Feral File is a curated NFT exhibition platform launched in March 2021 by Casey Reas, the artist and co-creator of the Processing programming language. Rather than running open auctions, Feral File commissions themed group and solo exhibitions of code-based and generative art, minting editions first on the Bitmark blockchain and later extending to Tezos and Ethereum.
One of its earliest exhibitions, “Social Codes”, offered ten artworks priced at $75 each in editions of 75, certified through the Bitmark Rights System. The show sold out so quickly that the site crashed, prompting a review by the writer Bruce Sterling in April 2021. Every artist showing in a Feral File group exhibition receives a free edition of each other participant's work, a structure Reas has said fosters a community of artists who collect one another. In September 2021 curator Pau Waelder organized the platform's fifth exhibition, “Instructions Follow”, a group show of twelve digital artists sold in editions of 75 for $75 that sold out within 40 seconds of opening. Feral File is built on a published Artist and Collector Rights framework granting artists resale royalties in perpetuity, and Waelder has said some artists earned more from resales than from an exhibition's original sale.
