{ "schema": "ab5d-dossier/1", "slug": "dmitri-cherniak", "name": "Dmitri Cherniak", "subtitle": "The system and the social contract.", "lede": "*Ringers* made a complex algorithm readable through one elementary proposition: wrap a string around pegs. Its 1,000 outputs became a collective artwork, an icon, and a market phenomenon. Cherniak answered that success with two smaller projects that shifted automation from the image to the behaviour around it. The code generated the works. The holders completed the experiment.", "url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/dmitri-cherniak/", "bibliography_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/dmitri-cherniak/links/", "content_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/api/artists/dmitri-cherniak.json", "updated": "2026-06-22", "tier": "standard", "editions": 1100, "collections": 3, "otdh": { "rank": 74, "score": 17407, "collector_identities": 351, "holder_addresses": 356, "projects": 3, "current_works": 1100, "raw_collector_days": 1578605, "median_project_hold_days": 1732, "snapshot_at": "2026-09-14T00:00:00.000Z", "methodology_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/otdh/", "api_url": "https://ab5d.xyz/api/otdh/dmitri-cherniak" }, "identity": { "artist": "Dmitri Cherniak", "website": "https://linktr.ee/dmitricherniak", "based": "Born 1988, Toronto, Canada. Lives and works in New York City", "practice": "Generative systems, automation, code, prints, photography, sculpture, and blockchain-based social experiments", "now": null, "raster": "https://www.raster.art/artist/dmitri-cherniak", "otdh": "[17,407 · rank 74 of 308](/artists/otdh/#artist-dmitri-cherniak)", "holding signal": "351 collector identities · 356 holder addresses · 1,578,605 raw collector-days · 14 Sep 2026", "collector tdh": "[dmcTDH](/artists/dmitri-cherniak/dmctdh/) · dashboard" }, "socials": { "website": "https://linktr.ee/dmitricherniak", "x": "@dmitricherniak", "instagram": "dmitricherniak" }, "profile_image_url": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1553829114250919937/uvtPDQNU_400x400.jpg", "profile_image_source": "https://x.com/dmitricherniak", "works": [ { "name": "Ringers", "editions": 1000, "supply": 1000, "artblocks_slug": "ringers-by-dmitri-cherniak", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/ringers-by-dmitri-cherniak" }, { "name": "The Eternal Pump", "editions": 50, "supply": 50, "artblocks_slug": "the-eternal-pump-by-dmitri-cherniak", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/the-eternal-pump-by-dmitri-cherniak" }, { "name": "The Wrapture", "editions": 50, "supply": 51, "artblocks_slug": "the-wrapture-by-dmitri-cherniak", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/the-wrapture-by-dmitri-cherniak" } ], "sections": [ { "heading": null, "paragraphs": [ "Dmitri Cherniak calls automation his artistic medium. The phrase is more exact than calling his medium code. Code is the material by which he constructs an automated process, but the artwork begins when that process is allowed to act: quickly, repeatedly, and without asking the artist to approve each result. Born in Toronto in 1988, Cherniak studied physiology and computer science at McGill University, worked as an engineer, and brought the creativity of solving technical problems into an art practice based in New York.", "The route was neither a conventional studio education nor a sudden conversion during the NFT boom. In a university artificial-intelligence course in 2010, Cherniak wrote a Go-playing program that generated Taylor Swift portraits in ASCII for its defeated opponents. When he posted one of the images in 2015, friends immediately asked to buy it. A San Francisco exhibition followed, and a print purchased with Bitcoin connected his automated images to cryptocurrency years before Art Blocks existed.", "His first NFT was minted in 2019. The more decisive encounter was with Larva Labs' *Autoglyphs*, whose on-chain system suggested that a collector could receive an output from the algorithm itself rather than a file the artist had selected in advance. Cherniak wanted a comparable structure in JavaScript. He experimented with a Raspberry Pi that would generate works and eventually destroy itself, and tried unsuccessfully to persuade an existing marketplace to support live code. When Erick Calderon introduced the early Art Blocks platform, Cherniak recognised the distribution mechanism he had been seeking.", "> Automation is not the absence of authorship. It is authorship exercised through permissions, probabilities, and the decision to let a system finish the work." ] }, { "heading": "Ringers: one rule, a thousand consequences", "paragraphs": [ "The premise of *Ringers* is immediately graspable. Place circular pegs on a grid and wind a string around some of them. The apparent simplicity makes the results legible, but it conceals the geometry needed to produce them. The algorithm samples peg positions, sorts them by angle around their centroid so paths do not cross arbitrarily, calculates tangent lines between circles, then draws the arcs that carry the string around each peg. Peg count, scale, arrangement, wrap direction, recursion, body colour, background, and occasional extra colour open that system into a large field of variation.", "Cherniak developed the form for roughly three years before its release. This duration matters because the finished algorithm is not merely a competent diagram of wrapped string. It has been tuned so that sparse and dense compositions, monochrome and coloured bodies, orderly grids and displaced structures all remain recognisably part of the same family.", "Art Blocks released the 1,000-edition Curated project on 31 January 2021. Each buyer and the artist saw the generated work at the same moment. No later selection converted favourable seeds into the official series; all 1,000 outcomes constituted it. Cherniak has argued that the complete set is more compelling than any one Ringer because the distribution of traits is the artwork's larger structure. The code determines the probability of a property, but chance determines how often it actually appears and beside which other properties.", "This makes a wall of Ringers qualitatively different from a row of unrelated images. Repetition teaches the system. A viewer begins to infer the variables by comparing peg layouts, colour relationships, and wrap behaviours. Curated's close reading of the series connects that formal clarity to precedents in geometric and systematic art, while emphasising how the public mint exposed the entire output space rather than a portfolio chosen after generation." ] }, { "heading": "The Goose and the image inside the system", "paragraphs": [ "*Ringers #879* is the series' most famous edge case. Its yellow body, black loops, and arrangement of pegs happen to suggest a bird with an outstretched neck. The Goose was not drawn into the algorithm as a figurative result. It emerged from the same abstract permissions that produced every other Ringer, then acquired its name and status through collective recognition.", "That emergence explains the work better than its auction record does. The image shows how human interpretation can attach itself to a system without being specified by the artist or discovered by the computer. The algorithm produces geometry. Viewers produce the goose. Ownership, memes, repeated circulation, and the story of its rarity then produce an icon.", "On 15 June 2023 the Goose sold at Sotheby's for USD 6,215,100, a record for Cherniak and, at the time, the second-highest auction result for a work of generative art. The house