VOICES OF WEB3 – THE ARCHIVE
VOICES OF WEB3 – THE ARCHIVE 2023
VOICES OF WEB3 is an archive of voices and statements summarising the year 2023 in digital art and culture. It is a document in time on the blockchain, bringing together some of the leading voices shaping Web3 and the history of digital art: artists, curators, and collectors.
VOICE GEMS
The statements have been recorded in the form of spoken word, poems, and songs by the participants and are frozen in time as VOICE GEMS on the blockchain. The VOICE GEMS were created by Harry Yeff (Reeps100) and Trung Bao, who have developed a voice-centred generative system utilizing data found in a human voice to synthesise the form and colour of the artwork.
Every voice is unique, and with that comes unique fingerprint-like data. Features like pitch, resonance, harmonics, and pace sculpt particle data points in a simulated digital space.
The NFTs will be available in editions of 3 + 1 AP for 200 EUR (excl. VAT) each.
The first VOICE GEM was created in 2018 from the laughter between two lovers and was used in place of a diamond engagement ring. Since 2021, contributors to the vocal archive include Ai Weiwei, Dr. Jane Goodall , Will.i.am, Sougwen Chung, Reggie Watts, Kenny Schachter, and Lily Cole.
In 2021, Herbert W. Franke and Harry Yeff started a conversation about the concept of VOICE GEMS and an audio-visual collaboration. Franke suggested using the lyrics of ASTROPOETICON because they are a minimalist and associative approach to language that could have been created by an AI. VOICE GEMS ASTROPOETICON (DESTINATION IN UNCERTAINTY) has been released as an OPEN EDITION on the occasion of Herbert W. Franke's solo exhibition at EXPANDED.ART in the spring of 2023.
The VOICE GEMS ASTROPOETICON (DESTINATION IN UNCERTAINTY) is shown on the left side.
Reeps100 and Trung Bao are two of the world's leading vocal experimentalists today, both utilising an almost inhuman vocal range.
As artists, they have collected hundreds of vocal techniques from around the world, which informs their knowledge and deep appreciation of the incredible nuance that VOICE GEMS capture.
INTERVIEW
Read More"Your voice is your indentity."
– VOICE GEMS
NOW LIVE
CHRISTIAN BÖK
Christian Bök is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and he is the author of EUNOIA, a bestseller that has won the Griffin Poetry Prize.
KALOKAGATHIA
"stars are bubbles of air
rising through an infinite
depth: we rise with them
through this dark, slow
motion snowfall in reverse
sleep through our ascent
bound at wrist and ankle
by the chains from silver
watches, anchors without
weight: even as we dream
we hold our breath against
the moment when we crash
up through the surface
tension, as though through
a sheet of glass, into still
another depth with other
stars, the fragments of our
last collision in our wake
eyes shut tight, and every
mouth a photo of a scream"
– Christian Bök
LEARN MORE AND COLLECT THE VOICE GEM FROM CHRISTIAN BÖK SOON.
ANA MARÍA CABALLERO
Ana María Caballero is a first-generation Colombian-American poet and artist. Her work explores how biology delimits societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil off romanticised motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue.
She is the recipient of the Beverly International Prize, Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, and a Sevens Foundation Grant, and has been a finalist for seven additional literary prizes. Her Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net-nominated work has been widely published and exhibited internationally, recently at bitforms in New York, Gazelli Art House and UNIT in London, Nighttimestory and Epoch Gallery in Los Angeles, and L’Avant Galerie Vossen in Paris.
She became the first artist to sell a poem at a live auction in Spain, and her digital poems are held in both public and private collections, including the Museum of Nordic Digital Art, the Museum of Wild Newfangled Art, and the Tezos Foundation Permanent Collection.
"Web3 affords poets the ability to transact digital poems in ways that adequately reflect our contribution to culture for what may be the first time in history, reasserting poetry’s agency, broadening how verse is experienced, and creating fresh opportunities for poems to be curated, exhibited, and collected as art.
I believe digital provenance will prove revolutionary for poets.
poem = work of art"
– Ana María Caballero
LEARN MORE AND COLLECT THE VOICE GEM FROM ANA MARÍA CABALLERO.
INTERVIEW
Read MoreI often say poetry had a logistical problem—it wasn’t easy to transact a poem in a way that reflected its value. Blockchain provenance solves this problem, opening a seat at the art world table for digital poetry that I believe will prove revolutionary.
