Alpha Centauri Kid, known as a.c.k. (b. 1986), is a self-taught digital artist and musician from San Antonio, Texas, whose glitch-inflected, story-driven work returns often to two recurring motifs: pianos and a guiding creative figure he calls the Muse. He began painting in oil as a child before moving to Photoshop and Cinema 4D, and worked a government job for fourteen years before becoming a full-time artist.
He discovered NFTs in March 2021 and that July released Last Orders!, a glitch-art collaboration with the artist XCOPY. That October his genesis piece ctrl + alt + generate sold on SuperRare for 165 ETH, prompting him to leave his job and commit to art full time. His work centers on a creative force he calls the Muse, which he first gave physical form in a four-panel, Warhol-inspired silkscreen that sold at Christie's for $107,100 in 2022. Piano imagery, rooted in his childhood piano lessons, runs through pieces such as his 48-work series The Broken Keys, made between 2021 and 2023 using Cinema 4D.
