In every gallery now, a QR code hangs beside the work: the wall label made digital - the link, the certificate, the price. The most useful thing in the room, and the least looked at.
What if it is the work? What if the QR code is the artwork, and the only thing it points to is itself?
Intent
A QRPunk is not an image placed over a code. The portrait is a solution to the code's own equations - solved, not drawn. Scan it, and it resolves to itself.
The image is the address; the address is the image.
In 2019, Autoglyphs put the algorithm on the chain. In 2021, the punks' pixels followed. Autonym closes the loop, and QRPunks is its genesis series: the artwork no longer points to itself through a server or a marketplace. It is the pointer.
Technique
A QR code is a field of linear equations. Following Russ Cox's QArt, each punk is solved into the modules of its own code - the native 24×24 grid, whole, at integer scale, bottom-aligned as drawn in 2017.
The skin is erased, returning its modules to the code. Light traits become a fine grain, shadow an ordered dither, and everything the code does not claim is left as fog. Ten thousand portraits, each one its own address.
The studio on the front page will solve a punk toward any address. The works themselves resolve to themselves.
Edition
QRPunks is an experiment, and experiments set their own pace. Should the collection come to Ethereum, each token will hold its portrait entirely on the chain - permanent, self-resolving - and its owner may set a second, verified resolution to point the code anywhere.
The portrait is permanent; the pointer is yours.
- gwendall