e30d #8 − Clean Slate (First First) Object: First First #555552 Artist: DEAFBEEF Owner: ChrisF Date: December 2023

In September 2021, during crypto art's first mainstream frenzy, Canadian-born artist Deafbeef released First First. The generative collection is the largest edition series created by Deafbeef, and is simultaneously his least understood work. The concept was simple – 5,000 digital objects featuring white text over black background. Each object’s words, created through an on-chain generative process, displayed a fictional news event as a categorical first event for crypto art.

In each of the 5,000 outputs, the text is generated directly by the smart contract, with the syntactic elements—such as nouns, adjectives, and clauses—stored within the contract's memory. Subsequently, the phrases are generated by the tokenID, which serves as a seed for producing each sequence of pseudorandom numbers. Utilizing a so-called context-free grammar, consisting of if-else statements weighted probabilistically, a Solidity function deterministically created the final text for each object. Last, this string converts into an SVG and output as a data URL. As a result, the contract does not need to rely on external resources or images for rendering, as the process is entirely self-contained within the smart contract.

At once satire and fictive documentary, First First captured the convergence of self-described cultural breakthroughs happening across the digital media space, and the peak of the 'everything bubble' that categorically defined Summer 2021.