Novelty Maximizer #046

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Mario Klingemann

2022

NFT/Digital

Description

Mario Klingemann’s Novelty Maximizer #046 belongs to a series of pixel works minted on 8Bidou, a Tezos-based platform for fully on-chain bitmap graphics. Issued on March 31, 2022, as a unique 8-by-8 RGB image, the work operates within strict formal limits while pursuing an unconventional goal: maximizing difference. Klingemann sought to generate images whose “feature vectors”—mathematical descriptions of visual characteristics—are as distant as possible from all previously minted works on the platform, privileging novelty over aesthetic convention.

To achieve this, Klingemann employed what he describes as an “evolutionary process,” a method of iterative optimization under computational constraint. Exhaustively searching all possible 8-by-8 color combinations would not be feasible, so the system instead tested multiple generative strategies—random sampling, recombination of partial successes, and incremental transformations such as adding or subtracting pixel values. Approaches that produced more novel results were allocated more processing time, while less effective ones were discarded. The final image thus emerges from a selective, feedback-driven process in which variation, evaluation, and refinement converge to produce maximal visual dissimilarity within a tightly bounded field.