ikon-1 

P-I: Richard Hudson-Miles 

This is a critical essay on Nick Knight's innovative new NFT project ikon-1. This was showcased at the second Metaverse Fashion Week, 2023. ikon-1 is the name for the project and its central avatar. Composed of 8,000 unique NFTs that are based on the model Jazzelle Zanaughtti, the ikon-1 avatar is created using 3D scanning and photogrammetry technology. Each final portrait is then auto-styled randomly according to two hundred unique traits. Knight estimates that the software can produce twenty-eight billion unique combinations. The result is a series of uncanny alter-egos of Zanaughtti, many of which are shocking in their transhuman abnormality. Indeed, this essay reads these images as meditations on what Fredric Jameson called the technological sublime.

Hudson-Miles, R. (2023) Elevate The Human Race, Putting Makeup On My Face: ikon-1 and the Technological Sublime, Vestoj

Image of space age looking person with flowers