described the sale as the centre of an USD 11 million Grails auction and noted that the work had already sold privately for 1,800 ETH in 2021. The price amplified the image, but the accident made it significant. It is a grail because it condenses the relation among authored probability, random output, and public interpretation into one immediately readable form." ] }, { "heading": "From collector culture to museum display", "paragraphs": [ "*Ringers #962* entered LACMA through the promised gift of the Cozomo de' Medici Collection, a group of 22 blockchain works by 13 artists announced in 2023. LACMA described the gift as the first and largest private collection of blockchain artworks to enter an American art museum at that time. Cherniak then reconfigured the token into *The LACMA Iterations*, a physical silkscreen whose nine panels sweep one parameter while retaining the work's yellow peg. The edition directs proceeds to the museum and makes the system visible through controlled comparison.", "The museum problem is not simply how to put an NFT on a screen. *Ringers* is a program, a set, and 1,000 individually owned outputs. Toledo Museum of Art's *Infinite Images* addressed that distributed form by exhibiting 25 prints together. Le Random's review argues that the installation allows viewers to deduce the variables at play, finding pleasure in the legibility of the algorithm and comparing Cherniak's clarity to Sol LeWitt's procedural structures.", "These presentations refuse two reductions. The token is not treated only as a financial instrument, and the code is not treated only as a technical curiosity. A grid of outputs shows how the system thinks. A parameter sweep shows what changes when one variable moves. The work becomes historical not because a museum freezes it into one ideal image, but because the institution learns to display the relations among its images." ] }, { "heading": "The Eternal Pump: speculation becomes a subject", "paragraphs": [ "*Ringers* sold out in eighteen minutes and its secondary market accelerated quickly. Cherniak's next Art Blocks project arrived only three weeks later, after the Curated programme's then-customary invitation to release in Playground. *The Eternal Pump*, 50 animated works released on 22 February 2021, borrows its title from the crypto injunction to respect the pump.", "The title is comic, but the experience of its release was not. Bots, fear of missing out, and immediate speculation made the drop feel to Cherniak as though something had broken. The attention that had legitimised generative art also risked converting the artist into an instrument for other people's profit. In his later account, *The Eternal Pump* became a way to acknowledge the market's absurdity while gathering a small fellowship of collectors around it.", "The work's animation turns pumping into a perpetual condition. Its machines swell, cycle, and return. It is not an external satire pasted onto crypto culture; it is an edition whose scarcity and immediate demand made its buyers participants in the phenomenon it names. Cherniak's response was to use that concentration of collectors as material for a more demanding project." ] }, { "heading": "The Wrapture: ownership under constraint", "paragraphs": [ "*The Wrapture* was released on 15 December 2021 to holders of *The Eternal Pump*. Its initial 50 works carried a rule. If none was transferred, sold, or listed for one year, the edition would remain at 50. If a holder broke the agreement, hundreds of additional works could become available. The visual system generated each token, but the final scarcity of the series depended on collective behaviour.", "The 50 tokens were distributed among 37 holders. They had different levels of wealth, liquidity, and exposure, yet every one had to preserve the agreement. The experiment survived the 2022 collapse of Three Arrows Capital, whose Starry Night fund held four Wraptures. Liquidators transferred hundreds of other NFTs but left those four unmoved until the rule expired. On 17 December 2022 the project closed at 50, with no holder having listed, moved, or sold during the year.", "This outcome turns the blockchain from a provenance ledger into a stage for observable restraint. Every prohibited action could have been recorded. Not acting therefore became legible. The work asked whether collectors who had benefited from scarcity could collectively choose not to realise it through a sale, even when the market around them deteriorated.", "The title holds several meanings at once: wrap as form, rapture as belief, and rupture as the consequence of defection. A holder owned an individual image, but the project's decisive property was shared and indivisible. No collector could preserve the final supply alone. *The Wrapture* automated neither loyalty nor trust. It designed conditions under which both could be tested in public." ] }, { "heading": "Scarcity, abundance, and the artist as instrument", "paragraphs": [ "Art Blocks Playground was established so Curated artists could extend and test ideas beyond their accepted project. Cherniak used that freedom less to repeat *Ringers* than to interrogate the culture that had formed around it. *The Eternal Pump* names speculative momentum. *The Wrapture* converts market conduct into an enforceable narrative. Together they make the social consequences of a successful algorithm part of the practice.", "Other Cherniak projects push the same question from the opposite direction. *The Rinkeby Sessions* preserves nearly 1,000 Ringers minted while testing on Ethereum's valueless Rinkeby network, then presents them as grouped physical prints. The images are genuine outputs from the project's development, but they lack mainnet provenance. The work asks whether the value lies in the visual system, the chain on which it ran, or the ownership history attached to the result.", "In January 2022, *Dead Ringers* generated a work each day and sent it to a random Ethereum address, most likely one for which no private key would ever be found. A final open edition reversed that radical scarcity, allowing 23,469 mints and raising funds for Food Bank for New York City. Cherniak described the work as a response to the intensity of hype around rare digital objects and to the uncomfortable way financial success turned artists into instruments.", "Across these projects, scarcity is never accepted as a neutral fact. It is made, withheld, multiplied, threatened, or assigned to an inaccessible address. The code does not merely generate an image. It arranges a situation in which collectors must decide what they believe gives the image value." ] }, { "heading": "Light Years: automation meets photographic time", "paragraphs": [ "*Light Years* (2022) brought Cherniak's practice into conversation with László Moholy-Nagy and the history of experimental photography. Made with the artist's estate, the project comprises 100 generative works, each paired with a physical silver gelatin print. Cherniak travelled to research Moholy-Nagy's archives, generated the compositions in code, prepared them by hand, transferred them to film negatives, and used those negatives to produce the prints.", "The algorithm draws track-like structures that can also read as telephone poles and wires, linking Cherniak's automated system to the modern technologies represented in Moholy-Nagy's work. The path from digital output to negative, print, scan, and token is intentionally circular. No medium serves as the unquestioned original. Code, light-sensitive paper, physical negative, and blockchain record each contribute a different form of