2021

Ringers

1,000 unique works

Ringers begins with a simple question: how many ways can a string wrap around a set of pegs? Variations in peg count, scale, arrangement, wrapping direction, and color produce a thousand distinct compositions. Dense grids and spare outlines belong to the same system, as do forms that unexpectedly suggest bodies, creatures, and familiar objects.

Released on Art Blocks Curated on 31 January 2021, the collection brought several years of experimentation into one generative work. Each Ringer was created at the moment of minting from a unique transaction hash, using JavaScript running in the browser. Neither artist nor collector selected the final image in advance.

The series makes automation visible as a creative medium. Cherniak designed the rules and their limits; the individual outputs reveal possibilities within them. Looking across the collection is part of the work: its range becomes apparent through the relationships between images.

Released: 31 January 2021
Edition: 1,000 unique works
Platform: Art Blocks Curated
Medium: JavaScript

Explore Ringers on Art Blocks

1,000 unique works

The complete collection

1,000 variations

Explore the works in numerical order. Select any image for a closer look.

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From the series

Selected works

A black string wraps around a field of circular pegs, with one yellow peg. — Ringers #940, 2021.

Ringers #861, an algorithmic composition of strings and circular pegs. — Ringers #861, 2021.

Ringers #65, an algorithmic composition of strings and circular pegs. — Ringers #65, 2021.

The generative system

One algorithm, one thousand outcomes

Rather than selecting a handful of favorite results, Cherniak released the system’s output as a complete series. He had spent years developing the string-and-peg form, allowing unexpected results and even useful coding errors to inform its evolution. On Art Blocks, the code, the generation of each image, and its delivery to a collector became parts of one automated process.

Before release, he tested a full set of 1,000 on a test network to examine the distribution of traits. The public edition minted out in 18 minutes. Collectors then began arranging their own groups and grids, finding visual connections across the series. For Cherniak, the complete collection matters more than any one exceptional Ringer.

An extended foldout of On NFTs displays all 1,000 Ringers in a dense grid against a blue background. — All 1,000 Ringers in On NFTs, edited by Robert Alice (TASCHEN, 2024).

A set of pegs

How many possibilities?

A string can wrap around just two pegs, or a much larger selection. Even before deciding how to draw that string, choosing which pegs to use creates an enormous range of possibilities.

4 of 16 pegs selected

Select a peg to include or leave it out. Keep at least two selected. Solid outlines mark selected pegs; dotted outlines mark unused pegs.

4 × 4 grid · 16 pegs

65,519

possible peg selections

Each peg can be included or left out. Those choices multiply: 16 pegs give 2¹⁶ = 65,536 selections. Remove the empty selection and the 16 single-peg selections, and 65,519 remain.

Grid	Pegs	Selections
3 × 3	9	502
4 × 4	16	65,519
5 × 5	25	33,554,406
6 × 6	36	68,719,476,699

How the count works

2^N² − N² − 1

An N × N grid has N² pegs. Two choices for each peg give 2^N² subsets. Subtract the N² single-peg subsets and the one empty subset to count every selection containing two through N² pegs.

Peg positions are distinct: rotated or reflected selections are counted separately. This counts selections, not all possible string paths or distinct finished Ringers. The illustration uses the Weave wrapping method; the original artwork applies its own selection and drawing rules.

The Rinkeby Sessions

Staging and production

Before the main Ethereum release, a complete set of 1,000 Ringers was generated on Rinkeby, Ethereum’s test network. The set brought software’s distinction between staging and production into the work: a test environment could produce a complete body of images worth experiencing in its own right.

Prints from The Rinkeby Sessions were offered at launch as another way to participate for people who did not want to mint Ringers, or were unable to. The masterprint brings all 1,000 works from the test-network set together.

The complete Rinkeby set of 1,000 Ringers, arranged in a forty-column grid of varied strings and pegs. — Ringers: The Rinkeby Sessions. All 1,000 test-network works in the masterprint.

Ringers #879

The Goose: an unexpected image

Ringers #879 became known as “The Goose” because viewers recognized a bird in its arrangement of pegs, curves, and yellow fields. It was generated by the same rules as the other 999 works. The resemblance was an unplanned result of the system, giving a geometric abstraction a shared identity through the act of looking.

The work was held in the collection associated with Three Arrows Capital before the fund’s collapse. It returned to market in Sotheby’s Grails: Property from an Iconic Digital Art Collection Part II in New York on 15 June 2023, as works from the collection were sold during the liquidation.

