0xDEAFBEEF writes self-contained generative audiovisual software in the C programming language, producing raw image and sound data stored directly on the Ethereum blockchain rather than off-chain.,The Canadian-born artist, based in Toronto,,spent twenty years across electrical engineering, sound production, computer graphics and blacksmithing before beginning to make art in 2020.,
Deafbeef's first project, Synth Poems, appeared in March 2021: an on-chain audiovisual piece using FM synthesis and XY-oscilloscope visualization, minted in an edition of 128. Five further works followed by July 2021, together referred to as Volume 1, developing the same austere, self-contained aesthetic. In September 2021, at the peak of that year's crypto art boom, Deafbeef released First First, a 5,000-edition on-chain project in which each object announces a fictional first-ever event for crypto art, working as both satire and record of the moment.That year Deafbeef and Snowfro approached Larva Labs and proposed moving the entire CryptoPunks collection fully on-chain, so that each punk and its attributes are stored directly on Ethereum.Deafbeef's 2022 work Caves sends the ASCII character H through a generated cave system, paying tribute to computer art pioneer Herbert W. Franke.
Deafbeef's practice extends into physical craft: for Sketches in Iron (2022) on Feral File, Deafbeef performed live in the blacksmithing shop, drawing blood with a handmade iron tool and using the resulting blood-sugar reading, taken as a Type 1 diabetic, as the random seed for a generative visual design produced in real time.In 2023 Deafbeef made Noumenon and a companion series, Chronophotograph, in support of LACMA's Art and Technology Lab, responding to Eadweard Muybridge's motion studies.That November, as part of Bright Moments' Buenos Aires chapter, Deafbeef released Hashmarks, 100 hand-forged iron sculptures paired with cryptographically linked digital objects, which collectors travelled to collect from a boulder on the Patagonian steppe.,,For the 2025 group exhibition “Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms” at the Toledo Museum of Art, Deafbeef turned the 2021 NFT Glitchbox into a forged-iron sculpture fitted with knobs, dials and buttons that let visitors change its ASCII visuals and synth soundtrack.,,In 2026 Deafbeef showed works from Synth Poems paired with forged-iron oscilloscopes at “Zero 10”, Art Basel's digital art sector in Basel.