– Ana María Caballero
CRASHBLOSSOM
James Bloom (crashblossom) is a London-based artist whose work combines conceptual digital abstraction with original innovations in blockchain code. Working with the dopamine-triggering colours and movements of computer games and market interfaces, he creates distorted digital images that examine themes around the fetishization of technology, the splintering of identity in digital worlds, and the influence of network systems on society.
His dynamic crypto art series BURNER explores the idea of constant impermanence and the disappearance of the current moment due to the flow of new information within media and financial networks. His GOLD series engages critically with the NFT art market by dynamically changing the artworks according to collectors' on-chain market activity.
He has had an abstract practice for over a decade, exhibiting at Galerie Kornfeld, EXPANDED.ART, Art Basel, and Sotheby’s New York. His films have been shown at the Berlin and Edinburgh film festivals. He is also a Creative Director, creating films and interactive experiences for leading brands and being awarded at D&AD, One Show, and Cannes Lions.
"I lost someone I loved to suicide
She had debts she couldn’t repay
And a social media image she couldn’t live up to
These weren’t the only reasons she took her life
But I know they weighed on her
Many of us are in dependent relationships to power structures not designed for our benefit
The credit and debt system is inequitable
Social media giants farm the content of our lives
We need more equitable networks, social and financial
Better systems already exist, where people are benefiting more from what they bring to the world
These new systems are empowering people practically and emotionally
I’ve been lucky to find blockchains, and to make art on them
These networks have enabled my art to be appreciated around the world
My hope is for more people to be empowered by these networks
For greater individual fulfillment and happiness"
– Crashblossom
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE VOICE GEM FROM CRASHBLOSSOM.
INTERVIEW
Read More"Blockchains have the potential to transform the world, for good and for bad. Many look to blockchains to fulfil their personal financial dreams, so it’s no surprise if we unconsciously deify Ethereum."
– Crashblossom
STERLING CRISPIN
Sterling Crispin is a conceptual artist and software engineer who creates smart contracts, generative art, machine intelligence, and techno-sculpture. Crispin’s artwork oscillates between the computational beauty of nature and our conflicting cultural narratives about the apocalypse.
Crispin’s artwork has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including the ZKM Karlsruhe, The Mexican National Center for the Arts, The Seoul Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, The Deutsches Hygiene Museum Dresden, and the Venice Biennale. As well as published in The New York Times, Frieze, Wired, MIT Press, BOMB, Rhizome, ARTNews, and Art in America.
"The trouble with translating sound, or any data, into artwork is in the tension between science and poetics. Too much science, and you're doing simple data visualization. Too much poetics, and the resulting art loses its relationship to the data."
– Sterling Crispin
LEARN MORE AND COLLECT THE VOICE GEM FROM STERLING CRISPIN.
DIANE DRUBAY
Diane Drubay has been working towards the transformation of museums and the arts internationally since 2007 as a strategist, curator, event producer, public speaker, trainer, and mentor. As founder of We Are Museums, an innovation lab for museums, she focuses on the Web3-oriented new program called WAC-Lab.
Among other Web3 projects, she gained her expertise by initiating and executing the art vertical strategy of the Tezos blockchain through TZ Connect, the Tezos hub in Berlin.
Drubay is also a multimedia artist, pushing for ecological awareness and curating environmental art.
"I feel so lucky. It is not every day that we can experience the birth of a new era in the art world. Thanks to Web3, digital art now sparks excitement and wonder, breathing life into the art industry. Once hidden and not really understood, digital art now thrives. Globally, artists unite and support each other through art collecting. With a good mix of fun, meaning, and innovation, they celebrate and care on a daily basis.
Digital art curators enjoy a newfound freedom and are blooming in their field. Museums finally start to embrace digital art, bridging the physical and virtual realms. But it's important to remember that the preservation of digital art is still at stake, and we should support the many who are working on it.
Here and Now, I believe we can create a future where digital art knows no boundaries and leaves a lasting impact for generations to come. So let’s not forget what we learned and lived together and cherish it for the years to come, even in the middle of winter."
– Diane Drubay
BRIAN L. FRYE
Brian L. Frye is the Dogecoin Professor of Law & Grifting at the University of Kentucky College of Law. He is a securities artist and conceptual lawyer. His scholarship focuses on copyright, art law and legal history, amongst other things. He is also a conceptual artist.
