Written by Katie Chiou

IN CONVERSATION WITH is a series from Archetype where we interview artists in/at the edges of crypto across music, visual art, design, curation, and more.

Nic Hamilton is a multifaceted visual artist based in Melbourne, whose work spans across mediums and themes. His practice-led work draws inspiration from software, nature, online and underground music cultures, and his formal background in architecture. Hamilton's art frequently explores themes of decay, the visual perception of environments, and interpretations of digital spaces, creating interpretations of the natural and digital worlds.

Throughout his career, Hamilton has collaborated with numerous artists from the electronic music scene, showcased his work in galleries across the globe, and lent his creative expertise to consumer brands. Hamilton is a founding partner of ONE, a boutique creative agency. He also worked as creative director at JPG, a decentralized digital art curation platform. Nic owns and operates a digital art co-working space, NUX.

In 2022, Hamilton released NUXUI, a series of 333 unique generative and hand-finished digital artwork NFTs. This collection was followed by NUX2UI, a Web GL / CGI hybrid and SVG collection. In 2024, Hamilton released Rez Tabs, a collection of  ultra-high-resolution degraded digital artifacts. Alongside this, he released Xookt, a WebGL / CGI hybrid series that transforms and degrades imagery in a web browser into a field of liquid-like pixels.

Over a video call, Nic and I talked about launching NFT collections, balancing personal and commercial art practices, AI music visualizers, and more.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Katie Chiou: For those who may be unfamiliar with your work, can you share more about your background and journey as an artist?

Nic Hamilton: I describe myself now as a visual artist, but across my career, I've done a whole lot of different things––always mainly based in image making. I was originally trained as an architect, but I’ve always just wanted to create things, which didn’t really jive with architecture. Originally, I was mainly focused on documentation and designing townhouses and offices, but I actually really enjoyed making the images of the buildings. I started pursuing architectural image-making more specifically as a career, and got a job focused on architectural storytelling and communication and making films, and I loved it. I still worked in the property industry, but I loved working on the cultural and conceptual projects and creating content for architecture pitches and things like that.

Around that time, I also started making music videos in my spare time because I’ve always loved techno and dance music. I would send the video to the artist saying, "Hey, I made you something," and then that kind of caught on. One thing led to another, and I started making bigger music videos and becoming more interested in leveraging technology in my work. I was really interested in the intersection of technology and image making, and I saw a real commercial niche for using these new technologies as soon as they came out.

Eventually, I got tired of the property and architecture world. I started independently doing brand creative, creative direction, content and strategy, and interacting with big Nike-style companies, which I loved for a while. And then along the way, we had COVID. During lockdown, I started making digital art for myself again, which was about the same time that NFTs came about. I thought, finally, that there might be a place for me to publish, share, and maybe sell my artwork.

Socializing online through Discord became a huge part of my life. I reconnected with friends overseas in similar positions, made new friends in small Discords, and saw artists I had respected move into NFTs. From that point, I started making a lot more of my own art and a lot less commercial work. I found that really compelling and rewarding, especially the fact that I might be able to sell artwork and interact with an audience.

Now, I’ve dialed back a lot of my commercial work and am much more concentrated on building my personal art career.  I'll always do commercial work in the background to pay my rent and living expenses, but COVID and Discord and NFTs were the real catalysts for me to take my own personal art seriously.

KC: In terms of the decision to do less commercial work, was that influenced by gaining an audience, the opportunity to monetize with NFTs, a general preference to work independently, or something else?

NH: Being able to explore the intersection of visual art and online culture through my own practice was certainly the biggest factor. But also just being able to get recognition and potentially payment for my work certainly helped make concrete in my mind that I could legitimately leverage NFTs. I haven't really sold personal artwork outside of NFTs apart from, I suppose, commissions and installations. And in those works, I don’t really have any ties to them. I didn't really feel that proud of them because people don't really know they’re mine. The only record of those works exists on my website in a small little blurb, and I just don't feel like they have a continuation or a real connection to me, unlike the kind of digital works I've published.

As far as commercial work, commercial budgets really seemed to plummet during COVID. I think on jobs for larger clients, we saw upwards of 50% budget cuts. In terms of digital content, people were spending a lot on digital marketing during COVID, so that was quite lucrative, but it was just work to me at that time. I didn't find it creatively rewarding. The only goal was to run those jobs as efficiently as possible, get a good margin, and to make sure the client was happy. I just wanted to get back to my own personal work.

