The P.O.L.L.O.C.K. Machine is a techno abstract expressionist unit created by ROBNESS to create 1912 generations of abstracts in the style of a certain infamous artist born on that very date.
An accidental homage of sorts, ROBNESS was investigating Ethereum's old design aesthetics of using interconnected dots and lines when the network was about to begin in 2015. When using these elements to create a generative work he came to find that they resembled abstract expressionist works of the past but in a new digital form.
One part cryptopop and another part abstract expressionist, the P.O.L.L.O.C.K. Machine updates an older art form to a new age of generative works on the blockchain.
ROBNESS is a Los Angeles artist who has worked in crypto art since its earliest days, minting on Bitcoin's Counterparty network and helping build the Rare Pepe project into the first decentralized crypto art community. His 2020 piece "64 Gallon Toter" was removed from SuperRare in a copyright dispute and later reinstated, an episode that launched the #trashart movement and a wider debate over censorship and ownership on centralized platforms. In 2021 he bought CryptoPunk #2317 and burned it as an art gesture — the "Burnt Punk." Two of his works are held in the Centre Pompidou's first NFT collection, he is included in TASCHEN's survey "On NFTs," and he appears in the documentary "What The Punk!" — with thousands of individual works made across many chains and platforms.