Professor Frye is also a filmmaker. He produced the documentary OUR NIXON (2013), which was broadcast by CNN and opened theatrically nationwide. His short films and videos have shown in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, the New York Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Film Festival, among other venues, and are in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. His critical writing on film and art has appeared in October, The New Republic, Film Comment, Cineaste, Senses of Cinema, and Incite! among other journals.
Additionally, Professor Frye also produces a podcast, IPSE DIXIT.
"I’m Brian L. Frye, Dogecoin Professor of Law and Grifting at the University of Kentucky College of Law. As a securities artist and conceptual lawyer, I’m fascinated by NFTs and the NFT market because they show us the economic reality of the art market and force us to reckon with it. The art market has always been a securities market, in which artists sell ledger entries represented by dirty pieces of cloth and lumpy rocks. The NFT market just makes it obvious by eliminating physical tokens and enabling direct transactions in ledger entries.
So NFTs are uncanny tokens, showing us how unfamiliar the art market has always actually been. And I love it."
– Brian L. Frye
LEARN MORE AND COLLECT THE VOICE GEM FROM BRIAN L. FRYE.
LAURENCE FULLER
Taking inspiration from his late father, the art critic Peter Fuller, having worked in the art world since youth and as an award-winning writer, Laurence brings his passion for poetry, fine art, and performance to his poetic NFT collaborations. He utilises cutting-edge technology and AI to create cinematic art.
Fuller is best known for his lead roles in the feature films ROAD TO THE WELL, APOSTLE PETER & THE LAST SUPPER, and PAINT IT RED. He also portrayed the role of iconic British painter David Hockney in the new HBO Max series MINX.
"The sun did fall,
A myth of love hid amongst the wreckage.
Watching over it all,
A snow owl soared above,
He saw a ring of smoldering hot ash,
Which burned a hole in the garden,
Though there was beneath the seed of a fig,
A delicacy for happy pigs,
Planted some time ago,
Found by the banks of a river.
Buried in earth,
Pulsating tenebrous glow,
Its blood rose up to the surface.
Where hummingbirds swarmed like locusts,
And an army of fauns pounded their fists.
The sky itself had traveled the world in a day just to witness,
Steam that swelled into a storm. 🥀🔥"
– Laurence Fuller
LEARN MORE AND COLLECT THE VOICE GEM FROM LAURENCE FULLER.
CLAUDIA HART
Claudia Hart leverages simulation technologies to collapse the false binaries between human and avatar, artificial and real, mind and body. With a background in architecture and writing, Hart emerged in the 1990s as part of a generation of multimedia artists exploring issues of identity and representation. Drawing on computing, virtual imaging, and 3D animation technologies, Hart weaves together topics from art history, philosophy, and cultural studies to explore themes of feminism, embodiment, and temporality through symbolic poetics that stitch onto real-world politics.
Her work is held in the collections of numerous museums and institutions, including The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the National Gallery, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, the Albertina Museum, Vienna, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Vera List Center Collection, the New York Public Library, and various private collections.
Hart is represented by bitforms gallery, Annka Kultys Gallery, and EXPANDED.ART.
"Syllogism and paradox have been the basis of my text-based work since my first exhibition, when I was in my twenties. And in fact, my feelings about the blockchain and Web3 are that the best things about them are also the worst things. I love that these structures embody the ephemeral and are not permanent, even when that impermanence was not intended.
So here is a blockchain syllogism that I wrote for my VOICE GEM about this:
DIGITAL ART IS NOT ARCHIVAL. THE BLOCKCHAIN IS DIGITAL. THE BLOCKCHAIN IS NOT ARCHIVAL."
– Claudia Hart
INTERVIEW
Read More"What seems to be shared in this digital culture is the impulse to reinvent art from scratch. I did not feel this in any way. In fact, it was my mission to do the opposite. I wanted to expand contemporary art, and my mission was to connect the past to the present. To connect the dots."
– Claudia Hart
JENNIFER & KEVIN MCCOY
Jennifer & Kevin McCoy are New York-based digital media artists whose works extend from film and video to installation and generative software that uses blockchain technology to create long-term ecosystems for images to live, die, and evolve.
The McCoys’ work has been featured in exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, MoMA, the British Film Institute, and the Sundance Film Festival and is held in the collections of MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In 2014, Kevin McCoy minted the world’s first digital art NFT.
