DFINITY at NFT.NYC: A Celebration of NFT Art on the Internet Computer
The ICONIC art exhibit reflected how NFTs have become a powerful new vehicle for artists to share their creative vision.
Thousands of NFT developers, artists, collectors, and enthusiasts from around the globe flocked to New York City last week for NFT.NYC, the world’s largest NFT conference — and we at the DFINITY Foundation were absolutely thrilled to be a part of this growing community. DFINITY partnered with Toniq Labs to airdrop 10,000 Motoko NFTs to conference attendees via Stoic wallets on the Internet Computer blockchain, demonstrating the power of no gas fees for users to mint or purchase NFTs while hosting them on a completely decentralized, on-chain public blockchain. As of writing, these Motoko NFTs have generated close to $1 million in secondary sales volume on the Entrepot NFT marketplace in a matter of days. But our main NFT debut was with ICONIC, an NFT art exhibit celebrating prominent artists and creators on the Internet Computer.
The ICONIC NFT art exhibit, curated by Liz Yang from DFINITY Foundation, featured artists from New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Singapore, Japan, Istanbul, and Paris. Nearly 600 people attended the event, bathed in music and pink light as they admired (and bought) the artworks on display. In fact, by the end of the evening, every single piece of NFT artwork had been sold.
ICONIC sought to reframe our relationship with technology to imagine how it can be used to connect humanity, as well as empower the individual, through decentralized technologies such as the Internet Computer. The artworks featured in the exhibit brimmed with scintillating techno-optimism for the future — unabashedly bold, dynamic, energetic, and full of life.
The most innovative artists have always used new technology and media as a means to amplify their core message. NFTs have become a powerful new vehicle for artists to share this creative vision. In this brave new world, the artists and creators wield the power.
The exhibit included eight featured artists who have showcased art at the MoMA, Burning Man, the streets of Paris, international art galleries, and elsewhere.
André Wee, a newcomer to the NFT art scene, is an experimental illustrator who jumps between the virtual and physical world when he creates. Aside from putting pencil to paper and pushing digital paint across a virtual canvas, André also works with animated layers hidden within the physical world through augmented reality, embedding narratives within his illustrations. Originally from Singapore, he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design before returning to Singapore to start his company, Studio André Wee (SAW).
All Seeing Seneca. S̶e̶n̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶.
The work of Paris-based Ludo (Ludovic Vernhet) explores a world where biotechnological chimeras offer to merge plants and animals with our technological universe. Ludo expresses himself through various media, locations, and sizes, including giant murals on the walls of streets worldwide, and gallery and museum exhibitions presenting installations, canvas, drawing, sculpture, and photography, all with his signature style of black, white, and neon green. Ludo has exhibited at the Shanghai Power Station of Art Museum, CAFA Peking, and Centre Pompidou Paris, among other places.
Neil White is a Miami-based contemporary artist. His work focuses on ironic portraits of historical icons and social commentary in the form of robots. He employs both digital art and studio painting mediums in a hyper realistic pop art style.
Ryan P. Griffin is a visual artist based in Los Angeles. He uses projected light as a vehicle to activate the environment in a poetic, performative, and public way. Griffin’s creative practice incorporates drawing, painting, photography, animation, and video, while extending these traditions through contemporary digital media tools to share unique experiences. The artist organizes frequent happenings through his ongoing project at Projected Visions, using projected light to radically repurpose place.
Selay Karasu is a multidisciplinary artist and multimedia coordinator based in Istanbul whose animations draw on her study of motion design. Her audio/visual works have been displayed in several national and international festivals, receiving a variety of awards. These A/V performances have been exhibited in such varied platforms as the CERN Particle Physics Laboratory, Quebec’s Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Burning Man Festival, WIRED, Fubiz, Vimeo (Staff Pick), Prix Ars Electronica, Prague’s Signal Light Festival, and the IX Immersion Experience Symposium in Montreal.
PatternBased, a partnership between Siori Kitajima and Joseph Minadeo, is a boutique creative label at the intersection of art and technology. Siori Kitajima is a multimedia visual artist who explores complexity and abstraction through a variety of mediums, from canvas painting to coding. Joseph Minadeo is a film composer and multimedia artist inspired by nature and technology. As technical artists, they celebrate the potential of generative / procedural art, and are currently exploring the world of decentralization, including NFTs.
Tyler and Dakota are a writer / designer team that is interested in semiotics and altered states. They produced a video series in which common phrases become hypnotic mantras. As the phrases fall apart and words and images float by, meanings are dissolved and rebuilt.
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The artists of ICONIC are dreaming of a brighter, more colorful future — one where technology once again ignites a sense of wonder and hope within us.
All photography by Krista Schlueter.
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