On Wednesday evening, Winterthur’s Caribbean Pearl rooftop bar and club hosted the Swiss NFT Association’s Crypto Art and Virtual Reality Light Festival with around 50 art and web3 enthusiasts. The event was also live streamed in the Metaverse. We attended in person and spent an inspiring evening, although the location’s ventilation system made it almost impossible to understand the speakers before the panel discussion.
The Death of Seneca
The first speaker, Abraham Yael, was the first Mexican digital artist and photographer to exhibit crypto-art at Art Basel and in New York. His artwork The Death of Seneca was exhibited on 3 screens in Times Square during the Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art. This 3D artwork represents the death of the Stoic philosopher Seneca draining his veins suffocating in a hot bath. Represented by the red mist and hot water. His writings about morality and virtue had a great impact on Abraham. The Death of Seneca is one of his favorite works.
- SuperRare NFT Marketplace
- Medium: Video (MP4)
- Dimensions: 2160×2700
- Token Standard: ERC-721
- File Size: 31 MB
- Blockchain: Ethereum
Utilizing 3D photography, Abraham explores graphic development and experimentation while drawing inspiration from architecture, literature, and art history. His work conveys a sense of dark science fiction.
Meteora Fan Art
In 2007, when watching the science fiction action movie Transformers, Abraham discovered the American rock band Linkin Park which later became his favorite band. He owns every single one of their CDs and special edition releases. Ever since, Linkin Park has been a great source of inspiration for his work, as they consistently produce top-notch music, album artwork, as well as music videos.
In February 2023, Linkin Park announced that they would release a 20th anniversary edition of Meteora for which the band started a graffity fan art campaign where Abraham’s version of the original cover artwork was also featured.
Being a Linkin Park fan myself, I was excited to learn that they also released the never before released song «Lost» sung by Chester Bennington as the lead single of the reissue on disk #6.
If you’d like to experience more of Abraham’s art, I recommend visiting his NFT collection in his interactive 3D gallery on the OnCyber Metaverse platform.
Vaduz Light Festival
The second speaker of the evening was Romy Abbrederis. She is both a software developer and the director of the Vaduz Light Festival, a unique event that blends art, culture, and innovation through light art. Every year, the festival hosts a 10-day event in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, showcasing a fusion of artistic expression and inventive installations. In 2023, the festival takes on a new form with the launch of a virtual edition, featuring the captivating works of Austrian digital artist Stefan Kainbacher who also was present for the panel discussion after Romy’s talk.
Romy elaborated on the challenges of transferring light installations with all their reflections into a virtual experience and showed several of Stefan’s works on the 3D spaces platform Hubs by Mozilla. There you can experience the virtual edition of the Vaduz Light Festival 2023. Here’s a video of the non-virtual, audiovisual space installation in the Bregenz offspace DWDS from 2021.
This was a space-specific and unique pulsating light installation, which consisted of 40 LED steles arranged in a grid, which were individually animated and thus were the light show of this installation, which were complemented by specially composed sound.
GRID was an immersive and unique light installation, which was also created as an ERC-1155 NFT and can be purchased on Rarible. The implementation of this work as an NFT was intended to create added value. The result was the possibility to experience this installation in VR, which is placed on a fictional Martian landscape. GRID ON MARS thus represents the interface now between the work poles presented in the Metaverse and the actual origin GRID, 2021. If you want to support this amazing artist, you can buy it on Rarible for 1 ETH or place your own bid.
More Crypto Art Events
The rise of NFTs has opened up a new world of possibilities for artists to monetize their digital creations and gain recognition in the art world. Collectors can now own unique, one-of-a-kind digital artworks that are verifiably scarce and immutable on the blockchain.
While the crypto art market is still in its early stages, it is clear that this is a trend that is here to stay. As blockchain technology continues to evolve and become more accessible, we can expect to see even more innovation in the crypto art space.
If you’re interested in exploring the world of crypto art, joining events like this is a great place to to be. If you want to learn more about the vibrant art scene and supportive community, make sure to join the Swiss NFT Association’s workshops on May 24th (NFT Twitter and Discord Deep Dive) and June 3rd (Opening Your First Wallet with Confidence) at Trust Square in Zürich.
Another event to mention is NFT ART DAY ZRH on June 10th at Kunsthaus Zürich, an annual conference at the intersection of Web3 and contemporary digital art, exploring the multifaceted interconnections between art and technology, through the lens of blockchain and NFTs, whilst building bridges with the traditional art world. It brings together thought leaders, from the field of digital art and the art market, who share their ideas, visions, and expertise.
Credits
- Main picture album cover is a photo of graffity artist Boris Telleggen
