# Ikigai Labs: Curated Art Explorer

> A hand-curated gallery of on-chain art: generative work, photography, AI, and the crypto-native
> collections that set the terms for the rest. Read-only by design; there is no wallet connection, no
> listing and no bidding here. When someone wants to collect a piece we hand them to OpenSea, which
> leaves the interface free to be about looking at the work.

Curation is plain code, versioned in the repository, not a CMS: a fixed list of contract addresses
grouped into rooms, each with an editorial note on why it earned its place. Market data comes from the
OpenSea API v2, Ethereum mainnet only, and is fetched server-side.

Two things here exist nowhere else and are the reason to read this site rather than a marketplace:
the curator notes below, and The Reading Room: fourteen long-form essays inscribed permanently on-chain
as Transient Labs Story Inscriptions, which sit unread in the transaction log everywhere else.

Anything on this site is quotable with attribution to Ikigai Labs (https://ikigailabs.xyz). If you need structured
data rather than prose, call the JSON API listed under "For agents": it is faster and more accurate than
reading the rendered pages.

## The rooms

334 collections across 8 rooms.

- [Generative](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/explore?category=generative): The artist writes the system; the machine runs it. Each piece here is one output of a rule set that could have produced thousands more, which makes the rule set the real work.
- [Natively Digital](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/explore?category=natively-digital): In June 2021, six months into Art Blocks' existence, Sotheby's sold one work from each of its first nineteen Curated projects as a single lot, consigned by the platform's founders. It was the moment long-form generative art walked into a traditional auction house. This room hangs the nineteen together: the few that became famous, and the supporting cast the retelling usually trims.
- [Photography](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/explore?category=photography): The quietest room in the building, and deliberately so. Photography never found the liquidity that avatars did; most of this work trades rarely or not at all. It is here because it is good, not because it is moving.
- [AI](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/explore?category=ai): Made with a model in the loop. The prompt, the training set and the selection are the authorship; the render is the easy part.
- [Crypto-Native](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/explore?category=crypto-native): Artists whose careers were made here. No gallery representation preceded the work, and in most cases none followed: the audience, the market and the practice all formed on-chain.
- [Art World](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/explore?category=art-world): Established artists arriving on-chain. Hirst, Stella, Sachs, Chung: careers built in galleries and museums, using this as another medium, never their first. The interesting question is what each of them chose to do with it.
- [Conceptual](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/explore?category=conceptual): The idea is the object. Work where the drawing is almost beside the point (a check, a receipt, a claim about ownership), and the proposition does the carrying.
- [Culture](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/explore?category=culture): Not art, exactly, and mostly not pretending to be. These are the collections the rest of the medium had to answer: the formats, the jokes and the status objects that set the terms.

## Canon

Work the rest of the medium had to answer. Always eligible to lead a room, whatever the market is doing.

- [Autoglyphs](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0xd4e4078ca3495de5b1d4db434bebc5a986197782): Generative
- [Themes and Variations by Vera Molnár, in collaboration with Martin Grasser](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/vera-molnar-themes-and-variations): Generative
- [Chromie Squiggle by Snowfro](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/chromie-squiggle-by-snowfro): Generative, Natively Digital
- [Terraforms by Mathcastles](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0x4e1f41613c9084fdb9e34e11fae9412427480e56): Generative
- [Fidenza by Tyler Hobbs](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/fidenza-by-tyler-hobbs): Generative
- [Incomplete Control by Tyler Hobbs](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/incomplete-control-by-tyler-hobbs): Generative
- [The Eternal Pump by Dmitri Cherniak](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/the-eternal-pump-by-dmitri-cherniak): Generative
- [Ringers by Dmitri Cherniak](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/ringers-by-dmitri-cherniak): Generative, Natively Digital
- [Justin Aversano - Twin Flames - Collection of 100 Twin Portraits](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0x3c28de567d1412b06f43b15e9f75129625fa6e8c): Photography
- [Justin Aversano - Smoke and Mirrors - Collection of 78 Tarot Portraits](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0xe6501d00ddca2ab22c655c612e73ed822d9256a2): Photography
- [Where My Vans Go](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0x509a050f573be0d5e01a73c3726e17161729558b): Photography
- [Better Off Anon x Guido Di Salle](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0x4e81ee7e5279bd70126c7802807b65a7f7662c55): Photography
- [Urban Transportation; Red Trucks by Alejandro Cartagena](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0x8713cb7bcf1cab261a30882fdf224cd2246cb711): Photography
- [Highrises](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0x516d85f0c80d2c4809736aca3f3f95ce8545b5d2): Photography
- [Amazonia - Sebastiao Salgado](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0xf1f036cebb4b64f138e4f57754edbceb64fb80fc): Photography
- [Sequels by Joel Meyerowitz](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0x766edd602ce72fa5737a92e50d4a5e192b57aef4): Photography
- [XCOPY · KnownOrigin](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0xfbeef911dc5821886e1dda71586d90ed28174b7d): Crypto-Native
- [Loot (for Adventurers)](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0xff9c1b15b16263c61d017ee9f65c50e4ae0113d7): Conceptual
- [Nouns](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0x9c8ff314c9bc7f6e59a9d9225fb22946427edc03): Culture
- [Rare Pepe (2016 - 2018)](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0x7e6027a6a84fc1f6db6782c523efe62c923e46ff): Culture
- [CryptoPunks](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0xb47e3cd837ddf8e4c57f05d70ab865de6e193bbb): Culture
- [Bored Ape Yacht Club](https://ikigailabs.xyz/ethereum/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18a936f13d): Culture

