Unios: A generative NFT project that creates personal connections with nature and technology in the physical and virtual worlds.
Technology overlaps with humanity and nature. Science and spiritual mysticism merge. The world is transforming. Natural systems are transforming. Technological systems are transforming. Are we as humans in control? Can we affect a transformation to heal the planet?
Future Machine is an art initiative by artists Electric Coffin that seeks to explore this question by interrogating the intersection of art and technology, and its affects on the future. Future Machine is an ongoing series of physical and digital installations and exhibitions in galleries, museums, and commercial buildings that explores the intersection of humanity, nature and technology.
Humanity is stepping out of the ‘Information Age’ and into the ‘Imagination Age’. The bolder of us can envision how we see our relationships with technology evolve in the near future. This vision includes technologies and digital experiences that enrich lives, enhance human experience, and power sustainable progress without forgetting the need to ground it within a framework that looks to humanity’s desire for a reality that also addresses society’s spiritual and connective needs.
As we enter the era of cognitive computing and the metaverse, it is our responsibility to reach beyond logic and algorithms. We are intuitive dreaming creatures capable of weaving resolutions from vastly disparate sources. We see the language of patterns and beauty in the cosmos. We are social animals that thrive on storytelling. Innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty to engineering, and poetry to processors. Creators who can flourish where the arts intersect with the sciences, who have a rebellious sense of wonder that opens them to the beauty of both, will lead the way.
Unio is Latin for Union. Electric Coffin’s creation, “Unios”, are techno-animal hybrids, born from the Future Machine ecosystem. These chimeric creatures represent not just the natural world or environmental forces, but also archetypal spiritual drives and progressive aspects that motivate humanity as a whole, such as the drive for relentless progress, and the desire for constant expansion and exploration. For example, a wolf might represent the instinctive desire for freedom, an elk the drive towards expansion of territory.
Artist Statement:
“We as humans are unique as a species in that our evolution can be self directed. Our current generation is seeing this evolution happen at the most rapid pace ever during our existence. However, evolution has been happening since the dawn of time. The Unio characters represent humanity’s relationship with that evolutionary journey. Our experience and history is built upon humans using natural resources mixed with man made constructs to further our existence. Those constructs range from religion to language to energy to digital technologies. All of those elements are neither bad nor good, inherently evil or positive. It’s our relationship with those elements and how we balance them that contributes to the human experience. The Unio characters are a series of spirit animals inhabiting landscapes across several facets of humanity, helping guide us to a better place. They represent elements of humanity, exploration, intelligence, tenacity, freedom, happiness, in the form of archetypes. The current variations of the Unio characters have vehicles and elements from the modern lexicon. Although they appear contemporary, the elements and iconography represent themes and symbols as old as mankind.
As we venture into the future these creatures are here to help guide and remind us about the balance and wonder of evolution and how magic the world can be when we merge nature and technology.”
About Electric Coffin:
Seattle’s Electric Coffin is composed of the artist duo Duffy DeArmas and Stefan Hofmann, Electric Coffin create multi-media works that comment on socio-economic and environmental concerns as well as reclaiming a sense of spirituality and connection with nature in the Anthropocene era. They explore found truths from modernity and a personal historical perspective. A process driven studio practice and narratively informed dogma guide them, synthesizing perception through the use of created and found iconography and typography. They are inspired by a number of sources both material and ephemeral; sources encompass knowledge, culture, the physical remains of industry, mass production, communication, and commerce.
