT collection.
The project was created together with Dutch artist Harm Van den Dorpel and art collector Fingerprints DAO.
NFT News: details of Mercedes-Benz’s Maschine generative art collection
In a roundup of tweets, the well-known German automotive brand Mercedes-Benz described its new generative art collection NFT: Maschine.
1/ We can finally announce our inaugural core collection, co-created with generative artist @harmvddorpel and art collectors @FingerprintsDAO. We’re excited to work with giants in this space and would like to share what “Maschine” is all about 🧵 pic.twitter.com/9iOFUxefpr
— Mercedes-Benz NXT (@MercedesBenzNXT) May 30, 2023
The collection features 1,000 unique Ethereum-based tokens and plays on the themes of speed and perception, as the artwork mimics a moving wheel.
Specifically, Maschine is inspired by the so-called “wagon wheel effect,” whereby spoked wheels appear to rotate in a way that seemingly contrasts with their actual speed and direction.
Mercedes-Benz wanted to recount the contributions of the two main contributors to its first collection, who are Dutch artist Harm Van den Dorpel and art collector Fingerprints DAO.
Specifically, Van den Dorpel, a multifaceted artist in Crypto Art since 2015, created and trained a neural network to identify and select the results generated in line with his artistic preferences.
Mercedes-Benz pointed out that while he is not new to the use of artificial intelligence in his work, this is the first time Van den Dorpel has used a custom neural network, and it is also his first fully 3D work.
NFT News: the Maschine collection and collaboration with Fingerprints DAO
Continuing with its tweets, Mercedes-Benz also describes Fingerprints DAO, a collector of many NFT works pioneering the blockchain such as a series of Autoglyphs from Larva Labs, Loot Bags, and other works deemed “inimitable and irreplaceable.”
And indeed, Fingerprints DAO spearheaded the collaboration and will be the host of the upcoming Dutch “Maschine” auction next Wednesday, 7 June.
In this regard, Luiz Ramalho, founder of Fingerprints DAO, stated as follows:
“Regular people that are mostly unaware of the developments in the Web3 space are likely to have their attention drawn to a collaboration like this… we can make them see that there is substance to artworks being made over here, artworks that couldn’t possibly be done without the use of these new technologies.”
Mercedes-Benz had also pre-announced that its collections will be three. Besides the first one featuring generative art, the German automobile brand has already described the other two as follows:
5/ For our third core collection we’ll embark on a journey through Mercedes-Benz’s design heritage. These digital collectibles are created by the Mercedes-Benz design team around Chief Design Officer Gorden Wagener and will make connections between the past, present, and future.
— Mercedes-Benz NXT (@MercedesBenzNXT) May 24, 2023
Mercedes-Benz and its Polygon-based data platform
The well-known brand is not only looking at NFTs; rather, it has been experimenting with different Blockchain “products” as far back as 2019.
Last year in July 2022, it chose Polygon as the basis for its data sharing platform: Acentrik.
Daimler South East Asia, part of the Mercedes Benz Group, launched Acentrik in collaboration with Ocean Protocol, an AI organization, which serves as a platform for data sharing, not industry-specific.
This means that Acentrik can be used for different types of data, from clinical trial data to insurance information or anything else.
Specifically, Daimler’s blockchain-based platform of Mercedes Benz and Ocean Protocol, stores data not on the blockchain but on an NFT that represents each dataset, while a hash of metadata is stored with it. Transactions are then executed on Polygon.