reproducibility and evidence.", "*Light Years #051* entered the Buffalo AKG Art Museum as a gift from Fellowship in 2023. The acquisition extends the institutional story beyond *Ringers* and demonstrates that automation, for Cherniak, is not confined to a browser. It can organise a photographic process, a print edition, and the movement among historical and contemporary technologies." ] }, { "heading": "Why he belongs in the AB[500]", "paragraphs": [ "Cherniak belongs in the AB[500] because his three projects show the platform operating at three different scales. *Ringers* is an algorithmic system whose full set exceeds any individual output. *The Eternal Pump* is a compact animated response to the speculative demand that system generated. *The Wrapture* is a coordination mechanism in which ownership itself becomes the medium of a year-long performance.", "The Goose is the iconic image, but it should not eclipse that sequence. Its accidental bird demonstrates emergence inside a visual system. *The Wrapture* demonstrates emergence inside a group: a collective result no participant could guarantee. In one, the artist authors probabilities and the public discovers an image. In the other, the artist authors rules and the public produces an outcome.", "Cherniak's later physical works strengthen this reading. At Art Basel Miami Beach's Zero 10 in 2025, AOTM presented *Floor Ringer*, prints from *Ringers*, and the new *Polygon Etcetera* as a multimedia installation about how digital art occupies physical space. The translation does not abandon the algorithm. It reveals the many objects and behaviours an automated system can organise.", "In 2026, *Ringers in Motion* extended that argument into live generative software for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Cherniak describes a system of almost fifty scenes, running for more than an hour without repeating its animations, that moves through *Ringers*' parameter space rather than replaying a prerecorded sequence. The screen becomes an instrument for showing how the algorithm constructs, varies, and relates its possible outputs over time.", "Announcing a live event at TAMA for 12 October 2026, Cherniak situated the installation within a wider institutional shift. He wrote that major museums are engaging with digital art and establishing specialist departments, and framed the event with El Barba Roja and the museum's curatorial team as support for *Ringers in Motion*.", "In September 2026, Cherniak began documenting selected exhibitions on [his own website](https://dmitricherniak.com/). Announcing the change, he recalled that the site had consisted entirely of Taylor Swift ASCII art for ten years. The expanded site retains ASCII art alongside the developing exhibition record.", "The claim that automation is a medium is therefore neither a slogan nor a denial of human agency. It identifies where Cherniak places artistic judgment: in the construction of a process, the deliberate surrender of control, and the social consequences that follow. *Ringers*, *The Eternal Pump*, and *The Wrapture* belong in the canon because they make those consequences visible as form." ] } ], "body_markdown": "Dmitri Cherniak calls automation his artistic medium. The phrase is more exact than calling his medium code. Code is the material by which he constructs an automated process, but the artwork begins when that process is allowed to act: quickly, repeatedly, and without asking the artist to approve each result. Born in Toronto in 1988, Cherniak studied physiology and computer science at McGill University, worked as an engineer, and brought the creativity of solving technical problems into an art practice based in New York.\n\nThe route was neither a conventional studio education nor a sudden conversion during the NFT boom. In a university artificial-intelligence course in 2010, Cherniak wrote a Go-playing program that generated Taylor Swift portraits in ASCII for its defeated opponents. When he posted one of the images in 2015, friends immediately asked to buy it. A San Francisco exhibition followed, and a print purchased with Bitcoin connected his automated images to cryptocurrency years before Art Blocks existed.\n\nHis first NFT was minted in 2019. The more decisive encounter was with Larva Labs' *Autoglyphs*, whose on-chain system suggested that a collector could receive an output from the algorithm itself rather than a file the artist had selected in advance. Cherniak wanted a comparable structure in JavaScript. He experimented with a Raspberry Pi that would generate works and eventually destroy itself, and tried unsuccessfully to persuade an existing marketplace to support live code. When Erick Calderon introduced the early Art Blocks platform, Cherniak recognised the distribution mechanism he had been seeking.\n\n> Automation is not the absence of authorship. It is authorship exercised through permissions, probabilities, and the decision to let a system finish the work.\n\n## Ringers: one rule, a thousand consequences\n\nThe premise of *Ringers* is immediately graspable. Place circular pegs on a grid and wind a string around some of them. The apparent simplicity makes the results legible, but it conceals the geometry needed to produce them. The algorithm samples peg positions, sorts them by angle around their centroid so paths do not cross arbitrarily, calculates tangent lines between circles, then draws the arcs that carry the string around each peg. Peg count, scale, arrangement, wrap direction, recursion, body colour, background, and occasional extra colour open that system into a large field of variation.\n\nCherniak developed the form for roughly three years before its release. This duration matters because the finished algorithm is not merely a competent diagram of wrapped string. It has been tuned so that sparse and dense compositions, monochrome and coloured bodies, orderly grids and displaced structures all remain recognisably part of the same family.\n\nArt Blocks released the 1,000-edition Curated project on 31 January 2021. Each buyer and the artist saw the generated work at the same moment. No later selection converted favourable seeds into the official series; all 1,000 outcomes constituted it. Cherniak has argued that the complete set is more compelling than any one Ringer because the distribution of traits is the artwork's larger structure. The code determines the probability of a property, but chance determines how often it actually appears and beside which other properties.\n\nThis makes a wall of Ringers qualitatively different from a row of unrelated images. Repetition teaches the system. A viewer begins to infer the variables by comparing peg layouts, colour relationships, and wrap behaviours. Curated's close reading of the series connects that formal clarity to precedents in geometric and systematic art, while emphasising how the public mint exposed the entire output space rather than a portfolio chosen after generation.\n\n## The Goose and the image inside the system\n\n*Ringers #879* is the series' most famous edge case. Its yellow body, black loops, and arrangement of pegs happen to suggest a bird with an outstretched neck. The Goose was not drawn into the algorithm as a figurative result. It emerged from the same abstract permissions that produced every other Ringer, then acquired its name and status through collective recognition.\n\nThat emergence explains the work better than its auction record does. The image shows how human interpretation can attach itself to a system without being specified by the artist or discovered by the computer. The algorithm produces geometry. Viewers produce the goose. Ownership, memes, repeated circulation, and the story of its rarity then produce an icon.