Raina Marie
Raina Marie is a curator, collector, producer, and writer. She has been working at Pace Gallery for 11 years and currently holds the position of Director, serving as an artist liaison to Pace’s interdisciplinary artists.
She received a master's in art history at Hunter College in New York. She has curated shows in physical and digital spaces, working in AR, VR, and the metaverse, showing work by contemporary and important but underknown artists.
She is a published writer, currently contributing articles for Whitehot Magazine and Sculpture Magazine, and speaks globally about art history, time-based media, digital and software-based art, and the Web3 space.
Her work explores themes relating to social-political issues, identity, the environment, and the role technology plays in the 21st century, commenting on the impact algorithms have on our lives and asking who really has control.
ANIKA MEIER
Anika Meier is a writer and curator specializing in digital art. She writes a column for the German art magazine Kunstforum titled STATUS UPDATE about the developments around the topic of NFTs in the field of art. Among others, she worked with CIRCA and Tezos on Marina Abramović‘s first NFT Drop, and with Herbert W. Franke on his NFT Drop MATH ART on Quantum. She‘s on the curation board of Art Blocks and on the advisory board of Haus der Elektronischen Künste in Basel.
Her curated exhibitions include LeeMullican.PCX at FeralFile, Who Is Online? Game Art in the Age of Post-NFTism at HEK Basel (Virtual), Art NFT Linz at Francisco Carolinum in Linz, and Tribute to Herbert W. Franke. In 2022, she created the project UNSIGNED together with Operator: a collection on the Tezos blockchain of 100 signatures from women and non-binary artists to reverse the current negative value of the signatures through their transformation into artworks themselves.
Her exhibitions have been written about and her writing has been published in, among others, artnet, Hyperallergic, Monopol, Kunstforum, Spiegel, Tagesschau, and Right Click Save.
MARJAN MOGHADDAM
Marjan Moghaddam is an award-winning digital artist known for her unique style of figuration and animation in 3D CG and critical discourse. She has exhibited her AR art at the Smithsonian Institution, other museums, and as public art internationally.
Hailed as a "trailblazer" in digital art, the "Digital Hijacker," and "the definition of digital fine arts" by the press, her influential #arthacks made Forbes’ Best of AR Art list in 2019. She was Adobe’s AR Artist-in-Residence and is in the BBC documentary WHEN ART GOES DIGITAL.
Notable exhibitions include a solo show at MOCDA, Proof of Art at the Francisco Carolinum, Unit London, and solo shows at Annka Kultys Gallery and Gazelli Art House. Her work is in institutional and DAO collections. She was the winner of the first edition of the Arab Bank Switzerland NFT Art Prize.
"2023 was the year of expansion and greater adoption in terms of NFTs and Web3. A lot of the feeding frenzy in terms of sales subsided because of crypto winter, but many more artists and collectors were onboarded. AI-creative content proliferated in social feeds and NFTs on a much greater level, raising concerns and controversies around data provenance, IP, and the nature of artistic capital. Digital Art was better embraced by institutions and galleries, finally receiving much of the legitimacy that it had lacked for decades. And also, I think most importantly, the philosophical, sociopolitical, and cultural aspects of the crypto and defi movement came to be embraced by many more people as a legitimate resistance front against the censorship industrial complex, CBDCs, and the dreaded encroaching social rating system."
– Marjan Moghaddam
SKYE NICOLAS
Post-conceptual artist Skye Nicolas blends amalgamations of vivid imagery with familiarity and the skewing of timelines through appropriation. He investigates the role of memory in the post-internet age through intimate conversation and hidden dialogue. The complex interweaving of a conceptually layered armature and a visually poetic distillation process inspires the creation of works that feature a recurring theme that he refers to as Induced Nostalgia.
As co-founder of the art collective Organic Material, he has created work for the collective’s collaborative project, Event Horizon, which debuted during the first Art NFT Linz festival at the Francisco Carolinum in Linz, UNESCO City of Media Arts. The work has been added to the museum’s permanent collection.
"In a vast expanse of ones and zeros, we find fertile ground for collaboration and inspiration. Artists and thinkers converge, forming the interconnected fibers of this Web3 tapestry. But let us not forget that its true essence is not found in the perfection of algorithms but in the imperfections of the human spirit. Whether we are blanketed in nostalgia or overzealously chasing the horizon of an unknown future, it is our humanity that sets us apart from the sterile sea of digital conformity. May our voices, our creativity, and our ever-curious minds find ways to transcend the machine-like limitations imposed in this technological age."
