Sixteen Horses 'round the Bay

Sixteen Horses ‘round the Bay is the first (to the best of my knowledge as of writing this) NFT based photo book project (though the fact that it’s the first of it’s kind is secondary to the main goal outlined below). The token is Available here (rarible) for purchase, so that you or anyone who purchases the book can create their own sequence of images and add to it, becoming a co-author.

For those not familiar I’ll drop the project goal/procedure here (directly from the book):

“Google (apparently) used to use this problem to interview programmers:

“you have 25 horses, you need to find the three fastest horses, you can only race five horses at a time, and have no watch to time the horses. How many races does it take to select the horses.”

The math says that given these constraints, it only takes 7 races to determine the three fastest horses.

I have no math skills, but I do find the idea interesting - so I’ve decided to take the concept, and apply it to photo selection/bookmaking.

I ran batches or “races” of 20 photos from my “composition studies” here in my instagram stories, over a couple weeks to determine what the most “successful” photos or “horses” from each “race” is by using the “yes/no” poll function here, then running them against each other when it comes time to figure out where to cut off the project.

It should take 9 races to determine the “best” 16 images - given these constraints. - given that in the final round or race, I was able to monitor the races more closely.

Prior to running the experiment, I’ve selected my personal 16 favorite images, as a point of comparison. Furthermore, anyone who purchases this NFT will (or should) receive the Raw Files,and the Afpub File so that they can create their own sequence and add it to the book, as a continuation on that experiment of “what I like, you like, and everyone likes.”

This whole project could only be accomplished by NFT - which allows me (or anyone) to track the provenance of ownership and modification of the book from user to user, artist to artist, collector to collector. Ideally, everyone who owns the book at some point would leave their own mark on it, either by adding a signature, stamp, sequencing their own set of sixteen images, from the pool provided, or even going off the rails with it and doing their own thing, hopefully keeping “16” in mind, as it is a title number.I hope the project is able to explore how different people both interpret a prompt, choose photos - infinitely, given mostly the same source material.

To commemorate the book, I’ll be releasing batches of 4 photos from my own sequence, in editions of 16 (natch) - each token is redeemable for one print at the maximum size I can print the file. The first four tokens are up, alongside the book now. You can buy them here.

So without further ado, the world’s first infinitely collaborative/NFT photobook (also placed in the galleries for extra ease of use):