One of the most expensive NFT artists ever, Pak, said in a cryptic tweet that he was really the Italian artist Federico Clapis. On July 30, all he did was write “I’m Pak.”
If true, the admission gives one of the most mysterious people in the NFT community a name and a face. Pak has been able to hide his identity so far by using software that changes his voice and the pronouns “they” and “them.” The Nothing is the name of their band.
The artist told Artnet News last year that he tries to keep his physical appearance separate from his work because he thinks that when people see a face, they automatically think of it when they hear a name. Instead, I’d rather have my works be remembered.
Clapis looks like a good competitor. Over the course of years, the Italian built up his social media following by making popular videos that were written anonymously and posted on several platforms. The artist’s website says that during this time, the artist was working “undercover.”
Through a comparable piece of guerilla online art, Pak first gained notoriety. In 2014, they introduced Archillect, an AI system that searches through social media accounts and broadcasts popular content on its own feed.
Around 2015, Clapis used his influencer status to launch a successful art career, creating first small sculptures and eventually life-size ones using 3-D scanning techniques. His pictures that make tech-related comments, such as the picture of a baby being hoisted by a drone, were transformed into NFTs in more recent years as he dabbled in the realm of digital art.
However, is he actually Pak?
“Tomorrow I will release a new piece that I have been working on for months,” Clapis hinted in a tweet the day before his “I’m Pak” post.
Pak then retweeted Clapis’ message, adding an emoji of a smiling face peering out from between clenched hands. They did so after also retweeting a tweet from Paris Hilton, who had earlier in March claimed to be Pak, and which had an emoji with a hand covering the mouth.
A slew of mysterious one- and two-word tweets followed, including “Me 2,” “Proof,” and an image of a cloud.
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