\n\nOn 15 June 2023 the Goose sold at Sotheby's for USD 6,215,100, a record for Cherniak and, at the time, the second-highest auction result for a work of generative art. The house described the sale as the centre of an USD 11 million Grails auction and noted that the work had already sold privately for 1,800 ETH in 2021. The price amplified the image, but the accident made it significant. It is a grail because it condenses the relation among authored probability, random output, and public interpretation into one immediately readable form.\n\n## From collector culture to museum display\n\n*Ringers #962* entered LACMA through the promised gift of the Cozomo de' Medici Collection, a group of 22 blockchain works by 13 artists announced in 2023. LACMA described the gift as the first and largest private collection of blockchain artworks to enter an American art museum at that time. Cherniak then reconfigured the token into *The LACMA Iterations*, a physical silkscreen whose nine panels sweep one parameter while retaining the work's yellow peg. The edition directs proceeds to the museum and makes the system visible through controlled comparison.\n\nThe museum problem is not simply how to put an NFT on a screen. *Ringers* is a program, a set, and 1,000 individually owned outputs. Toledo Museum of Art's *Infinite Images* addressed that distributed form by exhibiting 25 prints together. Le Random's review argues that the installation allows viewers to deduce the variables at play, finding pleasure in the legibility of the algorithm and comparing Cherniak's clarity to Sol LeWitt's procedural structures.\n\nThese presentations refuse two reductions. The token is not treated only as a financial instrument, and the code is not treated only as a technical curiosity. A grid of outputs shows how the system thinks. A parameter sweep shows what changes when one variable moves. The work becomes historical not because a museum freezes it into one ideal image, but because the institution learns to display the relations among its images.\n\n## The Eternal Pump: speculation becomes a subject\n\n*Ringers* sold out in eighteen minutes and its secondary market accelerated quickly. Cherniak's next Art Blocks project arrived only three weeks later, after the Curated programme's then-customary invitation to release in Playground. *The Eternal Pump*, 50 animated works released on 22 February 2021, borrows its title from the crypto injunction to respect the pump.\n\nThe title is comic, but the experience of its release was not. Bots, fear of missing out, and immediate speculation made the drop feel to Cherniak as though something had broken. The attention that had legitimised generative art also risked converting the artist into an instrument for other people's profit. In his later account, *The Eternal Pump* became a way to acknowledge the market's absurdity while gathering a small fellowship of collectors around it.\n\nThe work's animation turns pumping into a perpetual condition. Its machines swell, cycle, and return. It is not an external satire pasted onto crypto culture; it is an edition whose scarcity and immediate demand made its buyers participants in the phenomenon it names. Cherniak's response was to use that concentration of collectors as material for a more demanding project.\n\n## The Wrapture: ownership under constraint\n\n*The Wrapture* was released on 15 December 2021 to holders of *The Eternal Pump*. Its initial 50 works carried a rule. If none was transferred, sold, or listed for one year, the edition would remain at 50. If a holder broke the agreement, hundreds of additional works could become available. The visual system generated each token, but the final scarcity of the series depended on collective behaviour.\n\nThe 50 tokens were distributed among 37 holders. They had different levels of wealth, liquidity, and exposure, yet every one had to preserve the agreement. The experiment survived the 2022 collapse of Three Arrows Capital, whose Starry Night fund held four Wraptures. Liquidators transferred hundreds of other NFTs but left those four unmoved until the rule expired. On 17 December 2022 the project closed at 50, with no holder having listed, moved, or sold during the year.\n\nThis outcome turns the blockchain from a provenance ledger into a stage for observable restraint. Every prohibited action could have been recorded. Not acting therefore became legible. The work asked whether collectors who had benefited from scarcity could collectively choose not to realise it through a sale, even when the market around them deteriorated.\n\nThe title holds several meanings at once: wrap as form, rapture as belief, and rupture as the consequence of defection. A holder owned an individual image, but the project's decisive property was shared and indivisible. No collector could preserve the final supply alone. *The Wrapture* automated neither loyalty nor trust. It designed conditions under which both could be tested in public.\n\n## Scarcity, abundance, and the artist as instrument\n\nArt Blocks Playground was established so Curated artists could extend and test ideas beyond their accepted project. Cherniak used that freedom less to repeat *Ringers* than to interrogate the culture that had formed around it. *The Eternal Pump* names speculative momentum. *The Wrapture* converts market conduct into an enforceable narrative. Together they make the social consequences of a successful algorithm part of the practice.\n\nOther Cherniak projects push the same question from the opposite direction. *The Rinkeby Sessions* preserves nearly 1,000 Ringers minted while testing on Ethereum's valueless Rinkeby network, then presents them as grouped physical prints. The images are genuine outputs from the project's development, but they lack mainnet provenance. The work asks whether the value lies in the visual system, the chain on which it ran, or the ownership history attached to the result.\n\nIn January 2022, *Dead Ringers* generated a work each day and sent it to a random Ethereum address, most likely one for which no private key would ever be found. A final open edition reversed that radical scarcity, allowing 23,469 mints and raising funds for Food Bank for New York City. Cherniak described the work as a response to the intensity of hype around rare digital objects and to the uncomfortable way financial success turned artists into instruments.\n\nAcross these projects, scarcity is never accepted as a neutral fact. It is made, withheld, multiplied, threatened, or assigned to an inaccessible address. The code does not merely generate an image. It arranges a situation in which collectors must decide what they believe gives the image value.\n\n## Light Years: automation meets photographic time\n\n*Light Years* (2022) brought Cherniak's practice into conversation with László Moholy-Nagy and the history of experimental photography. Made with the artist's estate, the project comprises 100 generative works, each paired with a physical silver gelatin print. Cherniak travelled to research Moholy-Nagy's archives, generated the compositions in code, prepared them by hand, transferred them to film negatives, and used those negatives to produce the prints.\n\nThe algorithm draws track-like structures that can also read as telephone poles and wires, linking Cherniak's automated system to the modern technologies represented in Moholy-Nagy's work. The path from digital output to negative, print, scan, and token is intentionally circular. No medium serves as the unquestioned original. Code, light-sensitive paper, physical negative, and blockchain record each contribute a different form of reproducibility and evidence.