Grailers (March 2022) emerges from Stefano Contiero’s exploration of community as creative force, transforming the challenge of designing membership tokens for GrailersDAO into an exploration of collective identity and shared aesthetic experience. This collection of 999 works represents the artist’s first venture into truly collaborative generative art, where algorithmic processes serve not individual expression but the visualization of a community’s collective spirit. Each composition pulses with dense textural color fields, creating surfaces that feel simultaneously organic and digital, like microscopic views of living tissue or neural networks made visible.
These compositions build upon techniques first explored in Rinascita (2021), but here find new purpose in representing what Contiero describes as the “hive mind” quality of the DAO community. Dense networks of linear elements create richly layered surfaces that shift between different color palettes, each variation responding to community input gathered through collaborative surveys. The works operate on dual levels: revealed artworks displaying pure algorithmic beauty, and covered versions featuring the iconic Grailers “G” logo, allowing viewers to toggle between aesthetic experience and institutional identity.
Grailers distinguished itself through Contiero’s role as facilitator rather than sole creator, channeling Tyler Hobbs’ influence while establishing Contiero’s own approach to community-driven practice. Created in March 2022, the collection connects the gestural discoveries of earlier works with the collaborative sensibilities that would later define Finale (2024), demonstrating how generative art can serve collective identity without sacrificing individual aesthetic integrity. The project establishes a new model where algorithmic beauty emerges from community dialogue, suggesting that the most meaningful digital art may arise not from solitary studio practice but from the patient cultivation of shared creative vision.