– Skye Nicolas
INTERVIEW
Read More"Art is a conversation between the past, present, and future. If you have something substantial to add to the conversation, you will be part of that greater conversation."
– Skye Nicolas
OONA
OONA is an anonymous conceptual artist whose practice explores the intersections of technology, finance, gender, and identity. Through moving images and performance art, OONA exposes the collision between progressive technologies and socially regressive ideas, offering a critical perspective on the contemporary cultural landscape.
Born on November 1, 2021, in the Holy See, OONA has performed and exhibited internationally at venues including Art Basel Miami, The Metropolitan Museum of New York, Proof of People London, Proof of People New York, Vellum Los Angeles, and Avalanche Summit Barcelona.
OONA's performances and exhibitions have garnered critical acclaim and attention from collectors and curators. She has been featured in numerous publications, and her work is held in private and public collections.
"Sometimes
Founding Questions of the OONAVERSE
I fucking hate this industry
1. How do we measure progress: in technology or ways of seeing? Its strife with mediocre ambition
2. Which is the container for–identity–the physical, the mental, or the cybernetic? Sometimes I think that there is nothing new here and we are lying to ourselves thinking that we are discovering something new
3. What is power? Sometimes I laugh
4. What is pleasure? Sometimes my entire practice goes over their fucking heads
5. What is good art?"
– OONA
INTERVIEW
Read More"There are countless examples of non-male artists' works being forgotten, erased, or misattributed. As a public ledger, blockchain is a permanent solution.
OONA enjoys using it as its own medium to ask questions about the value of women’s artwork, gender, and its relationship to speculation."
– OONA
OPERATOR
Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti are an award-winning experiential artist duo who founded their collaborative art practice, known as Operator, in 2016. Referred to as "the two critical contemporary voices on digital art’s international stages" (Clot Magazine) and "LGBT power couple" (Flaunt), their expertises collide in large scale conceptual works recognizable for their poetic approach to technology.
Ti’s background as an immersive artist and human-computer interaction technologist and Catherine’s as a choreographer and performance artist make for a uniquely medium non-allegiant output, bringing together environments, technology, and the body. For their most recent work, HUMAN UNREADABLE, the artists developed an on-chain generative choreography method.
Operator has been awarded The Lumen Prize (Immersive Environments), the ADC Award (Gold Cube), the S+T+ARTS Prize (Honorary Mention), and MediaFutures (EU Commission program).
They’ve spoken and appeared in BBC Click, Bloomberg ART+TECHNOLOGY, Christie’s Art+Tech Summit, SCAD Museum of Art, MIT Open Doc Lab, Ars Electronica, Art Basel, CADAF, MoCDA, Universität für Angewandte Kunst Vienna, Francisco Carolinum Linz, and ZKM Karlsruhe.
Ti and Catherine are originally from Los Angeles and are currently based in Madrid.
"Regarding art? Say no to tech demos, say no to spectacle. Regarding everything else? Novel technology has always come with promises. Is it still a promise?"
– Dejha Ti
"finding a way to flourish and involve more people
while also allowing people to be more present in their physical bodies
while still working, thinking, breathing, feeling and creating
with technology"
– Ania Catherine
LEARN MORE AND COLLECT THE VOICE GEM FROM OPERATOR.
SUSANNE PÄCH
Dr. Susanne Päch is a German journalist and media expert. She holds a PhD in the history of science and communication. She is the owner and managing director of mce mediacomeurope GmbH, a consulting company in the field of content and multimedia. The company also operates an independent TV station called HYPERRAUM.TV focusing on science and technology.
Her husband is Herbert W. Franke (1927–2022), a pioneer of computer art, a mastermind of the metaverse, and a pioneering German postwar science fiction writer. She is the Director of art meets science – Foundation Herbert W. Franke and curated the Tribute to Herbert W. Franke together with Anika Meier.
"Web3 is not an invention of the 21st century. AI, man-machine interface, metaverse—it sounds so new. But the roots of the topic go back many decades.
I want to give two examples: Joseph Weizenbaum's Eliza chat program from the 1960s. It is considered the prototype of today's chatbots.
