A Discussion With Sam Spratt: How The Monument Game Is Redefining the NFT Landscape

In August, Sam Spratt and Nifty Gateway, a Gemini company, teamed up to deliver The Monument Game — an interactive experience of art and observation powered by blockchain technology.

Sam’s artwork brought a new dimension to the world of NFTs, welcoming collectors to an interactive experience where they could add their thoughts and considerations to the art itself. Sam challenged collectors to “give a little piece of themselves to the painting, a sacrificial offering if you will.”

To compete in the “IX. The Monument Game” digital painting, collectors added a final digital varnish of their thoughts through observations, connecting Sam’s story, art, and collectors under a common system. In his words: “Dominion is formed through naming what we see, truth found in consensus.”

The response to The Monument Game was massive.

• 10,000 unique users were on the Nifty Gateway site at launch.
• The 1/1 “IX. The Monument Game” sold for 420.69 ETH, the highest 1/1 bid on Nifty Gateway this year.
• 209 “Player” NFTs that gave collectors the ability to add an observation to “IX. The Monument Game” sold out in 123 seconds, with $1.2 million in primary sale volume.

Sam’s imagination and the responses to his art merged to form a community-built art piece that is more than the sum of its parts.

Following the release of The Monument Game, we conducted a Q/A with Sam to learn more about his experience engaging with the community that has grown around his art and what he sees next for the NFT industry, among other topics.

The Q/A has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Nifty Gateway: How would you describe The Monument Game to someone not familiar with NFTs?

Sam: A new gallery opens. Inside of it is one massive painting on the wall filled with hundreds of stories. There is no cocktail party opening. There is no music. The gallery can be filled with people but no matter how many there are, only you are in the room with the painting at any given time.

Anyone is able to come and see it for free as the gallery is open 24/7/365, and anyone can get up close to the painting, they can even touch it, run their greasy fingers over its surface as they pan across the vignettes depicted within it, but it cannot be destroyed.

For the opening week of the gallery, the painting serves as an experience that rewards the curiosity and interaction of its viewers. Two hundred fifty-six gallery visitors, who are willing to be patrons of the artist behind this painting, can collect a signed print by them at the door and can not only enter to touch and view the larger work, but also compete with one another to collect the artist’s work by simply observing the painting.

Their observations – what the gallery-goer takes from the work – the exact spot on the painting they were looking at, the exact feeling they had and were able to voice, serve as permanently etched thoughts into the varnish of both this massive painting, and are written into the signed prints they each collected.

For the opening week, these observations are judged by the artist’s existing collectors. Combed through carefully and with love, existing collectors determine which three patrons left behind a piece of themselves atop the painting. The three chosen patrons are welcomed among the ranks of collectors, and are invited to join their unique community.

Lastly, a wealthy collector visits this gallery and sees the painting. They also see 256 people who have spent at the very least minutes, and in many cases, hours, even days, studying it and sharing what they see and feel. The collector collects not just the painting, but the energy that others have given to help understand the work they hope to place in their collection. They perpetually share it. The gallery stays open. The observations too.

Nifty Gateway: How do you hope (or have seen) The Monument Game change the way artists and collectors engage with one another?

Sam: I am wary to speculate on what I’ve seen, as The Monument Game revealed a very complex web of human motivations around me that is not always what it seems, and one piece will not change this behavior.

However, for those who are interested in gleaning something from what I’ve experienced through the human connections formed around it, I would say: active participation in art is a more complex, vulnerable, and spicier relationship between people than a transaction of collection.

I have had conversations with many of the collectors of “Player” without ever speaking a word to each other because I spoke it in the painting, and provided a reason and ability to respond within the work. I feel a mutual sense of closeness that acknowledges we do not all need to be pen pals, but understands one another to some degree, and allows us to skip the preamble and tutorial of conversation for when we do actually meet.

Nifty Gateway: Why did you choose to open source The Monument Game’s code?

Sam: A lot can be done with it. I would love to see what others have in themselves and what they might create with some of the tools we built.

Nifty Gateway: You’ve mentioned on Twitter that you’re tracking everything related to The Monument Game very closely, why?

Sam: I am collecting the feelings others have elicited out of me and curating them. They are the inspiration.

Nifty Gateway: Can you tell us about what’s next for The Monument Game? And, what’s next for you?

Sam: The Monument Game will most certainly have a second life as it finds placement in the world. The conversations being had are wild. Very exciting.

Two months out from The Monument Game, I am already fully submerged deep into the soup of the next chapter of Luci. Chapter 6 is simultaneously a far more intricate and intimate story. It plays with the human chaos of what was learned from the Players and The Monument Game. “X.” is demanding much more than before but nothing for me is more interesting than waking up to a behemoth of a self-created and uncertain endeavor, and learning what’s required to make a delusional idea real.

Those expecting a quick follow-up are not paying much attention, but those who see the year that went into the creation of The Monument Game as proof of where my interests and passion are and have the patience to wait: It’s going to be a hell of a party.

Thank you to Sam for bringing us into his world and sharing his thoughts with us. We eagerly wait to see what he offers next to the art and NFT worlds.

Onward and Upward!

Team Gemini