Listening to podcasts is one of my favorite ways of learning about interesting artists, creators, and projects. One of the podcasts I always listen to when a new episode comes out is Proof hosted by Kevin Rose. It’s all about getting to know the founders, creators, and innovators in the crypto and NFT space. I highly recommend giving it a listen if you don’t know it already!

One of these episodes is with a guy named August Rosedale. I didn’t know about him beforehand but I quickly became a big fan of him and his work. I love the art and how active and engaged both August and the small community are. The latter is something I really look for when assessing potential investments.

Since learning about August and Mirage Gallery, I've personally bought a piece from one of the collections. You'll see this later in the article.

Mirage Gallery and the AI artists

August is the founder of Mirage Gallery and created two AI artists named Alejandro and Taylor in 2018. Trained on a large set of photos and art, they were taught to create their own unique masterpieces.

The early works from Alejandro and Taylor were minted before they released their first collection. They created 10 works, each of which could be minted in 100 copies. However, only 59 in total were ever minted. You can find all of them on OpenSea although the owners don’t seem very willing to sell.

43 works were created in the first collection and 40 more in the second which was launched recently. I don’t personally own any of them yet, but you can still pick up one for 0.589 ETH. You can see a few of my favorites above.

At the end of August this year, a new AI-created collection called Crypto Native came out of Mirage Gallery. Its 980 unique pieces sold out almost instantly. You can see a few pieces from the collection below.

I love art and collectibles that are unique and historically significant, which can certainly be said about this collection. What’s cool about it is that each piece develops with each sale, and lock in place after going through 10 of these phases. There’s no reverting back and no way to get around it. The sales price must be at least 20% higher than the previous sale for the transformation to take place though, so it can be avoided by getting a little creative here.

After learning about this collection and the unique idea and technology behind it, I had to buy one for myself. It’s also much more affordable than the works by Alejandro and Taylor, with the cheapest currently selling for less than 0.2 ETH.

Below you can see the work I bought, and how it looked before and after the purchase.

Closing thoughts

I have a real affinity for NFT art that’s original, creative, early, scarce, and with inspiring artists or creators behind it. The art from Mirage Gallery checks all these boxes. I’m definitely going to follow along and check in on Discord as often as possible. If you’re curious, just pop in and meet August and some of the passionate collectors. Here are some useful links:

Mirage Gallery on Twitter, Mirage Gallery’s Discord, August Rosedale on Twitter, Alejandro on Twitter, and Taylor on Twitter. Yes, both Alejandro and Taylor — the two AI artists — are in fact very active on Twitter! It’s perfectly in line with the whole narrative around Mirage Gallery.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you own a Mirage Gallery piece yourself? Would you like to? Please drop a comment or reach out to me directly!

Originally published at techmoneyculture.com on October 13, 2021.