A few months ago, 19 artists got together to reimagine XCOPY’s entire body of work. The result is CXRDS — 251 original artwork cards matching the original edition sizes, with packs minting on Shape via OpenSea and ripping soon after on Manifold. We spoke with asterism.eth, the collector-artist who organized it, about remix culture under CC0, the deep cuts nobody remembers, and why the card format hits different.
Why XCOPY, of all the work you could have reassembled?
To me, XCOPY represents one of the best qualities of vision from an artist that I’ve ever seen.
Conceptually, his work wrestles with dark and interconnected themes like death, mortality, dystopia, and apathy. Subjects that people around the world face every day. I think that’s one of the reasons his work has resonated so deeply on the internet; it’s a mirror to our reality, online and especially offline.
And then on the technical side, he invented a completely unique style that is instantly recognizable and enhances the subject matter of the artwork. The raw, pixelated glitches make you feel what he’s trying to tell you.
He even goes as far as to hide little surprises in his artwork for those who are willing to look. One example is the “F” “U” in the eyes of the Grifter I own. It’s barely recognizable unless you zoom in or someone told you it’s there. Another popular one is the “U OWE” hidden in the animation frames of TAXMEN.
He’s a master. And that made it interesting to catalogue and reexamine his entire body of work in this new collection.
CC0 means nobody had to ask. Did you tell him anyway, and what came back?
I love CC0 because it encourages freedom, a core tenet of the space we all love.
You can trash someone’s art. You can remix their art. You can strip it down to its bare bones.
Or, what we attempted to do in this case, is explore the artwork in an entirely new way. We are recontextualizing the visuals and the themes through other points of view. (More on that later.) XCOPY has extremely popular works like Last Selfie, Mortal, Grifters, etc. that the community is deeply connected to. But how many people can recall from memory what Tap your card when you’re ready sir looks like? Or maybe his piece titled One squeeze is enough for a sink full of dishes. A big reason why we did this was to bring his early or lesser-known works into the public eye again so that his entire catalogue could be appreciated.
On the CryptoPunks side, PIV does this expertly. He remixes shapes, colors, and traits in ways that allow someone to see CryptoPunks with new eyes. This is another angle we were going for.
Oh, and as a matter of fact, I did tell him we were doing this. I can’t reveal exactly what he said as it was in a private DM, but it was positive.
How’d you pick the 19? What were you looking for in a reinterpretation — faithful or unfaithful?
I actually started this project on my own a little while ago, but ~250 completely unique cards was a tall order for one artist. I knew I needed help or the project would never see the light of day.
As the owner of a few XCOPY pieces I knew quite a few other community members, and I especially paid attention to who was on the Creative Commons page of XCOPY’s site. He regularly features work there by people who remix his work under the CC0 license.
So I started by reaching out to a few friends. Then, they messaged their friends within the community and before you know it, we had a group of 11 core artists who were all psyched about the project. But even with 11 people, that’s about 23 artworks per artist. It was still a huge task.
So for the artworks that were leftover after we all signed up for different ones, I made asks within the XCOPY community of people who’d made work before or were especially passionate.
We ended up with 19 incredible artists who did a phenomenal job. Core artists included #1 Crush, 1xHarsh, Arctefact, Arthr, asterism, Bananakin, Nawhsan, NeonGlitch86, NuclearSamurai, Scamart, and ubk. Honorary artists included Arsonic, Balon_art, batzdu, Darkfarms, Garry B1rd, Lewis (who recently did a collaboration piece with XCOPY), Masnah, and Mdiac.
In terms of the cards themselves, I only gave two instructions: the dimensions, and that the name of the original artwork had to appear on the card somewhere. That was it. This led to varied interpretations that I was quite happy with.
The cards span both static and animated formats, with artists delivering everything from still PNGs to looping GIFs that capture the raw, glitchy energy XCOPY’s work is known for. Some artists designed a single template and applied it across their set of cards, while others approached each piece individually, resulting in a collection where every card reflects a distinct creative interpretation of the source material.
In the run-up to mint, the CXRDS artists have been previewing their decks on X — each one a different read on the same catalogue. A scroll through a few of the teasers:
Why cards, and why Shape?
Personally, I have a ton of fond memories of when I was younger and I was ripping Pokemon packs at the dining room table or trading them with my friends at recess. Many people have those same, nostalgic memories, too.
It explains why the Pokemon and TCG meta is coming back so strong, especially for cards on the secondary market. Why not introduce that same mechanic for an artist and a catalogue we love?
It made total sense.
In terms of Shape, XCOPY has done several works there (Cope Salada and Bubbles) and we thought an art-focused L2 lent itself better to the scale of this idea. After all, there will be something like 15,000 editions across all of the cards.
You said even if it doesn’t mint out you’re proud of this one. What makes it the collection you’d defend?
My belief in this collection is less about my contributions to the project as an artist, and more about how proud I am of this group of artists coming together to tackle a bold idea.
Reimagining XCOPY’s work is a serious undertaking. As a matter of fact, I’d go so far as to say this is the most comprehensive study of his work ever completed. (Besides the originals, of course.)
I am proud of that vision and the people who helped bring it to life.
Trading cards are how most of us first learned to collect anything. What does the card format unlock for art that a straight 1/1 doesn’t?
As you’ve alluded to in the question, trading cards are a familiar concept. People get it right away. And one of the fun things about cards is that you can build “sets” or collections that match your interests within XCOPY’s catalogue.
For example, if you own an original edition of The DOOMED, you may also want to collect an edition of the card. Or perhaps there are families of artworks you want to collect, such as the three artworks within the GRIFT SZN collection, which are PROTO-GOUGE, PROTO-WRETCH, and PROTO-SHADY.
We can’t predict exactly how people will collect these cards, but one of the things we’re most excited to see is how people decide to curate their own collection of cards!
After PATTERN RETRIEVAL, SIGNAL RECEIVING, and now curating 19 artists through XCOPY’s catalogue, what’s the thread pulling you forward?
My creative journey recently has been a humbling experience.
This year, I set a goal for myself that I would make something and put it out into the world. I produced some music, filled a notebook with sketches, and started researching the artistic practices of some of my favorite artists: XCOPY, Mathcastles, Kim Asendorf, 0xDeafBeef.
That’s how PATTERN RETRIEVAL and SIGNAL RECEIVING came into being. And then as I shared earlier, CXRDS was a personal project that expanded beyond me to include 18 other artists.
The thread that pulls me forward is the desire to create and keep nurturing the things I’ve created. To keep exploring.
That’s the job of any true artist.