There’s a tension in commercial work between being in control of my own art and sending work to a client. It's not a compelling way to spend eight weeks for me anymore. I still take on smaller jobs, but I’ve stopped taking larger jobs, the ones that require a bigger team, just because they are no longer worth the time to me.

KC: Something I’ve found in similar conversations with artists who work on institutional scales, is that in those types of projects, you have no idea who is engaging with your work on the audience side, which I can understand to be disappointing. But also, when working with institutions, you don’t have to worry as much about marketing and distribution and personal brand because the institution bears a lot of that burden for you––so there’s tradeoffs. I would love to hear if that resonates with you at all.

NH: Yeah, certainly. Not having to promote your own work is a big upside of commercial work. The business already has the audience in mind, they know exactly what they want, they pay you. It may or may not get credited. The dynamic never really bothered me, but it wasn’t particularly fulfilling either. If it was a job that I liked, I would share it on my social media or send it to other people I knew and say, "Hey, I worked on this. I like this. Maybe we could do this with your brand."

The social side of personal artwork for me is really interesting. I talk to people all day and night about everything––art, digital work, and technology. I genuinely love those subjects, and making those relationships is really rewarding. It means you can go anywhere in the world, to any city, and you've got someone you know there to chat with or catch up with.

I feel like the majority of all my commercial work is actually word-of-mouth referrals. I don't advertise; I don't do cold calls. Developing those social, kind of invisible networks, whether it's commercial or personal artwork, is absolutely key. If you don't share stuff, people don't know you're around. You might not get new work unless you get lucky.

KC: You launched the NFT collection NUXUI in 2022, what was the motivation for launching the collection and what was your experience like?

NH: For NUXUI, I was seeing other people I admired releasing work in the NFT space and I wanted to try it myself. In the past, I had really only made singular artworks, I had never thought about working generatively on a larger scale, so I was very intrigued by watching people make 1000 pieces of artwork that were essentially the same. Working that way allows you to put at the forefront all your experimentation on a work in progress and to show the entire gamut of any idea. For NUXUI, it was an artwork in the form of a collection of around 300 pieces. All the software tools I was already working with at the time actually suited this kind of algorithmic, generative process, and automated a lot of stuff anyway. I also had two friends locally, two developers, who worked on it with me.

At the time, there were no platforms for launching your own collection. There was no Highlight, I think Zora was around and I think there Art Blocks was as well, but we had to apply for that. I had no idea how to make a smart contract. My friends and I got together and learned how to do it all ourselves, which was really cool. The whole process was fascinating. I enjoyed writing about the collection, explaining it, and making a nice website for it. I wanted to create the whole context around everything. I didn't quite get as far as I wanted. I wanted to do videos and stuff, but in the end, we ran out of time. It was like, crap, let's call time on this and release it, otherwise, we would have worked on it forever. I think that was all done in 3D software with procedural methods. I think I made probably thousands of those things, but in the end, whittled it down to around 200. At the time, I was spending a lot of time with Friends With Benefits, and people there were very supportive of it. They were like, this is really cool, release it. I was hesitant, but they encouraged me. That support and reinforcement from the online community I knew was really helpful. I don't think any of my real-life friends at the time really wanted to know about NFTs; they didn't care or weren't interested. They were like, Nic's making his digital artwork again.

KC: Do you recall anything about the process of launching the collection being particularly difficult or unique from your typical processes?

NH: I think the whole process of actually using a terminal to deploy smart contracts was kind of scary. I think there's so much money at stake. It cost about $800 to launch that smart contract at that time. I thought, "Man, if I get this wrong, this is an expensive mistake." On the technical side, getting the wallet to make you feel good and informed while connected and making sure the server was strong enough to meet the minting demand involved a lot of technical overhead that I didn’t expect. I was super interested to learn about it, but I found it fairly scary.

KC: You’re still actively creating NFTs and a lot has changed since you initially launched NUXUI. How has the process changed, and how have various platforms and tools made the process easier?

NH: It's totally different now. I feel like pretty much anyone could deploy an NFT collection. Platform-wise, I think what Nat and Modi have built at Highlight is probably the best user experience out there for launching a collection. They've got a lot of sophisticated tools and are very product and user-focused. On the other side, you have Zora, which is even easier to use for open editions and very fast minting. Both platforms serve different purposes, and they're both extremely easy to use.