My second example goes to Herbert W. Franke: He published reflections about human-machine cooperation in the arts and in society already in the 1950s. And he also reflected on the ambivalence of virtual reality.
So look to the pioneers and their thoughts. You might still find interesting new ideas in their work."
– Susanne Päch
LEARN MORE AND COLLECT THE VOICE GEM FROM SUSANNE PÄCH
INTERVIEW
Read More"Herbert W. Franke and I reached out to Harry Yeff because we were fascinated by the visualization of spoken words in a crystal structure. It’s important to know that Herbert loved the beauty of nature and its structures. He was a collector of gems like crystals, stones, and stalagmites. So you can imagine that being able to see spoken words frozen in a gemstone was very intriguing for Herbert."
– Susanne Päch
ANNE SPALTER
Anne Spalter is a leading digital artist, creating dystopian landscapes with AI and other technological tools. She has been actively working in digital art for decades; she established the first digital fine arts courses at Brown University and RISD during the 1990s and wrote THE COMPUTER IN THE VISUAL ARTS, which is used internationally. Together with Michael Spalter, she oversees Spalter Digital, one of the largest private collections of early computer art.
In 2022, Spalter was part of MASS MoCA's alumni residency, named one of the 50 most important crypto artists by Rizzoli, participated in the SPRING/BREAK Art Show NYC and the CADAF Art Fair; and released RABBIT TAKEOVER, an NFT project that sold out in five minutes. Her 20-minute NFT video piece, THE BELL MACHINE, was acquired by the Buffalo AKG Museum in December 2022.
"Web3 is an evolving stage that is reshaping our understanding of art in profound ways. Just as Modernism ushered in a shift from representation to abstraction, Web3 is shifting art from the physical to the digital, from the centralized to the decentralized.
However, the decentralized ethos of Web3 comes with its own set of challenges. Security vulnerabilities, along with the market's reliance on volatile cryptocurrencies, create an unstable foundation that could end up undermining its claims to authenticity and longevity.
The marketplace for art bought and sold as NFTs boomed in 2021 but is mostly sluggish today. Although a few standout sales continue to make the news, most artist’s markets remain much lower and slower than last year.
While the economics remain unknown, Web3 has undoubtedly brought new approaches to artmaking. Much as the Renaissance redefined art through perspective, so too could Web3 redefine it through decentralization. The road is filled with challenges, but the potential for an innovative, inclusive, and egalitarian Web3 art community still fills me with hope and excitement for the future."
– Anne Spalter
LEARN MORE AND COLLECT THE VOICE GEM FROM ANNE SPALTER.
INTERVIEW
Read More"I’ve always been a technological optimist. As part of stewarding Spalter Digital since the early 1990s, I’ve had to combat the knee-jerk reaction of many in the art world that the computer somehow usurps artistic agency from human beings."
– Anne Spalter
TSCHUUULY (JULIA STAUDACH)
Tschuuuly (Julia Staudach) is a digital artist and collector living and working in Vienna. She studied digital arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna from 2004 to 2009. She is a founding member of CryptoWiener.
Since July 2023, she has been the curator for contemporary art at the Digital Francisco Carolinum in Linz, the UNESCO City of Media Arts.
"We are still early; this technology poses so many possibilities that we have just begun to explore its potential. I am looking forward to seeing more playful conceptual artworks beyond tokenizing JPEGs and GIFs.
What makes the NFT space so special is the community building taking place. Valuable connections are being made, projects evolve, and the creative energy unleashed is mind-blowing. Even though we see a lot of toxicity and greed-driven behaviour, the majority of interactions are valuable and fruitful.
So let’s see what we can come up with in the future. The fact is, we are in this together, and we have the chance to revolutionize the art world."
– Tschuuuly (Julia Staudach)
LEARN MORE AND COLLECT THE NFT FROM TCHUUULY (JULIA STAUDACH).
SASHA STILES
Sasha Stiles is a first-generation Kalmyk-American poet, literary artist, AI researcher, and author of the "instant techno-classic" Technelegy, as well as co-founder of theVERSEverse. Recognized as a pioneer of algorithmic authorship, blockchain poetics, and publishing innovation, Stiles became the first writer to bring AI-powered literature to a major auction house when her poem, "COMPLETION: When it’s just you," sold at Christie’s in 2022.
