PXL NET
“Disclaimer: Pixel (PXL) is not a security token, nor a memecoin or a shitcoin. Please act accordingly.” This line closes out the descriptions Kim Asendorf has published for works in his PXL series. It's his attempt to direct how people behave in the participatory ecosystem of tokenized generative art he's created. But as anyone who has created something to put into the world knows, people don't follow instructions. They'll use what you make in whatever way feels good to them. So telling people how to act isn't enough. You have to shape what you make to subtly encourage the behavior you want. You have to structure your creation so the right behavior feels intuitive. Asendorf has done that with PXL. When a token is tied to a fart joke, what else is there to do but pump, dump, and forget about it? But $PXL is tied to a pixel. One token equals one unit of computational visuality. The elegant austerity of $PXL's equation puts holders in mind to study the artwork, to contemplate it, to think about how visuals take shape on the screen from basic units of code and computing, which is what Asendorf's work is about. The disclaimer reminds us how to act toward the work, but the work itself already offers the best instruction, thanks to how it's coded.
The PXL series began in 2025 and it is ongoing. Asendorf has set a cap of 1,024,000,000 $PXL, so eventually he'll hit a point when no more can be minted. After releasing three projects in the ecosystem—PXL DEX, PXL POD, and now PXL NET—he is about halfway through. Asendorf didn't draw up a roadmap before embarking on PXL. As with all his works, he likes the art to reveal itself as it's made. He wants the system to generate unexpected outcomes. The progression of PXL so far feels deliberate and logical, but also surprising. Like any good artwork, PXL NET feels at once unexpected and inevitable. It manifests the conceptual promise of $PXL. The work is the network. It offers a visible, almost tangible sense of what a network looks like and how it functions.
Networks tend to be visualized as spindly structures, concatenating nodes and spokes. But PXL NET is a dynamic, shapeless mass. Its pixels move in concert, and also in opposition. Their tension gets resolved, or it doesn't. Conflict intensifies and ebbs. Harmony breaks out suddenly, and just as suddenly it falls apart, leaving room for new formations to brew in the chaos. An in-world camera pans, swoops, and zooms around the NET, traveling to sites of new activity and following its emergence, then abruptly shifts perspectives, because no one vantage point can take in all that matters. There's no god's-eye view that can show us the whole thing, because even if we could somehow get above it all there would still be something happening underneath. That's the truth of the network, and that's what you learn from looking at PXL NET.
Or so I imagine. I haven't really seen it. Asendorf showed me some test versions by sharing his screen on Zoom. But that's not the real thing. As I write this, PXL NET doesn't yet exist. And when it does, it won't be something that can be viewed remotely. Maybe people following on X or TikTok will feel like they know the image of it, but they won't really see the actual work. This is partly because it's constantly evolving and changing, but also because it's being shown on special computers that can render vast numbers of pixels. Asendorf is releasing 128,000,000 $PXL to populate PXL NET, and it's likely that they all will be minted and added to the work by the time the run of his exhibition at NODE is over. That is more than a phone can render. It's more than a regular gaming computer can render, too. NODE is using advanced graphic cards to show PXL NET, which means that any appearance of the work in selfie backdrops or influencer reels will blur and combine the pixels, showing only a fuzzy approximation of what it really is.
PXL NET is a logical step in the development of the PXL ecosystem, but it also responds to a particular situation. Asendorf was invited to do a show at NODE, a foundation dedicated to exhibiting and promoting art on the blockchain. What does it mean to show digital art in a specific location? Asendorf has always made work that is freely available to view online. For this exhibition, he decided not just to put the work on a dedicated screen, but to make something that is best viewed in a specific location, on specific hardware. PXL NET is accessible online too, but most viewers won't have the compute to render it fully. This is one of the main ways that PXL NET differs from PXL DEX and PXL POD, both of which use similar algorithms to guide pixel behavior, but that contain the movement of pixels in isometric objects. The pods and decks are virtual sculptures that you can behold as singular objects while influencing their appearance by adding $PXL to their associated smart contracts. They make sense for the NFT market, as objects that are similar but unique, connected by Asendorf's innovation of adding a utility token that can move in and out of each piece. But PXL NET stands apart. It's a 1-of-1, but it's also a work that many people can contribute to. It's also something that you have to travel to see, even as it remains embedded in the network.
The singularity and site-specificity of PXL NET harkens back to a time when computers were too big to put in a pocket, or in the back seat of a car. The title gestures toward that history, too—it adheres to the six-character limit of early filenames. But there's nothing nostalgic about Asendorf's work. It returns to the fundamentals of the medium while pushing the possibilities of contemporary hardware to their limits. He's not emulating the art of the past, but finding continuity through common ground in the history of computation.
There are elements of continuity with his own practice, too. Asendorf's use of market structures to shape community behavior and connect it to the formal properties of his art predates his engagement with the blockchain. In 2011, he released GIF Market, a series of 1024 unique GIFs in which pixel scarcity directly influenced price—an early experiment in making the material logic of digital art legible through exchange. $PXL extends that experiment on a greater scale: one token, one pixel, one unit of computational visuality, now tied to a network that only exists because people choose to join it.
Asendorf has also released his original algorithms as open-source software, free for others to remix and build upon. The markets, the open-source releases, the token ecosystem—all is united by a belief that art becomes meaningful through use, that participation isn't incidental but essential. PXL is the most fully realized expression of that belief.
Which brings us back to the disclaimer. “Please act accordingly” is a reasonable request, but Asendorf knows better than to rely on it. The instruction that actually works is built into the equation: $PXL is tied to a pixel, and the pixel is tied to one of the most ambitious works of participatory generative art ever made. That's not a memecoin. You don't pump and dump something you can live in.
