written by Maurice Cardinal …
As soon as I saw the Dorkis Art Project I thought, “WOW, finally, a hand-drawn generative art project that represents how most of society secretly feels about itself.”
I’m a notoriously assertive guy and a real world environmental and social activist that some very large corps, orgs, and governments dread, so Dorks aren’t exactly my cup of tea. I’m more of a straight-up tequila guy–hold the salt and lime.
Decades ago, I met Mike Tyson in a Vegas gym just as his star was starting to moon. He’s a scary guy who seems as wide as he is tall–definitely not someone you’d call a dork. His most infamous quote is, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” A strong sentiment to be sure, but true and one I personally appreciate. I’ve been on both sides of that jab and cross.
When I first saw PUNKS & APES and the dystopian and fake-belligerence undertone, all I could see was inch-deep posing by wealthy anons and little that represents good people. I’ve eased a bit since, but still, mostly what I see in these thin cartoon projects are shitposting, aggression, and misdirection. I don’t see much art, but I do see bullying and fear-mongering leveraged to ramp up FOMO. It’s primarily based on gaming aggression and panders to frustration and hopelessness, hence the “Buy our knock-off gen and save yourself from dystopian doom.” It was also initially driven by mostly covert tech-teams pretending to be artists, much like digi-punks pretending to be real punks. You can easily tell by their lexicon. To start, an artist would have never named it NFT–non-fungible tokens. We are much more humanly creative.
With Dorkis I feel the exact opposite vibe.
With Dorkis I see hope, creativity, genuine self-deprecating fun, and a real world need to make things better. Exactly what I want right now in a lingering and hopefully waning pandemic. I asked my ninety-three-year-old mother what she thought about the Dorkis phenomenon and she agrees. She’s never steered me wrong. My ninety-three-year-old father however, leans toward the angry monkeys –I guess because he’s an ex-professional boxer. Go figure.
The Dorkis project represents a transition similar to the one that wildly-successful NFT photographer Justin Aversano spearheaded. Aversano, of Twin Flames fame, built the first bridge for photographers to shoot analog film and convert it to digital NFT. Aversano also owns a PUNK or maybe two, and because I interviewed him just before he mooned, I won’t hold it against him haha, because at the time the dystopian-factor was the most popular generative project the metaverse had at the time. Aversano is a pioneer and survivor, and recognizes business opportunity when he sees it. He’s also an authentic community guy and has brought as much and sometimes more to the NFT art community than anyone. Not everyone in the space is a bad guy. For some, it’s just business, and there is no denying that generative art can be a great investment.
Dorkis is also a transition, but this time it is a bridge for artist and collector alike who genuinely ache to help improve society. It’s what authentic artists and decent people do.
Our slogan since 2004 at International Artist Day is;
“We celebrate the contribution artists make to society every day.”
Dorkis do that too, incredibly well and by natural design.
Here’s a secret I loathe to admit; I don’t want to be a dork, but sometimes I am. PUNKS and APES probably think I’m being a dork right now.
Being a dork signals vulnerability. Today, being vulnerable is the last thing I want, but the truth is that it also makes you human, and that’s really what I want the most. I just want to be human and have human thoughts and feelings and connections.
I’ve been pouring over the Dorkis collection looking for MY PERFECT DORK, but it turns out it seems I’m more UNconfident in myself than I thought, and I can’t find the perfect one–at least yet. I have a feeling I will though, and if I do, I’ll send you my DORK PIC–sorry, it had to be said.
Below is an inside peek at official info directly from the source about the Dorkis generative project that will give you backstage insight …
In a newsfeed of bold colorful animals, a new hand drawn, pencil-led creation has hit the Twitter space. Hand Drawn, gender unknown, humanesk cuties that artist Tori Batt calls Dorkis. We Are Dorkis is an NFT project of cute hand drawn traits, randomized in a computer whose smart contract contains a brave new mechanism.
Founder @FCCview speaks about the unique burning mechanism he has implemented with the 10k avatar launch of @WeAreDorkis. A mechanism created to hopefully help curb a sales trend he has seen in other project launches.
While helping to build communities for several NFT projects he made note of consumer behaviours. Some collectors who want to turn profit quickly, will buy mass quantities of a project, and sell many of the less rare NFTs, at a loss.
To curb that, Dorkis is the first to offer a burn and rebate mechanism; a phase they like to call “COMMUNITY CURATION“.
Order of Events as follows:
*Sale : Dorkis minted on website, revealed on website.
*Burn : When 100% are sold, for 24 hours, the smart contract will allow a BURN & REBATE for an 80% return and to curate rarity.
*Meta Data Release : After the burn period, collectors will finally get to see the Metadata of the Dorkis telling them how rare their Dorki is, following the curation.
Graveyard : Sending the Dorkis to something the community likes to call the “Graveyard Collection”.
If the sellout does not happen however, the remaining Dorkis will be burned, and the burn/rebate mechanism won’t be activated.
Dorkis are odd and innocent creations by Netherland artist Tori Batt that will transport you back to a simple time of childhood creation. Hand drawn in ink, and colored with pencil.
Each of Tori’s creations require her to draw out and color each unique feature individually. Scan them, and generate the traits that make up each Dorkis–randomized and computerized.
“My drawings are much too silly to be this appreciated!” says Tori, as each new member pours into the Dorkis discord server through a joint love of her creations. Tori, an artist who felt her drawings and paper sketches would never see success, is humbled to have a community find joy in these whimsical drawings, and especially when fans and their children draw derivatives of her silly creatures.
Randomizer, smart contract developer, and former aircraft engineer Frank Poncelet, who has over twenty years of experience in software development, accepted the task of developing this smart contract for the project. He’s an active digital artist in the NFT community and familiar with the current NFT marketplace.
Frank says his favorite part of this experience is how the Dorkis “come to life”.
The journey was long, from prototype to final product. It included many redos from Tori, and for Frank and FCCview to run more than one-hundred thousand Dorkis through the generator to pick the best traits.
By the presale launch August 31st, the smart contract was tested over twenty times on the beta network to ensure the burn mechanism and traits would work dynamically together during curation.
September 5th, We Are Dorkis launched through their website for 0.07 ETH each. The project has a 100/wallet limit, 10/transactions, and has focused on organic growth from the community while opting to not pay influencers at the beginning stage.
First week of launch and they are already working with communities such as the @Animetas and the @SewerRatGang to foster a strong community of holders. They have attracted purchases by collectors such as jimmy.eth and rapper Ja Rule in just their first week.
The community roadmap is a beautiful piece of art in itself with an approximate six-month timeline.
It includes Dorkis companions by Tori, a Halloween resurrection event for burned Dorkis, early holder offers, such as Dorkis merchandise, and a very exciting D&D Dorkis community they will foster. As well as a Liquidity Pool with nft20.io. Also, a thirty-five percent community fund.
The funds will be handled in a multi signature wallet with Gnosis-safe.io with community decisions being handled through Snapshot.org. allowing the funds to be delegated by the community for proposed IP projects and group acquisitions and other endeavours.
Great detail went into the interactive website and roadmap to enable ease of mobile minting. The experience is visually appealing, reminiscent of a time when websites were enjoyable to visit.
Oops, sorry I originally wrote below that minting ended on the 26th, but it’s actually tomorrow, the 19th of September – TOMORROW!
Dorkis ARE STILL MINTING through their website until this SUNDAY SEPT 19, 2021
Get one tough guy, if you’re brave enough …