Recent honors include a Future Art Award, nominations for the Forward Prize, Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net, and finalist status for the Christopher Smart Prize and Palette Emerging Poet Prize. Stiles has recently spoken at Art Basel, The Brooklyn Museum, SXSW, Digilogue Istanbul, the Ai4 Summit, AWP, and Miami Art Week, and has exhibited widely at both analog and virtual venues around the globe, from New York to London to Dubai to Tokyo.
A graduate of Harvard and Oxford, Stiles has served as Poetry Mentor to the humanoid android BINA48 since 2018, and lives near New York City with her husband and studio partner, Kris Bones.
"I’ve long believed that poetry is the original blockchain, an ancient, enduring data storage system. And so I arrived in Web3 organically, perhaps inevitably, recognizing it as the ideal printing press for my hybrid poetics and philosophical interrogations of digital duality—our condition of being both visceral and virtual.
Poetry originates in the body, rising from the gut and shaped by the muscular throat and fleshy pink palate, yet language is immaterial and infinitely reproducible—software to our mortal hardware. It’s second nature to scribe on ether. I’ve found my voice composing meta verse here in the metaverse."
– Sasha Stiles
LEARN MORE AND COLLECT THE VOICE GEM FROM SASHA STILES.
INTERVIEW
Read More"We live in a time of so much noise, activity, commotion, information, and questionable value, and I think poetry, with its concision and stillness or slowness, insists on a kind of meaningful synthesis we crave deeply."
– Sasha Stiles
ALFRED WEIDINGER
Alfred Weidinger studied art history and archaeology at the University of Salzburg. He has been managing director of OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH since April 2020.
Previously, as director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig, he focused on researching and exhibiting East German art, especially non-conformist art from the GDR era, and was committed to the young international art scene.
Between 2007 and 2017, he was chief curator and deputy director of the Belvedere in Vienna, having previously been deputy director of the Albertina in Vienna.
His main areas of research are classical, modern, and contemporary photography, as well as media art. In Linz, he has transformed the Francisco Carolinum into a house for international photography and media art, founded the DFC in the Metaverse Voxels, and is involved in almost all forms of contemporary digital art.
"Our museum has shown several exhibitions and programs about NFTs over the last three years, starting with PROOF OF ART. A SHORT HISTORY OF NFTs, the first museum exhibition on the topic. Since then, we've exhibited, for example, Herbert W. Franke's solo exhibition VISIONARY and made THE SPACE, a group show about virtual land. We've also held many exhibitions at our virtual Francisco Carolinum in Voxels, since its opening in April 2021. My colleagues have learned a bit about NFTs in this time.
More and more, Web3 is becoming an important topic in our society. NFTs have established themselves in the international art world. Public museums have begun to collect digital art and NFTs in particular, they have moved a great step closer to the present and are gradually orientating their work towards the future."
– Alfred Weidinger
MIKEY WOODBRIDGE
Mikey Woodbridge is an Australian-born multidisciplinary artist living in Berlin. They started their creative career as a songwriter and painter, later branching out into performance and fashion with Sink the Pink in London and the Berlin nightlife scene. Woodbridge engages with methods of rendering ephemeral states and transformative experiences into physical, digital, and time-based media. Their work on blockchain uses tokens to translate the electric currents of physical presence into the cultural currency of digital presence.
Woodbridge explores ways of translating personal history into training data for generative art forms. This includes performances with Bright Moments in Berlin and Mexico City, a commission for ConsenSys (BRIDGE), exhibitions at Art Basel Miami with SCOPE Art Fair, features in FOMA Magazine #7 and #8, and the NFT releases OTHERFACES and LATENT COUTURE, released on Sovrn Art.
"I am you you am I (I, I, am you, I, I, am you, I, I, am you, you, you, am I You am I)."
– Mikey Woodbridge
LEARN MORE AND COLLECT THE VOICE GEM FROM MIKEY WOODBRIDGE.
INTERVIEW
Read More"The dynamics of art on the blockchain are quite unique. Ultimately, what I think we’re building is a new kind of cultural currency, a paradigm where cultural value can be a functional means of exchange."
– Mikey Woodbridge
YUYU
Yuyu, also known as Cyber_Yuyu and YuLiang Liu, is a Berlin-based artist and photographer who uses collage to create thought-provoking and unconventional artworks. Born in Taiwan, Yuyu's artistic journey began when he relocated to Europe and tackled exploring his identity as a queer Asian in Western society. His work bridges disparate styles, media, and eras, utilizing western cultural history to challenge conventional definitions of art and offering a contemporary perspective on society while critiquing elitist and theological structures at their very core.