—Brian Droitcour
“Disclaimer: Pixel (PXL) is not a security token, nor a memecoin or a shitcoin. Please act accordingly.” This line closes out the descriptions Kim Asendorf has published for works in his PXL series. It's his attempt to direct how people behave in the participatory ecosystem of tokenized generative art he's created. But as anyone who has created something to put into the world knows, people don't follow instructions. They'll use what you make in whatever way feels good to them. So telling people how to act isn't enough. You have to shape what you make to subtly encourage the behavior you want. You have to structure your creation so the right behavior feels intuitive. Asendorf has done that with PXL. When a token is tied to a fart joke, what else is there to do but pump, dump, and forget about it? But $PXL is tied to a pixel. One token equals one unit of computational visuality. The elegant austerity of $PXL's equation puts holders in mind to study the artwork, to contemplate it, to think about how visuals take shape on the screen from basic units of code and computing, which is what Asendorf's work is about. The disclaimer reminds us how to act toward the work, but the work itself already offers the best instruction, thanks to how it's coded.
The PXL series began in 2025 and it is ongoing. Asendorf has set a cap of 1,024,000,000 $PXL, so eventually he'll hit a point when no more can be minted. After releasing three projects in the ecosystem—PXL DEX, PXL POD, and now PXL NET—he is about halfway through. Asendorf didn't draw up a roadmap before embarking on PXL. As with all his works, he likes the art to reveal itself as it's made. He wants the system to generate unexpected outcomes. The progression of PXL so far feels deliberate and logical, but also surprising. Like any good artwork, PXL NET feels at once unexpected and inevitable. It manifests the conceptual promise of $PXL. The work is the network. It offers a visible, almost tangible sense of what a network looks like and how it functions.
Networks tend to be visualized as spindly structures, concatenating nodes and spokes. But PXL NET is a dynamic, shapeless mass. Its pixels move in concert, and also in opposition. Their tension gets resolved, or it doesn't. Conflict intensifies and ebbs. Harmony breaks out suddenly, and just as suddenly it falls apart, leaving room for new formations to brew in the chaos. An in-world camera pans, swoops, and zooms around the NET, traveling to sites of new activity and following its emergence, then abruptly shifts perspectives, because no one vantage point can take in all that matters. There's no god's-eye view that can show us the whole thing, because even if we could somehow get above it all there would still be something happening underneath. That's the truth of the network, and that's what you learn from looking at PXL NET.
Or so I imagine. I haven't really seen it. Asendorf showed me some test versions by sharing his screen on Zoom. But that's not the real thing. As I write this, PXL NET doesn't yet exist. And when it does, it won't be something that can be viewed remotely. Maybe people following on X or TikTok will feel like they know the image of it, but they won't really see the actual work. This is partly because it's constantly evolving and changing, but also because it's being shown on special computers that can render vast numbers of pixels. Asendorf is releasing 128,000,000 $PXL to populate PXL NET, and it's likely that they all will be minted and added to the work by the time the run of his exhibition at NODE is over. That is more than a phone can render. It's more than a regular gaming computer can render, too. NODE is using advanced graphic cards to show PXL NET, which means that any appearance of the work in selfie backdrops or influencer reels will blur and combine the pixels, showing only a fuzzy approximation of what it really is.
PXL NET is a logical step in the development of the PXL ecosystem, but it also responds to a particular situation. Asendorf was invited to do a show at NODE, a foundation dedicated to exhibiting and promoting art on the blockchain. What does it mean to show digital art in a specific location? Asendorf has always made work that is freely available to view online. For this exhibition, he decided not just to put the work on a dedicated screen, but to make something that is best viewed in a specific location, on specific hardware. PXL NET is accessible online too, but most viewers won't have the compute to render it fully. This is one of the main ways that PXL NET differs from PXL DEX and PXL POD, both of which use similar algorithms to guide pixel behavior, but that contain the movement of pixels in isometric objects. The pods and decks are virtual sculptures that you can behold as singular objects while influencing their appearance by adding $PXL to their associated smart contracts. They make sense for the NFT market, as objects that are similar but unique, connected by Asendorf's innovation of adding a utility token that can move in and out of each piece. But PXL NET stands apart. It's a 1-of-1, but it's also a work that many people can contribute to. It's also something that you have to travel to see, even as it remains embedded in the network.
The singularity and site-specificity of PXL NET harkens back to a time when computers were too big to put in a pocket, or in the back seat of a car. The title gestures toward that history, too—it adheres to the six-character limit of early filenames. But there's nothing nostalgic about Asendorf's work. It returns to the fundamentals of the medium while pushing the possibilities of contemporary hardware to their limits. He's not emulating the art of the past, but finding continuity through common ground in the history of computation.
There are elements of continuity with his own practice, too. Asendorf's use of market structures to shape community behavior and connect it to the formal properties of his art predates his engagement with the blockchain. In 2011, he released GIF Market, a series of 1024 unique GIFs in which pixel scarcity directly influenced price—an early experiment in making the material logic of digital art legible through exchange. $PXL extends that experiment on a greater scale: one token, one pixel, one unit of computational visuality, now tied to a network that only exists because people choose to join it.
Asendorf has also released his original algorithms as open-source software, free for others to remix and build upon. The markets, the open-source releases, the token ecosystem—all is united by a belief that art becomes meaningful through use, that participation isn't incidental but essential. PXL is the most fully realized expression of that belief.
Which brings us back to the disclaimer. “Please act accordingly” is a reasonable request, but Asendorf knows better than to rely on it. The instruction that actually works is built into the equation: $PXL is tied to a pixel, and the pixel is tied to one of the most ambitious works of participatory generative art ever made. That's not a memecoin. You don't pump and dump something you can live in.
—Brian Droitcour