I'm not sure if I'll use either of them again in the future for a large collection. I'd probably go back to making my own contract because I like the ownership aspect. I like that it can be completely self-owned and operated, rather than linked to another brand or platform, as good as the platforms out there are. They serve a great purpose, but for a larger, more deliberate body of work, it might be worth the effort of doing your own contract. Adding some novel mechanics can differentiate it and make it totally independent with no one else involved.

The self-publishing platforms are great for providing access for everyone, but it also makes it difficult to stand out. This forces people to up their game to get noticed, which I think is worthwhile. The improvements in the past two years have been tenfold; it's changed completely. Everyone gets their artwork now, even on social apps like Lens. It's very easy to mint stuff there quickly.

KC: You make art that isn't NFTs and also make art that you mint as NFTs. Do you have a particular framework for deciding what's better suited to be onchain? For example, NFTs often involve high volume and many editions, so maybe algorithmic generative art is better suited for that.

NH: At the moment, I have no clear framework for what should be an NFT and what shouldn’t.  If I'm publishing work in progress or tests, I'll often chuck stuff on Zora without tweeting about it. I'll just publish my work in progress, and people might see it or they might not. I don't shout about it. Currently, I'm working on physical editions backed up with digital ones, trying to create a hierarchy of work. I'm doing giant light boxes of AI-generated imagery with RFID chips to link them to digital versions. Beneath that, there will be a series of high resolution, longer format videos and maybe 200 still images. I'm trying to create a real-life exhibition so local people can see the work and engage with it at different levels.

KC: For any artists today looking to engage with NFTs or crypto, what advice would you give them?

NH: If I was just starting out, I'd say that you've got to get involved. You have to reach out to people also in the space, meet the people building the products, making the artwork, buying the artwork, and selling the artwork. The social aspect is huge. You need to engage with it on a genuine level. Don't expect any financial reward at the moment. If you've been making art, you're probably going to continue making it regardless. Be deliberate about what you mint, how you mint it, and how you price it. Make it accessible to as many people as you can and then go from there.

I've always had day jobs and other sources of income. Even with a full-time job, I still tried to find time to work on my art. There's something about getting home from work and thinking, "That was such a drag of a day, let's do something for myself." I've always managed to fit it in.

KC: How do you draw distinction between your commercial work and personal work? Do you think of them separately?

NH: I think it really depends on the purpose. For many people, it's hard to delineate between art and design because the context is so important. For example, graphic designers work in a commercial sphere, but their work often exists as art. I feel that Eric [Hu], who I consider an artist, is also a very skilled creative director and designer. His work bridges both art and design, and there's no real endpoint. His work is art, design, and a commercial project simultaneously. That's something I've struggled with. I've always felt a delineation where my commercial work could never be considered artwork. It probably reflects my feelings about having others influence my work, making me think it's not really art. I've struggled with calling myself an artist because it didn't feel genuine. I'm still working it out.

There's a lot of discourse around the idea that real artists don't sell out and that monetizing art makes it commercial and therefore not art. Crypto for artists allows for easier monetization, changing the discussion around commercial versus fine art. I have no issues with people making money from their artwork. It's about the manner, context, and intention. Some art projects are commercially focused from the start, and that's fine. Some interesting projects begin as commercial and gain a cult following, like some PFP projects and Solana edge-case art. They bridge that gap well.

KC: How do you think about the role of emerging technologies in your work and how it affects commercialization potential?

NH: Everything I do is seeded by new technology or techniques. I closely study open-source AI, 3D, and VR. For my whole career, these have been jumping-off points for recontextualizing ideas or revisiting projects through a new lens. In 20 years, it will be interesting to see the influence of major software releases and innovations on people's artwork. Early AI art, for example, has a certain character marking it as of a certain time.

Technology as a marker of time is interesting, but as a conceptual driver, it’s less so. I'm more interested in the aesthetics these tools provide for building on larger themes and concepts. There are some genuinely cool conceptual blockchain-native artworks, like Terra0, which is particularly cool. The early projects by Hito Steyerl, for example, include the garden cedar where the blockchain updates parts of the work algorithmically. That's strong, both aesthetically and culturally.

However, generative art using Python or JSON to produce thousands of iterations isn't particularly interesting technically. It's more a reflection of the tooling and marks a time when processing was huge. It’s great for exposure but doesn’t always result in strong artwork. It can lead to a kind of zombie formalism, which may look fine but lacks longevity.

KC: What topics and themes are you thinking most about exploring nowadays?