Yuyu holds a post-professional Master's Degree in Architecture and has worked alongside industry leaders, including ARCHIMAN Architects in Shanghai and ROEWU Architecture in London. He later explored the fields of fashion photography and modelling before settling as an independent creator and visual artist.
Yuyu's work has been featured in several publications and has been exhibited in a number of local and international group exhibitions, as well as a solo show at SoHo House Berlin. One of Yuyu's physical artworks is owned by the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles, California, while a digital work was recently auctioned through Sotheby’s Hong Kong.
"在變化萬千的 數位藝術和文化領域， 我化為一抹視覺謎團，為多元群體編織著線索。 在社會規範中，我挑釁並重新想象， 一個難以捉摸的亞裔同性戀者， 漂泊在藝術的傳統懷抱之外。 2023年，人工智能照亮了我們的畫布， 但 真正讓我著迷的是 Web3的喃喃低語。 在神秘的場域中，數位身份翩翩起舞。 然而隱秘的剪影騷動，留下模糊了的痕跡。 但透過朦朧，我睥見一個願景， 未來的 Web3 將超越迷思，用智慧的燈塔指點萬千。區塊鏈的神秘詩句 將驗證了藝術的真實性， 並照亮通往永恒的旅程。
In the ever-shifting realm of digital art and culture, I stand as a visual enigma, weaving threads of representation. Amidst societal norms, I provoke and reimagine an elusive Queer Asian, adrift from the confines of art's conventional embrace.
Behold the year 2023, where AI's blazing trails illuminate our canvas, but it's Web3's whispers that truly bewitch me. In cryptic realms, digital identities dance. Yet veiled shadows transpire, leaving trails of ambiguity. But through the haze, a vision emerges—a future where Web3 transcends mystery, enlightening the masses with wisdom's beacon. Blockchain's cryptic verse validates art's authenticity, illuminating paths to eternity."
– Yuyu
SARAH ZUCKER
Sarah Zucker is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. Her work merges humour, myth, and mysticism with the interplay of cutting-edge and obsolete technologies. Her GIFs have over 6.9 billion views on Giphy. She is a Jeopardy! Champion.
She has been editioning her art on the blockchain since April 2019. In 2021, her work was part of NATIVELY DIGITAL, the first curated NFT sale at Sotheby's, and CRYPTOOGs: THE PIONEERS OF NFT ART at Bonhams.
She was named to the NFT100 list in 2022 and 2023 by NFTNow as one of the top artists working with NFTs.
Her work was shown as part of PEER TO PEER, the first survey of leading artists engaging with the blockchain presented at an American Museum. Her video art series FOUR CARYATIDS was among the first blockchain editions added to the permanent collection of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Her work was part of LACMA’s REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS FUTURE, a blockchain art initiative at the museum.
"There are two different aesthetic trends that are emerging in this realm, and I think we have one side, which is the sort of "all the things all at once" approach. And you see this within artworks, but you also see it within the way we are presenting digital art right now.
And then we're seeing the other side, which is artists—and I include myself in this—who are leaning into the personal. You know, "How am I experiencing this moment as an individual node of this vaster human network?"
Each of these elements must contain the other in order to be effective.
It's like the sleekness of the spirit has to be tempered by the grit of the soul, or else we just feel like we're sliding into infinity with no place for us in our incredibly analog way of thinking.
We are not binary.
So, in using these tools, which are founded on binary code itself, we must actively infuse randomization. And we are the seed! You know, we—our organic, beautiful, complicated, complex, and undefinable selves—are the randomization seed.
It's really not a small thing. It's a matter of our continued relevance in this ecosystem that we've created."
– Sarah Zucker
... AND MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON.
VOICES OF WEB3 – THE EXHIBITION | BERLIN
Read MoreVOICES OF WEB3 – THE ARCHIVE 2023
8-26 AUGUST 2023
OPENING: 8 AUGUST 2023 | 6-9 PM CEST
EXPANDED.ART
Friedrichstraße 67, 10117 Berlin
Monday - Saturday: 11 AM - 6 PM CET
CRYPTO ART SALON BERLIN
REEPS100 of VOICE GEMS: Performance and Talk
24 AUGUST
6-9 PM CET