The auction brought wider attention to a defining quality of generative art: a carefully authored system can produce a specific image that surprises its own maker. The Goose’s recognition grew from both that unexpected result and the community that gave it a name.

The Goose also entered popular culture: it was parodied in “Wild Barts Can’t Be Token,” the NFT-themed segment of The Simpsons’ 2023 Halloween special, Treehouse of Horror XXXIV. A purple version of the bird appears alongside Marge in the episode’s world of digital collectibles.

Ringers #879 (The Goose), 2021.

View on Art Blocks

Dmitri Cherniak holds a framed print of Ringers #879 beside a white goose against a yellow studio backdrop. — Dmitri Cherniak with The Goose and a live goose. Courtesy of Avant Arte.

The framed Goose hangs behind the auctioneer during a Sotheby’s auction, with the audience in the foreground. — The Goose at auction at Sotheby’s. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Marge Simpson stands beside a purple parody of The Goose in the NFT-themed Halloween episode. — The Goose parodied in The Simpsons, “Treehouse of Horror XXXIV” (2023).

In print

Ringers in On NFTs

TASCHEN’s On NFTs, edited by Robert Alice and first published in 2024, places Ringers within a wider history of art made and circulated on blockchains. Kate Hannah’s profile of Cherniak describes automation as the central medium of his practice: software is used to create work capable of eliciting the emotional responses associated with art made by hand.

Her account follows the relationship between a deliberately simple premise and its varied results. Peg counts, backgrounds, wrapping styles, bullseyes, and recursive grids give the series its vocabulary. Each work emerged on demand when purchased, with the result revealed to artist and collector together.

Hannah also emphasizes the collector’s role as curator. Grouping Ringers and sharing those arrangements became a way to compare the images, tell stories, and understand an individual work within the thousand-piece whole. The book’s foldout makes that relationship tangible, bringing the entire collection together on paper.

The accompanying spread places Ringers alongside Dead Ringers, connecting the original collection to Cherniak’s later exploration of circulation, scarcity, and inaccessible artworks.

Kate Hannah’s profile of Dmitri Cherniak in On NFTs (TASCHEN, 2024), with Ringers and Dead Ringers.

Publication: On NFTs
Editor: Robert Alice
Profile: Kate Hannah
Publisher: TASCHEN
First published: 2024

Beyond the original release

From the browser to the museum

As of 2026, all 1,000 Ringers have been displayed in a museum setting.

Ringers #182 (2021) is held in the collection of ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. The museum records the work as a generative algorithm, an on-chain NFT on Ethereum, and a digital image. In 2021, Ringers appeared on ZKM’s outdoor Cube screen in CryptoArt: It’s Not About Money.

In February 2023, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced Ringers #962 as a promised gift from the Cozomo de’ Medici Collection. The museum’s account places Cherniak’s work within its history of art and technology, describing the shaping of an algorithm as an artist’s distinctive touch.

Ringers has also become a basis for physical display, public participation, and live software. At the Toledo Museum of Art’s Infinite Images in 2025, a selection of twenty-five Ringers appeared alongside visitor activities that explored the system’s rules. Ringers in Motion subsequently extended the visual language into an evolving installation at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2026.

Collection: Ringers #182, ZKM Karlsruhe
2021: CryptoArt, ZKM Karlsruhe
2023: Ringers #962 announced at LACMA
2025: Infinite Images, Toledo Museum of Art
2026: Ringers in Motion, Tel Aviv Museum of Art

On paper

Printed editions

The print register records which numbered works or editions have been made as physical prints. These numbers identify the associated digital editions; they do not indicate how many copies of each were printed.

193 of 1,000 listed as printed

View printed edition numbers

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View the print register

Shown at

Exhibitions

Ringers in Motion2026 · Tel Aviv Museum of Art · Museum
Art Basel Miami Beach2025 · AOTM · Zero 10, Miami Beach · Fair
Infinite Images2025 · Toledo Museum of Art · Museum · Twenty-five Ringers
The Digital2021 · Miami Beach, Florida · Group · Four Ringers
Right Click + Save2021 · Le Freeport · Singapore · Group · Nine Ringers
Exhibition #0: Genesis2021 · Art Blocks Gallery, Marfa · Group · Ringers #0
CryptoArt2021 · ZKM Karlsruhe · Museum