Snark.art and OG.Art announces Heterosis, a groundbreaking art collection and immersive metaverse experience brought to life by established contemporary artist Mat Collishaw and renowned digital artist Danil Krivoruchko, in partnership with metaverse architects EL-GABAL

Heterosis - the increase in such characteristics as size, growth rate and yield of a hybrid organism over those of its parents.

Snark.art, the innovation laboratory supporting artists creating at the cutting edge of art and technology, announces Heterosis, a new series of digital artworks and an immersive metaverse experience by Mat Collishaw. Created in collaboration with digital artist Danil Krivoruchko and metaverse architect EL-GABAL, Heterosis is a project produced for the OG.Art platform which combines blockchain technology and art to create a unique experience for collectors.

Heterosis will see participants cultivating and breeding virtual flowers that grow in a hyperrealistic metaverse ‘greenhouse’ – a digital recreation of a grandly decorated wing of London’s National Gallery, abandoned and reclaimed by nature. Each flower will be a one-of-a-kind, unduplicable digital artwork, but the works, both individually and collectively, become meaningful via the community that is created. Based on innovative technology, Heterosis invites collectors to participate in an art ‘game’ where their interaction determines the outcome of the works. The participatory nature of Heterosis means the artwork could not exist in any context other than on the blockchain.

Mat Collishaw and Danil Krivoruchko, Heterosis, 2023 © Snark.art

Collector’s control the creative outcome

Upon minting, each collector receives a Heterosis flower with unique DNA code and the combination of a few basic traits. Through hybridisation, collectors can discover advanced characteristics or mutations, and unlock new species, colours, patterns and forms. Their actions and engagement with one another will determine how the creation of new species and increasingly exotic and elaborate blooms unfolds. They become the agents of digital evolution and digital art collaborators.

Mat Collishaw and Danil Krivoruchko, Heterosis, 2023 © Snark.art

Ground-breaking technology

The digital flowers have been developed using SideFX’s Houdini – a powerful 3D animation and visual effects tool used in blockbuster films, commercials and video games – and are rendered on Redshift. Uniquely, the hyperrealistic flowers are created via a process of hybridization that is not predetermined, requiring advanced technology to generate the dynamic content. The metaverse ‘greenhouse’ was developed using Unreal Engine, the state-of-the-art gaming technology to allow collectors to interact with one another and freely explore the environment no matter where they are in the world. The technology means they can have an interactive, collective experience on any device with exceptionally high-quality visualisation.

Mat Collishaw and Danil Krivoruchko, Heterosis, 2023 © Snark.art

Flower market

To hybridize, collectors must pay the flower’s owner a breeding fee. Collectors themselves set the prices for hybridization which can reflect if significant resources have been spent to create a new rare and exciting combination of genes. These dynamics create two separate markets – one for the purchase digital flowers and another for selling the opportunity to hybridize your flower.

Mat Collishaw and Danil Krivoruchko, Heterosis, 2023 © Snark.art

Heterosis builds on Collishaw’s practice and cross-disciplinary approach which sees him engage with developments in technology and unafraid to venture into unfamiliar terrain. He says of the collaboration: