Maya Man’s StarQuest, Now Open
Our first solo exhibition in the new Feral File chapter.
StarQuest by Maya Man, curated by Nora O’ Murchú, is now live on Feral File.
This is our first solo exhibition in this new chapter for Feral File, and we have put a lot into making this moment feel right for Maya and for the work.
We are hosting Maya’s artist walkthrough of the exhibition online now, please join us here.
About StarQuest
StarQuest sits at the intersection of AI video, generative code, and Maya’s own history as a competition dancer. It draws on the spectacle of Dance Moms and the culture around competitive dance, while looking at visibility, labor, control, and what it means to put your body and your story into an AI system at this scale.
As a technologist, I think Maya is working right at the edge of the questions society will have to face with AI. There is something haunting about this work for me. It is dark, and at times hard to look at, but I love it. It has changed the way I look at the world.
The work is built from 111 video scenes, each 8 seconds long. Every scene is AI generated, including the sound. Maya created them with extremely detailed text prompts, often generating dozens of candidates before selecting one for the final set.
Collect two or more scenes, and a generative episode powered by Maya’s custom built player automatically emerges from the scenes held at a single on-chain address. It shuffles your scenes in real time to create an endless, non-linear “reality show” built from the material you chose. There is no fixed beginning or final cut. The episode keeps unfolding out of your collection.
Pricing and bundle rebates
Each scene is priced at 0.22 ETH. If you build a larger collection of scenes in a single wallet, we apply manual rebates so your average price per scene never exceeds the best bundle level you reach:
3 scenes 0.55 ETH
5 scenes 0.88 ETH
11 scenes 1.88 ETH
25 scenes 4 ETH
For example, if you collect 4 scenes, we recalculate your total so you pay 0.73 ETH in total, using the 3-scene bundle rate across all 4 scenes.
Right now our system cannot apply these rebates automatically, so we process them by hand. If you qualify for a bundle rebate, we will refund the difference to the payment method you used, whether that is your crypto wallet or your credit card. We will process rebates weekly through December 1.
How to collect and support this chapter
If StarQuest connects with you, the most direct way to support this new chapter is to collect a set of scenes and build your own episode.
If collecting is not possible for you right now, but the project still resonates, there are still simple ways to help:
Share the show with someone who might care
Write a few lines about what the work makes you feel or think
Send me feedback about what you want Feral File to become in this next chapter
All of that helps more than it might seem from the outside.
This year Casey and I turned Feral File into a fully independent company. There is no outside parent anymore; Feral File is a small core team, our partners, and a community of people who keep showing up for this work.
Right now I am self funding the company, together with early exhibition revenue and the first FF1 art computers. It is intense and sometimes scary, but it feels right. I still believe there needs to be a serious, lasting home for computational art. Feral File is my attempt to build that place with Casey.
Maya was part of Social Codes, the very first exhibition we ever did on Feral File in 2021. That show helped set the tone for everything that followed. Bringing her back now for StarQuest, our first solo show as an independent company, feels very full circle.
Thank you for reading and for being part of this. It means a lot to me that people are still willing to focus attention on digital art in a deep way, even when markets are noisy or quiet. This is the kind of audience I want to build Feral File for.
> Sean (and the Feral File Team)