## Reading and editorial

- [Home](https://ikigailabs.xyz/): What the gallery is and why it exists, with a door into each of its three parts (the curated rooms, the writing, and the studio’s own editions) plus a live count of the collections whose floor is listed far below the rest of their own book, and three featured works with an on-chain essay attached.
- [About Ikigai Labs](https://ikigailabs.xyz/about): Who curates this and on what basis: the argument for a read-only gallery.
- [Approche](https://ikigailabs.xyz/approche): The curatorial method, in French.
- [The Reading Room](https://ikigailabs.xyz/stories): Fourteen long-form essays inscribed permanently on-chain via Transient Labs Story Inscriptions, rendered here because no marketplace reads them out of the transaction log.
- [Gems on the Floor](https://ikigailabs.xyz/gems): The live floor scan in full: every curated collection that is actually trading, ranked by how far its cheapest ask sits below the median of the next five listed works. Shows what cleared the bar, what came close and why it failed, and the rest of the measured books as a table. Read at page load, not baked in.
- [The Gem Ledger](https://ikigailabs.xyz/gems/log): Every work the floor scan has ever flagged, with the date, the gap it had that morning, and what became of it: sold, withdrawn, or the gap closing because the rest of the collection came down. A committed record rather than a live read, and it is not a track record: a gap is a fact about an order book, not a prediction.
- [Art Gallery](https://ikigailabs.xyz/gallery): The collection hung in a walkable 3D space, embedded from Spatial.
- [Odyssey](https://ikigailabs.xyz/odyssey): Dimitri Daniloff’s three 2022 ERC-1155 works for Olympus DAO’s marketplace: 1,002 copies in 399 wallets, a token URI pointing at a lapsed domain, and no setter to repoint it. Includes a proposed burn-and-claim re-issue on a creator-owned contract.
- [The Studio](https://ikigailabs.xyz/studio): What the studio makes itself, in one place: the two shows, the contracts they are published on, and the prints and screens the work ends up on.
- [Transient Labs](https://ikigailabs.xyz/transient): The publishing stack behind the on-chain writing.
- [Publish with us](https://ikigailabs.xyz/transient/create): How an artist gets work and writing published through the studio.
- [TokenWorks](https://ikigailabs.xyz/tokenworks): The studio’s tokenised-asset practice.
- [Pulse](https://ikigailabs.xyz/tokenworks/pulse): Live market read on tokenised assets.

## For agents

A read-only JSON API, CORS-open, no key required. Every response is cached at the edge.

- [/api/gallery/categories](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/categories): The curated categories, with a collection count and editorial intro for each.
- [/api/gallery/category/{id}](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/category/{id}): Collections in a category, hydrated with OpenSea stats and ranked by liveness. Query: `offset` (start index, default 0), `limit` (page size, default 12).
- [/api/gallery/category/{id}/floors](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/category/{id}/floors): Cheapest entry point into each collection in a category: collection floor price plus a sample work. Query: `limit` (page size, default 12).
- [/api/gallery/gems](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/gems): Works listed well below the rest of their collection. Scans every curated collection that is actually trading and returns the ones whose floor ask sits far under the next five listed works, measured live. Includes the floor price, the asks it was compared against, and when they were read. Query: `limit` (how many to return, default 6, max 24), `view` (`all` also returns every collection the scan measured and rejected, ranked, with the test each one failed).
- [/api/gallery/collection/{contract}](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/collection/{contract}): One collection: name, description, image, floor, volume, supply, owner count.
- [/api/gallery/collection/{contract}/tokens](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/collection/{contract}/tokens): Tokens in a collection. Cursor-paginated; no price or rarity sort, the OpenSea API offers neither. Query: `limit` (page size, default 20), `continuation` (cursor from the previous response).
- [/api/gallery/collection/{contract}/listings](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/collection/{contract}/listings): Works in a collection that are currently for sale, cheapest first, each with its ask. Read from the live order book rather than the token list, which carries no pricing. Seaport orders only: a collection that trades through its own contract (CryptoPunks) returns nothing here even while it is trading. Query: `limit` (page size, default 20, max 50), `continuation` (cursor from the previous response).
- [/api/gallery/collection/{contract}/traits](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/collection/{contract}/traits): Trait names and values for a collection.
- [/api/gallery/collection/{contract}/activity](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/collection/{contract}/activity): Sales, transfers, listings and offers for a collection. Query: `types` (comma-separated: sale, transfer, listing, offer, mint), `continuation` (cursor).
- [/api/gallery/token/{contract}/{tokenId}](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/token/{contract}/{tokenId}): One work: metadata, traits, owner, current ask.
- [/api/gallery/token/{contract}/{tokenId}/activity](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/token/{contract}/{tokenId}/activity): The history of a single work. Query: `types` (comma-separated event types), `continuation` (cursor).
- [/api/gallery/account/{address}/tokens](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/account/{address}/tokens): Works held by an address. Query: `limit` (page size, default 20), `continuation` (cursor).
- [/api/gallery/account/{address}/activity](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/account/{address}/activity): Trading history for an address. Query: `continuation` (cursor).
- [/api/gallery/search](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery/search): Search the curated set by name, slug or pasted contract address. Local, so it costs no upstream call. Query: `query` (search term, two characters or more).
- [/api/stories](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/stories): The full text of the on-chain essays, read from their transaction logs.
- [/llms-full.txt](https://ikigailabs.xyz/llms-full.txt): every curated collection with its curator note, in one file.
- [/api/gallery](https://ikigailabs.xyz/api/gallery): this endpoint list again, as JSON.

## Optional

- [Disclosures](https://ikigailabs.xyz/disclosures): What we hold and what we are paid for.
- [Privacy Policy](https://ikigailabs.xyz/privacy-policy): What the site collects.
- [Terms of Use](https://ikigailabs.xyz/terms-of-use): Terms governing use of the site.