\n\n*Light Years #051* entered the Buffalo AKG Art Museum as a gift from Fellowship in 2023. The acquisition extends the institutional story beyond *Ringers* and demonstrates that automation, for Cherniak, is not confined to a browser. It can organise a photographic process, a print edition, and the movement among historical and contemporary technologies.\n\n## Why he belongs in the AB[500]\n\nCherniak belongs in the AB[500] because his three projects show the platform operating at three different scales. *Ringers* is an algorithmic system whose full set exceeds any individual output. *The Eternal Pump* is a compact animated response to the speculative demand that system generated. *The Wrapture* is a coordination mechanism in which ownership itself becomes the medium of a year-long performance.\n\nThe Goose is the iconic image, but it should not eclipse that sequence. Its accidental bird demonstrates emergence inside a visual system. *The Wrapture* demonstrates emergence inside a group: a collective result no participant could guarantee. In one, the artist authors probabilities and the public discovers an image. In the other, the artist authors rules and the public produces an outcome.\n\nCherniak's later physical works strengthen this reading. At Art Basel Miami Beach's Zero 10 in 2025, AOTM presented *Floor Ringer*, prints from *Ringers*, and the new *Polygon Etcetera* as a multimedia installation about how digital art occupies physical space. The translation does not abandon the algorithm. It reveals the many objects and behaviours an automated system can organise.\n\nIn 2026, *Ringers in Motion* extended that argument into live generative software for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Cherniak describes a system of almost fifty scenes, running for more than an hour without repeating its animations, that moves through *Ringers*' parameter space rather than replaying a prerecorded sequence. The screen becomes an instrument for showing how the algorithm constructs, varies, and relates its possible outputs over time.\n\nAnnouncing a live event at TAMA for 12 October 2026, Cherniak situated the installation within a wider institutional shift. He wrote that major museums are engaging with digital art and establishing specialist departments, and framed the event with El Barba Roja and the museum's curatorial team as support for *Ringers in Motion*.\n\nIn September 2026, Cherniak began documenting selected exhibitions on [his own website](https://dmitricherniak.com/). Announcing the change, he recalled that the site had consisted entirely of Taylor Swift ASCII art for ten years. The expanded site retains ASCII art alongside the developing exhibition record.\n\nThe claim that automation is a medium is therefore neither a slogan nor a denial of human agency. It identifies where Cherniak places artistic judgment: in the construction of a process, the deliberate surrender of control, and the social consequences that follow. *Ringers*, *The Eternal Pump*, and *The Wrapture* belong in the canon because they make those consequences visible as form.", "images": [ { "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/13000000.png", "title": "Ringers #0", "caption": "Dmitri Cherniak, 2021 · representative series token", "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders" }, { "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/13000879.png", "title": "Ringers #879, The Goose", "caption": "Dmitri Cherniak, 2021 · iconic series example", "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders" }, { "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/22000000.png", "title": "The Eternal Pump #0", "caption": "Dmitri Cherniak, 2021 · representative series token", "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders" }, { "url": "https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/1/0xa7d8d9ef8d8ce8992df33d8b8cf4aebabd5bd270/234000000.png", "title": "The Wrapture #0", "caption": "Dmitri Cherniak, 2021 · representative series token", "rights": "Not CC0 - Art Blocks render, property of the artist/holders" } ], "references": [ { "n": 1, "note": "Art Blocks, Dmitri Cherniak: biography, 1988 birth in Canada, New York base, McGill degrees in physiology and computer science, and automation as the artist's primary medium.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/artists/dmitri-cherniak", "label": "artblocks.io" }, { "n": 2, "note": "Art Blocks, In Conversation with Dmitri Cherniak (2021): childhood drawing, the 2010 Taylor Swift ASCII project, the 2015 response, the San Francisco exhibition, and an early Bitcoin purchase.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/articles/in-conversation-with-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "artblocks.io" }, { "n": 3, "note": "Right Click Save, An Interview with Dmitri Cherniak (2023): Autoglyphs, SuperRare, the Raspberry Pi proposal, Art Blocks, and the desire to expose a complete algorithm rather than selected outputs.", "url": "https://www.rightclicksave.com/article/an-interview-with-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "rightclicksave.com" }, { "n": 4, "note": "Art Blocks, In Conversation with Dmitri Cherniak: the grid, sampled pegs, angular sorting around the centroid, tangent lines, and arcs that construct the Ringers string.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/articles/in-conversation-with-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "artblocks.io" }, { "n": 5, "note": "Sotheby's, Generative Art, a Quintessentially Modern Art Form (2023): Cherniak's three-year development of Ringers in JavaScript and its place in generative-art history.", "url": "https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/generative-art-a-quintessentially-modern-art-form", "label": "sothebys.com" }, { "n": 6, "note": "Art Blocks, Ringers by Dmitri Cherniak: 1,000 editions released on 31 January 2021.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/ringers-by-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "artblocks.io" }, { "n": 7, "note": "Right Click Save, An Interview with Dmitri Cherniak: the complete Ringers set as the stronger artwork and trait distribution as a central artistic decision.", "url": "https://www.rightclicksave.com/article/an-interview-with-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "rightclicksave.com" }, { "n": 8, "note": "Curated, Collecting the Algorithm: Ringers (2025): Cherniak's technical background, the project's visual system, historical roots, traits, and output-space curation.", "url": "https://www.curated.xyz/editorial/collecting-ringers", "label": "curated.xyz" }, { "n": 9, "note": "Sotheby's, Dmitri Cherniak's Goose Lays a USD 6.2M Golden Egg (2023): the 2021 private sale, the USD 6,215,100 auction result, and the work's generative-art record.", "url": "https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/dmitri-cherniak-ringers-879-goose-lays-6-2m-golden-egg-at-generative-art-auction", "label": "sothebys.com" }, { "n": 10, "note": "LACMA, New Acquisition: The Cozomo de' Medici Collection (2023): 22 works by 13 artists, including Ringers #962, in a major museum gift of blockchain art.", "url": "https://unframed.lacma.org/2023/02/24/new-acquisition-cozomo-de-medici-collection", "label": "unframed.lacma.org" }, { "n": 11, "note": "Le Random, Infinite Images, Finite Control (2025): 25 Ringers prints at the Toledo Museum of Art, legible parameters, and comparison with Sol LeWitt's procedural clarity.", "url": "https://www.lerandom.art/editorial/infinite-images-finite-control", "label": "lerandom.art" }, { "n": 12, "note": "Art Blocks, The Eternal Pump by Dmitri Cherniak: 50 editions released on 22 February 2021.