Kevin McCoy's artwork Quantum (2014) features pulsing, multicolored rings of light against a black background, creating the sensation of moving through an astronomical phenomenon at speed. The artwork is a screen recorded loop, consisting of 179 frames, derived from a code-generated animation written in the Processing language.
Quantum, Kevin McCoy, 2014.
Quantum is widely regarded as "the first NFT". In 2014, as part of the Seven on Seven conference organized by Rhizome, McCoy and Anil Dash developed a system for establishing provenance for digital artworks on the NameCoin blockchain, which he called Monegraph. Prior to the launch of Ethereum, McCoy foresaw that the blockchain could be used to establish a cryptographically certified string of transactions, allowing digital works to be authenticated, bought, and sold.
The work’s evocation of a futuristic science fiction narrative is balanced by the presence of what looks like traces of image compression, though on closer inspection, these are effects introduced intentionally by the artist. In some ways, the story of Quantum is an example of how NFTs can allow the often-overlooked cultural value of digital works to be properly recognized. McCoy chose Quantum from his digital sketchbook to be the first work to be minted in this new system; the code had been written for possible use in a 2013 project, as a backdrop for a drag-racing video. Today, the work is very much in the foreground, inseparable from this origin story: suggestive of new worlds arriving, while rooted in the digital material of its time.