Tell us how you were chosen for the grand event as the launch of Olta. How do you feel about being one of the first artists to kick off a cutting edge NFT platform?
I’m always looking for new platforms, playgrounds and rising technology to immerse myself in and experiment with. I came across Olta a few years ago and thought to myself “this is really progressive.” At the time, they were working on a digital festival with interactive art that you can experience online. This was prior to Covid and the Metaverse, and I had already been drawn to creating digital experiences that I could link to real world experiences so that my audience could explore both. Being in experiential space for a good amount of time, it felt right to reach out to them to get involved. I wanted to work with them, but it was all about timing and making sense of an experience to share through the platform.
Fast forward to 2021 post-covid lockdown and the popularization of NFTs, a more refined version of the OLTA platform had entered a beta stage and the team reached out to onboard me as one of the selected artists for the roll out alongside a few others I had been following on social media for years. I immediately said yes because I saw the potential of the platform, and how it is creating space and a roadmap to the future for experiential artists and coders.
It definitely feels good to know that my work stands out enough to be noticed by a team equipped with the knowledge and resources to build such a platform, and it feels even better to know that I get to create a vehicle to drive in this space for those that want access to these type of experiences as we approach Web3.
We would love to know more about your body of work and what it means for you to have your art on the blockchain. Tell us what your aesthetic is defined as.
The body of work is showcased as an artistic exploration of interactive Time Crystals using WebGL resources. When interacting with the scene, the viewer will visualize a looping cycle of luminous objects, which sustains whether the viewer chooses to interact or not. Perspectives and camera angles can be altered as shards and blends of light peak through at the viewer.
I try to feature light in all of my work to some degree, because it takes light to discover. I wanted to try to recreate the feeling of anemoia, or nostalgia for an unknown time with this piece. I like the idea of extending beyond what we know as possible and impossible, so I always find interest in new discoveries and theories that break the codes to things that suffice.
I was more than happy to share this as my first “living” art piece and interactive NFT on the blockchain because for quite some time now, I’ve had a high interest in “living” art as an experiential artist and futurist. It’s nice to be able to see and keep track of all of the spaces and places your art travels to but best of all, it’s nice to know that this work can loop forever.
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So, your work for the launch of OLTA is titled Edge Light, which takes a look at an artistic exploration of interactive Time Crystals. Can you tell us more about how this design came to be?
Edge Light is inspired by and transpires from the discovery of Time Crystals, or a new type of matter, which resembles properties similar to that of a perpetual motion machine. In layman’s terms, its parts can cycle forever without the requirement of energy input. So, if you can imagine a traffic or street light looping at its timed intervals without energy, then you’ll have a better understanding of how it works. Its parts move in a normal repeating cycle and sustains this constant change, all while expending zero energy. This body runs off of its own stream.
Because the concept of a Perpetual Motion Machine was rendered impossible before Time Crystals, as it would override certain laws of thermodynamics, I wanted to experiment with post-processing effects (e.g. aberration, etc.) in this body of work to display a deviation from what is normal, usual, or expected. From this train of thought, I imagined crystal-like objects intertwining through a blurred screen creating a dreamy ever-lasting loop. Since these crystals are a new discovery and there’s still much to learn about them and prove, I leave it up to the viewer’s perception to determine how close they want to be to this reality as they zoom in and out of the scene.
When it comes to creating art for the modality of NFTs, what do you have to take into consideration? Is there a specific framework you have to adhere to or do you create and then refine after?
Well, “use-case” has been a recurring phrase as a part of my creative process. As for any technology I use to create art, I first like to think about the point of interest or a topic that draws me into wanting to produce a concept. In this case, Time Crystals i.e. the functionality of them and how they exist in both a stable and ever-changing state.
Additionally, the idea that these Crystals can produce an ever-lasting cycle with no energy input consequently leads me to think about more eco-friendly alternatives to NFTs and future plans for the ecosystems we are a part of, and I’d like to help push towards the milestones in completing those goals. Because of this, the Olta platform makes the most sense for this NFT release as it has resources that enable version updates and is built using Zora Protocols.
Though sometimes I do enjoy just jumping right in and creating from feeling and refining things later, I try to keep priority space for utility and intent when it comes to the artistic developments. At the same time though, I don’t want to hinder or block myself from creating.
Considering the nature of NFTs & the ongoing advancement of technology, what is the potential for immersion of the senses? What is the future like for NFTs and how immersive their experiences can be for the viewers and artists? How will you prepare your own craft for the ever changing digital future?
What excites me most about this space is the idea of downloading things directly from the real world as more augmented devices like smart glasses (and better smartphones) continue to hit the market. I think there’s a major opportunity for interactive NFTs living on our smartphone lock-screens, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a phone company announces this feature in the future. Even the idea of augmented sound, or sound that only exists and plays in a specific geo-location is an interesting way of exploring senses in this space. Sound bites are like the new hashtags, and people search for them to explore the content that is created with them so I can definitely see sound bite NFTs becoming a more trendy area of exploration. Augmented listening parties could become a thing, as musicians roll out their music but want their fans to be able to immerse themselves in the music all over the world as a collective experience. Imagine a hidden tracklist or bonus tracks from an album that you can only hear if you go to a specific geo-location.
We could also potentially see things like “sense upgrades”. This could go in multiple directions, whether that’s purchasing sensibility or characteristics for the NFTs we own such as avatars, digital animals, robots, etc. to be able to function accordingly in real-time scenarios and react to real-world influences, as things begin to layer over the real world through augmented reality, or being able to download samples directly from advertisements such as garments, and scents in the Metaverse. Subscription based models and trials could even translate pretty well to this space, considering now we have smart contracts, although I’m not a fan of expensive subscription models.
Luckily, the Metaverse and NFTs make a lot of sense for experiential artists and designers to dip their feet in, as we are already accustomed to transforming spaces and creating digital experiences in physical spaces. Now, there is an extremely high potential for the duality of not only our identities, but our artworks as well to exist simultaneously in both the physical and digital where the engagement and interactions can benefit both versions.