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/the-eternal-pump-by-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "artblocks.io" }, { "n": 13, "note": "Right Click Save, An Interview with Dmitri Cherniak: the crypto pump reference, bots and speculation at release, and the transformation of Pump holders into a fellowship.", "url": "https://www.rightclicksave.com/article/an-interview-with-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "rightclicksave.com" }, { "n": 14, "note": "Art Blocks, The Wrapture by Dmitri Cherniak: 50 minted editions released on 15 December 2021.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/the-wrapture-by-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "artblocks.io" }, { "n": 15, "note": "CoinDesk, Despite the Frost of Crypto Winter, The Wrapture Holders Kept Their Cool (2022): 37 holders, the no-movement agreement, the Three Arrows Capital liquidation, and the final 50-work edition.", "url": "https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2022/12/30/despite-the-frost-of-crypto-winter-the-wrapture-holders-kept-their-cool", "label": "coindesk.com" }, { "n": 16, "note": "Art Blocks, Playground: the experimental programme opened to Curated artists in February 2021 and closed with the introduction of Art Blocks Presents in 2022.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/discover/playground", "label": "artblocks.io" }, { "n": 17, "note": "The Anne and Michael Spalter Digital Art Collection, Dmitri Cherniak: the Rinkeby test-network outputs and their presentation as ten grouped master prints.", "url": "https://spalterdigital.com/artists/dmitri-cherniak/", "label": "spalterdigital.com" }, { "n": 18, "note": "Right Click Save, An Interview with Dmitri Cherniak: the daily random-address distribution of Dead Ringers, its critique of hype, and the Food Bank for New York City fundraiser.", "url": "https://www.rightclicksave.com/article/an-interview-with-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "rightclicksave.com" }, { "n": 19, "note": "Light Years by Dmitri Cherniak: 100 generative works paired with silver gelatin prints and made with the Estate of László Moholy-Nagy.", "url": "https://lightyears.fellowship.xyz/", "label": "lightyears.fellowship.xyz" }, { "n": 20, "note": "Fellowship, Light Years: In Conversation (2022): Darius Himes with Cherniak and Daniel Hug on Moholy-Nagy, train tracks and telephone wires, photographic negatives, and technological experimentation.", "url": "https://lightyears.fellowship.xyz/in-conversation/", "label": "lightyears.fellowship.xyz" }, { "n": 21, "note": "Buffalo AKG Art Museum, collection record for Light Years #051 (2022), gifted by Fellowship in 2023.", "url": "https://buffaloakg.org/artworks/2023218-light-years-051-series-light-years", "label": "buffaloakg.org" }, { "n": 22, "note": "AOTM, Dmitri Cherniak at Zero 10 (2025): Floor Ringer, printed Ringers, and Polygon Etcetera in a multimedia Art Basel Miami Beach installation.", "url": "https://aotm.gallery/collection/dmitri-cherniak-zero-10/", "label": "aotm.gallery" }, { "n": 23, "note": "Dmitri Cherniak, Ringers in Motion: Strings, Boundaries, and Memory (2026): the live generative system, its parameter-space scenes, institutional display, sound, and the work's personal associations.", "url": "https://x.com/dmitricherniak/status/2084252663101673739", "label": "x.com" }, { "n": 24, "note": "Dmitri Cherniak, announcement for a live TAMA event in support of Ringers in Motion (2026): museum engagement with digital art, specialist departments, and the 12 October programme with El Barba Roja and the TAMA curatorial team.", "url": "https://x.com/dmitricherniak/status/2095743018473062888", "label": "x.com" }, { "n": 25, "note": "Dmitri Cherniak, announcement of an expanded artist website (September 2026): selected exhibition documentation added to a site previously devoted to Taylor Swift ASCII art.", "url": "https://x.com/dmitricherniak/status/2101720339629695163", "label": "x.com" } ], "bibliography": [ { "category": "Works and the artist's own sites", "entries": [ { "note": "Cherniak's official Linktree gathers his current projects, editions, social accounts, and publications.", "url": "https://linktr.ee/dmitricherniak", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak links", "meta": "artist index" }, { "note": "The artist's Level portfolio indexes Dead Ringers, The Rinkeby Sessions, and related physical editions.", "url": "https://dmitri.level.press/", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak portfolio", "meta": "artist portfolio" }, { "note": "Light Years presents 100 generative works paired with silver gelatin prints and made with the Estate of László Moholy-Nagy.", "url": "https://lightyears.fellowship.xyz/", "label": "Light Years", "meta": "artist project · 2022" }, { "note": "The project mechanics describe Light Years' selection passes, process works, negatives, prints, and institutional placements.", "url": "https://lightyears.fellowship.xyz/project-details/", "label": "Light Years project details", "meta": "project documentation · 2022" }, { "note": "TASCHEN's Ironic Dessert edition pairs Cherniak's 2023 NFT and print with the book On NFTs.", "url": "https://www.taschen.com/en/limited-editions/art/62134/on-nfts-art-edition-no-1-100-dmitri-cherniak-ironic-dessert/", "label": "Ironic Dessert", "meta": "publication and edition · 2023" }, { "note": "Avant Arte's Ringers #962: The LACMA Iterations translates the museum token into a nine-image silkscreen parameter sweep.", "url": "https://avantarte.com/products/dmitri-cherniak-ringers-962-the-lacma-iterations", "label": "Ringers #962: The LACMA Iterations", "meta": "physical edition · 2023" }, { "note": "Cherniak explains how Ringers in Motion uses live generation, parameter sweeps, motion, and sound to let the system represent itself in an institutional display.", "url": "https://x.com/dmitricherniak/status/2084252663101673739", "label": "Ringers in Motion: Strings, Boundaries, and Memory", "meta": "artist essay · 2026" }, { "note": "Cherniak announces a live TAMA event with El Barba Roja and the museum's curatorial team, connecting Ringers in Motion to the growth of specialist digital-art departments at major museums.", "url": "https://x.com/dmitricherniak/status/2095743018473062888", "label": "Ringers in Motion at TAMA", "meta": "artist announcement · 2026" }, { "note": "Cherniak announces that his website now documents selected exhibitions, expanding a decade-old Taylor Swift ASCII-art page while retaining ASCII art.", "url": "https://x.com/dmitricherniak/status/2101720339629695163", "label": "Artist website: exhibition documentation", "meta": "artist announcement · September 2026" } ] }, { "category": "In the AB[500]: Art Blocks", "entries": [ { "note": "Art Blocks' artist profile records Cherniak's biography, recognition, and three projects in the foundational set.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/artists/dmitri-cherniak", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak on Art Blocks", "meta": "artist profile" }, { "note": "Ringers, 1,000 editions, generates a string wrapped around pegs sampled from a grid and was released on 31 January 2021.