Organic Growth: Crystal Reef

Mechanics OG:CR Crystals were built around the Dynamic NFT concept. The project transformed static NFTs into a flourishing digital reefscape, where each unique piece of digital art grows every time it is re-sold during the collection Growth Period (Oct 14 – Dec 31 2021). 6955 Ethereum wallets participated in the growing process through more than 33k qualified blockchain transactions.

The crystals started as basic "seeds" and then changed their shape every time they were sold, keeping all parts from the previous owners and adding a new part for every new owner. Each part of the crystal was generated using the owner's wallet metadata — wallet address, amount of NFTs in the wallet, amount of ETH, and so on.

Every crystal visually represents the chain of ownership stored in the blockchain transaction history of each OG:CR NFT. So everyone who participated in minting and sales was helping to define the crystals' look, making owners of these wallets co-creators of the collection.

The mix of possible traits for each crystal is fairly complex: there are 4 general types of crystals (Spiky, Fractal, Cluster and Coral), 2 complexity variants, 5 basic colors with additional shades, several options for brightness and darkness, and 4 special materials (Obsidian, Gold, Quartz and Pyrite). Detailed information on the events that trigger specific changes and their probabilities can be found on GitHub.

Collabs The unique mechanics of the project allowed us to create homage traits for BAYC, ArtBlocks, CryptoPunks, Ksoids, Meebits, Omnimorphs and 89seconds NFT collections. If the owner's wallet contained one of those NFTs, they had a chance of getting a piece of crystal with a particular look.

AR & 3D Assets Optimized 3D assets were produced for each of the 10301 crystals, so they can be used for AR, VR or any other 3D content creation. The uniqueness of this feature also lies in its direct availability on OpenSea — the AR button lets anyone go straight into AR mode from the marketplace. You can try it out by scanning the code below with your phone camera.

Posters While the collection was evolving, posters visualizing the collection stats were procedurally generated every week. An actual current image of each of the 10301 crystals was used during the process, making each poster a time-slice of the whole collection state at that moment.

The Reef The Crystal Reef is the final and most ambitious stage of the road map. This sculpture will aggregate all OG:Crystals from the entire collection and be shown in museums around the world. The implementation stages are complex, requiring iterative testing for printing as well as negotiations with the museums and institutions themselves.

Featured in exhibitions & events: • Noospheres: Expanded | 61st Venice Biennale, Venice, 2026 • Breath(e) | The Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, 2025 • Breath(e) | Moody Center for the Arts, Houston, 2025 • Breath(e) | HAMMER, Los Angeles, 2024–2025 • OpenSea_Current Sea_Deep Sea, ArtSonje Center, Seoul, 2023 • The Etherial Aether | Hermitage Art Gallery, Saint Petersburg, 2021 Links: OG:CR Website · Collection on OG.ART · Collection on OpenSea

Concept: Michael Joo & Danil Krivoruchko Generative and Digital Art: Danil Krivoruchko Physical sculpture: Michael Joo Marketing and Development: Snark.Art