NH: The themes I keep coming back to are entropy, decay, and the passage of time, particularly through a digital lens. And particularly, I think about landscapes and how people perceive them over time. These ideas have always fascinated me, especially the way people inhabit and view landscapes and how these perceptions evolve.

When I was younger, it was just through a camera and I was always trying to manipulate that kind of footage to make it look like it was more messed up or looked like it was decaying or rotting. Now, with open-source AI, there are new ways to interpret landscapes, people, and culture. It always feels like everything is constantly melting and decaying, which ties into a sense of mortality and beauty.

I love the idea of reflecting the passage of time over a career, showing snapshots that melt and degrade through the lens of contemporary technology. Imagine having a body of work in 50 years that shows a gradual growth or decay, a natural cycle viewed through the tools of the time.

I've never been particularly articulate about the conceptual grounding behind my work. I consider myself someone who has a feeling and then makes stuff. I talk about my work in abstract or metaphorical terms related to a time, place, or experience. I'm not a conceptually driven artist; my work comes from my own experiences and reflects what I see in landscapes and people.

I think that’s why I like music so much. Whenever I'm making artwork, I test it with music, putting it into Premiere Pro and adding different tracks to see what kind of vibe it gives off. Sometimes the artwork needs to be more messed up, sometimes more ambient and beautiful. Music helps me check my work. I love going out to dance parties and listening to loud music; the social aspect is invigorating. The otherworldly experience of strobe lights and smoke, disconnected from reality, somehow connects to how I see nature.

KC: Using music is interesting. Do you usually have a track in mind for what you want an artwork to evoke or is the song choice more so informed by the art?

NH: Sometimes I will. I’ll find a piece of music and make something specifically about that song. Whether I tell people about it or not is another thing. Recently, I’ve been making these large-scale AI creations, like waterfalls and giant slow-motion waves. That inspiration came from listening back to my friend Kane Ikin’s unreleased music, which I've had on my hard drive for ages. As I was really listening to it, I thought, "This stuff is so romantically melancholic and euphorically epic. It has this giant grinding sound that reminds me of an upside-down waterfall or something." So, I decided to create something for it. Those tracks ended up being the conceptual side that actually pushed me to act on making it. There’s no way I would have just sat down and said, "I’m gonna make a giant waterfall today." That was really cool. I like the symbiotic relationship with that—it gave me a jumping-off point.

KC: On that note, how do you feel about generative music visualizers? I could see having access to that sort of tooling eliminating the kind of collaborative practice you’re describing with Kane.

NH: From an artist's perspective, I love all the AI tooling. I think it’s really exciting. It’s the most excited I’ve been about a tool or technique, or something that can change the way you look at stuff, since probably the release of Unreal Engine, which made real-time graphics accessible to everyone.

In the early days of new tools, people, including myself, make all sorts of stuff—terrible stuff, good stuff—so I’m kind of used to that. In the first wave of 3D, when Blender became good, people were making orcs, fairies, women with swords, superheroes, and aliens. We’re not there yet with AI tools and it’s fine—people are just messing around. It’s how they learn. A lot of those people end up making cool stuff as they learn the techniques.

I think AI visualizers for music are very cool. It’s just a new tool, and people are making really good, interesting stuff. It’ll be a fun moment to look back on, like, "Wow, 2024, when everyone got involved in creating and started making these image interpolation, morphing graphics—wasn’t that cool." It’s the people who grab those tools, subvert them, and use them in the "wrong" or interesting way—that always happens—that create a cool niche. They find stuff that people think is stupid at the time and say, "Actually, no, it’s not. It’s really cool, and we’re going to use this."

It’s the same as NFTs. Mainstream people thought NFTs were a stupid scam, but underpinning all that, it’s just people messing around. Ultimately, over time, all that critique and criticism will wash away, and the interesting activity will continue. When I started making 3D art, I made some pretty awful, cringeworthy stuff. But that’s just how it happens. You learn through making, through sharing, and eventually, things get better.

Disclaimer:

This post is for general information purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any investment and should not be used in the evaluation of the merits of making any investment decision. It should not be relied upon for accounting, legal or tax advice or investment recommendations. You should consult your own advisers as to legal, business, tax, and other related matters concerning any investment or legal matters. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by Archetype. This post reflects the current opinions of the authors and is not made on behalf of Archetype or its affiliates and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Archetype, its affiliates or individuals associated with Archetype. The opinions reflected herein are subject to change without being updated.