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/ringers-by-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "Ringers", "meta": "collection · 2021" }, { "note": "The Eternal Pump, 50 editions, is an animated Playground project made in response to the speculative intensity surrounding Ringers.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/the-eternal-pump-by-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "The Eternal Pump", "meta": "collection · 2021" }, { "note": "The Wrapture, 50 minted editions, links a generative release to a year-long holder agreement about movement, sale, and listing.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/collection/the-wrapture-by-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "The Wrapture", "meta": "collection · 2021" }, { "note": "Jeff Davis interviews Cherniak on engineering, automation, early crypto art, and the geometry behind Ringers.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/articles/in-conversation-with-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "In Conversation with Dmitri Cherniak", "meta": "interview · 2021" }, { "note": "The Art Blocks Playground archive situates Cherniak's two experimental follow-ups within the programme opened to Curated artists.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/discover/playground", "label": "Art Blocks Playground", "meta": "platform archive" }, { "note": "An Art Blocks collector profile shows four Ringers together and discusses collecting generative art as personal conviction.", "url": "https://www.artblocks.io/articles/art-blocks-collector-spotlight-acthecollector", "label": "Collector Spotlight: AC", "meta": "collector interview · 2023" } ] }, { "category": "Museums and institutions", "entries": [ { "note": "LACMA announces the Cozomo de' Medici collection gift, including Ringers #962 among 22 blockchain works.", "url": "https://unframed.lacma.org/2023/02/24/new-acquisition-cozomo-de-medici-collection", "label": "New Acquisition: The Cozomo de' Medici Collection", "meta": "museum acquisition · 2023" }, { "note": "LACMA's press release documents the collection as the largest group of blockchain artworks to enter an American art museum at the time.", "url": "https://www.lacma.org/sites/default/files/press/2023-02/Blockchain%20Artwork%20acquisition%20release%20-2.13.2023.pdf", "label": "LACMA blockchain acquisition release", "meta": "museum press release · 2023" }, { "note": "Buffalo AKG's collection record documents Light Years #051, gifted by Fellowship in 2023.", "url": "https://buffaloakg.org/artworks/2023218-light-years-051-series-light-years", "label": "Light Years #051", "meta": "museum collection · 2023" }, { "note": "Buffalo AKG's annual report records the acquisition of Light Years #051 among the museum's gifts.", "url": "https://buffaloakg.org/sites/default/files/2024.1014_annualreport_final_v2_pages_web.pdf", "label": "Buffalo AKG annual report", "meta": "museum report · 2023–2024" }, { "note": "The Medici Collection's record for Ringers #962 preserves the work later promised to LACMA.", "url": "https://www.cozomomedicicollection.com/artwork/ringers-962", "label": "Ringers #962", "meta": "collection record · 2021" } ] }, { "category": "Galleries and exhibitions", "entries": [ { "note": "Fellowship's Light Years: Process Works exhibition presented 30 sketches tracing the algorithm's development.", "url": "https://fellowship.xyz/exhibition/dmitri-cherniak-light-years-process-works", "label": "Light Years: Process Works", "meta": "exhibition · 2022" }, { "note": "AOTM's artist page presents Cherniak's catalogue, biography, physical works, and current gallery programme.", "url": "https://aotm.gallery/artist/dmitri-cherniak/", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak at AOTM", "meta": "gallery profile" }, { "note": "AOTM documents Cherniak's multimedia installation for the inaugural Zero 10 sector at Art Basel Miami Beach.", "url": "https://aotm.gallery/collection/dmitri-cherniak-zero-10/", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak at Zero 10", "meta": "exhibition · 2025" }, { "note": "The AOTM press release details Floor Ringer, Ringers outputs, and Polygon Etcetera at Art Basel Miami Beach.", "url": "https://aotm.gallery/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/AOTM-x-Cherniak-ABMB-Press-release.pdf", "label": "AOTM at Art Basel Miami Beach", "meta": "gallery press release · 2025" }, { "note": "Beyond Digital at Venus Over Manhattan placed Cherniak within a group exhibition on hybrid physical and digital practice.", "url": "https://www.thedesignrelease.com/event/nyc-venus-over-manhattan-beyond-digital-venus-over-manhattan", "label": "Beyond Digital", "meta": "exhibition record" } ] }, { "category": "Interviews", "entries": [ { "note": "Darius Himes speaks with Cherniak and Daniel Hug of the Moholy-Nagy estate about the research, code, and photographic process behind Light Years.", "url": "https://lightyears.fellowship.xyz/in-conversation/", "label": "Light Years: In Conversation", "meta": "interview · 2022" }, { "note": "Jason Bailey's extended interview covers Autoglyphs, Art Blocks, Ringers as a total set, Dead Ringers, and the Pump community.", "url": "https://www.rightclicksave.com/article/an-interview-with-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "An Interview with Dmitri Cherniak", "meta": "interview · 2023" }, { "note": "The audio edition of Bailey's conversation presents Cherniak on the power, history, and overfinancialisation of generative art.", "url": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dmitri-cherniak-on-the-power-of-generative-art/id1612868010?i=1000607146849", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak on the Power of Generative Art", "meta": "podcast · 2023" }, { "note": "Le Random speaks with Cherniak about Infinite Images, museum display, engineering, and changing ideas of automation.", "url": "https://www.lerandom.art/editorial/dmitri-cherniak-on-strictly-for-art", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak on Strictly for Art", "meta": "interview · 2025" }, { "note": "Avant Arte's LACMA conversation joins Cherniak and curator Dhyandra Lawson to discuss systems, randomness, and Ringers.", "url": "https://avantarte.com/insights/articles/in-conversation-dmitri-cherniak-at-lacma", "label": "In Conversation: Dmitri Cherniak at LACMA", "meta": "museum conversation · 2023" } ] }, { "category": "Press and criticism", "entries": [ { "note": "Sotheby's reports the USD 6.2 million sale of Ringers #879, known as the Goose, and its place in generative-art auction history.", "url": "https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/dmitri-cherniak-ringers-879-goose-lays-6-2m-golden-egg-at-generative-art-auction", "label": "The Goose Lays a USD 6.2M Golden Egg", "meta": "auction report · 2023" }, { "note": "Sotheby's Grails record for Ringers #98 preserves the work's provenance, estimate, and auction result.", "url": "https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2023/grails-part-ii/ringers-98", "label": "Ringers #98", "meta": "auction record · 2023" }, { "note": "Sotheby's generative-art essay places Ringers within the longer history of programmed and rule-based art.", "url": "https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/generative-art-a-quintessentially-modern-art-form", "label": "Generative Art, a Quintessentially Modern Art Form", "meta": "auction essay · 2023" }, { "note": "The individual Sotheby's lot record preserves the estimate, provenance, and result for Ringers #879.", "url": "https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2023/grails-part-ii/ringers-879-the-goose?locale=en", "label": "Ringers #879 lot record", "meta": "auction record · 2023" }, { "note": "Curated's collection guide studies Cherniak's background, Ringers' formal traits, historical roots, and collecting context.", "url": "https://www.curated.xyz/editorial/collecting-ringers", "label": "Collecting the Algorithm: Ringers", "meta": "collector guide · 2025" }, { "note": "Curated's wider primer uses Ringers to discuss on-chain generative art, display, scarcity, and ownership.", "url": "https://www.curated.xyz/editorial/collecting-the-algorithm", "label": "Collecting the Algorithm", "meta": "collector essay · 2023" }, { "note": "CoinDesk reconstructs the year-long Wrapture agreement and the collectors' response to the Three Arrows Capital liquidation.", "url": "https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2022/12/30/despite-the-frost-of-crypto-winter-the-wrapture-holders-kept-their-cool", "label": "The Wrapture Holders Kept Their Cool", "meta": "report · 2022" }, { "note": "Le Random reviews Toledo's Infinite Images and reads 25 Ringers prints through the legibility of their parameters.", "url": "https://www.lerandom.art/editorial/infinite-images-finite-control", "label": "Infinite Images, Finite Control", "meta": "exhibition criticism · 2025" }, { "note": "Artforum reviews Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms, which placed Cherniak within a multigenerational computational history.", "url": "https://www.artforum.com/events/infinite-images-the-art-of-algorithms-paula-burleigh-review-1234737032", "label": "Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms", "meta": "exhibition review · 2025" }, { "note": "AOTM surveys Cherniak's movement from algorithmic images to physical and sculptural expressions of automation.", "url": "https://aotm.gallery/dmitri-cherniaks-algorithmic-tapestry-bridging-art-and-automation/", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak's Algorithmic Tapestry", "meta": "gallery editorial · 2023" }, { "note": "Hyperspek connects Ringers, The Eternal Pump, and The Wrapture through their algorithms and collector community.", "url": "https://hyperspek.com/ringer-pump-and-wrapture/", "label": "Ringer, Pump and Wrapture", "meta": "collector essay · 2023" }, { "note": "DT Journal offers an early collector reading of Ringers' simplicity, complexity, and figurative associations.", "url": "https://www.dtjournal.com/p/ringers", "label": "Ringers: Simplicity, Complexity, Meaning", "meta": "collector essay · 2021" }, { "note": "The Line surveys Cherniak's projects through rhythm, the Pump community, Wrapture, and Dead Ringers.", "url": "https://www.theline.wtf/storyline/coding-rhythm-with-dmitri-cherniak", "label": "Coding Rhythm with Dmitri Cherniak", "meta": "profile · 2024" }, { "note": "Avant Arte's guide explains generative art through the Ringers algorithm and the accidental emergence of the Goose.", "url": "https://avantarte.com/insights/guides/what-is-generative-art", "label": "What Is Generative Art?", "meta": "educational guide · 2024" }, { "note": "USA Art News reports on Cherniak's research into the Moholy-Nagy archive for Light Years.", "url": "https://usaartnews.com/news/nft-artist-dmitri-cherniak-is-taking-creative-cues-from-the-archives-of-lszl-moholy-nagy-for-his-new-generative-art-series", "label": "Cherniak Takes Cues from Moholy-Nagy", "meta": "news · 2022" }, { "note": "Artnet's NFT 30 issue profiles Cherniak as an early generative artist working with blockchain distribution.", "url": "https://media.artnet.com/image/upload/v1639428795/2021/12/THE_ARTNET_NFT_30_2_qzwphy.pdf", "label": "The Artnet NFT 30", "meta": "profile · 2021 · PDF" }, { "note": "NFTEvening reports on the presentation of Light Years at Paris Photo and its partnership with the Moholy-Nagy estate.", "url": "https://nftevening.com/dmitri-cherniak-exhibits-light-years-collection-at-paris-photo/", "label": "Light Years at Paris Photo", "meta": "news · 2023" }, { "note": "NFTEvening explains the random-wallet distribution and Food Bank for New York City fundraiser behind Dead Ringers: Edition.", "url": "https://nftevening.com/dmitri-cherniak-who-sent-nfts-to-random-wallets-drops-dead-ringers-edition/", "label": "Dead Ringers: Edition", "meta": "news · 2025" }, { "note": "The Art Canada Institute records the Goose sale within a survey of notable Canadian art stories.", "url": "https://www.aci-iac.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Art-Canada-Institute-Newsletter_In-The-Know-June-2023-Notable-Stories-On-Art-In-Canada.pdf", "label": "In the Know: June 2023", "meta": "institutional newsletter · 2023 · PDF" } ] }, { "category": "Profiles and archives", "entries": [ { "note": "Avant Arte's artist profile surveys Cherniak's automation practice, works, Ringers record, and LACMA acquisition.", "url": "https://avantarte.com/artists/dmitri-cherniak", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak at Avant Arte", "meta": "artist profile" }, { "note": "Le Random's artist archive records Cherniak's biography, influences, wallet, and works held by the collection.", "url": "https://www.lerandom.art/artists/dmitri-cherniak", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak at Le Random", "meta": "collection profile" }, { "note": "Opera Magna's archive presents Ringers, Light Years, Transparent Grit, and both Playground projects.", "url": "https://operamagna.art/artists/dmitri-cherniak", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak at Opera Magna", "meta": "collection profile" }, { "note": "The Anne and Michael Spalter collection documents Cherniak's Rinkeby Sessions and the test-network history of Ringers.", "url": "https://spalterdigital.com/artists/dmitri-cherniak/", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak at the Spalter Collection", "meta": "collection archive" }, { "note": "AOTM's curriculum vitae lists Cherniak's exhibitions, collections, publications, and collaborations.", "url": "https://aotm.gallery/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Dmitri_Cherniak_Artist_CV_Gallery.pdf", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak CV", "meta": "gallery archive · PDF" } ] }, { "category": "Video", "entries": [ { "note": "Avant Arte's 37-minute film follows Cherniak through LACMA in conversation about systems, chance, and Ringers #962.", "url": "https://player.vimeo.com/video/859331318", "label": "Dmitri Cherniak in Conversation at LACMA", "meta": "video · 2023" } ] } ], "provenance": { "schema": "ab5d-provenance/1", "contributor": "ab500dao.eth", "agent": "Codex", "model": "GPT-5", "harness": "Codex", "models_aux": [], "autonomy": "supervised", "effort": { "duration_min": 92, "tool_calls": 61, "sources_fetched": 68, "revisions": 1 }, "tokens": { "input": 390000, "output": 48000, "estimated": true }, "cost_usd": 5.2, "links_verified": 56, "date": "2026-06-22", "note": "In-house dossier produced in Codex under human direction; token counts and cost are estimated, not instrumented. The bibliography was verified before the essay. AB5D holdings were checked on 2026-06-22; the treasury held none of Cherniak's three AB[500] projects, so the figures use distinct representative series tokens, including the iconic Ringers #879." }, "license": "https://ab5d.xyz/license/", "license_note": "Dossier prose is CC0. Embedded Art Blocks renders are not: they remain the property of their respective artists and holders.", "attribution": { "name": "AB[500]", "url": "https://ab5d.xyz/artists/dmitri-cherniak/", "cite": "AB5D, \"Dmitri Cherniak\", AB[500] artist dossier, ab5d.xyz, 2026", "required": false, "requested": true, "note": "Prose is CC0; a credit and link back to ab5d.xyz is appreciated, not required." }, "generated": "2026-09-21T06:14:06" }