Artist Spotlight — Fabin Rasheed
The world today witnesses a rapid rate of improvement and enhancement in the field of science and technology. Among the fields that have always boasted to be free of the intervention of machines and artificial intelligence, arts and creativity were the foremost, but not for long 😊
In the twelfth edition of the Artist Spotlight from the NFT Malayali Community, we are excited to share the story of Fabin Rasheed, an amalgamation of both creativity and technology in an NFT artist. His fields of specialty include and are not limited to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Voice, Generative Arts, and so on.
Before changing lanes to NFT art, Fabin has worked with tech giants and innovation labs such as Adobe Design Labs, Xerox research, and so on. Starting with digital art and NFTs in late 2019, his works since have been displayed in an array of prestigious art venues such as Ars Electronica Global Gallery, The Florence Biennale, NeurIPS Creativity Gallery (Vancouver, Canada) and Contemporary and Digital Art Fair (CADAF)
As one carefully examines Fabin’s creations, it can be understood that his intentions and expertise with NFTs are not limited to profitable sales but pushing the realms of art — Voxorium (an audio reactive generative art), Regalia (a participatory generative art), and Pilgrimage (a global Augmented Reality experience). At a time when NFTs were considered immutable, decentralized, permanent and so on, Fabin questioned all that NFTs stand for by creating an NFT called “I” which was essentially an NFT that can change to any image or video that he chose it to be. This suddenly raised a lot of debate on the validity of NFTs, what exactly is ownership when the owned artwork changes, the surprise factor that comes from thinking what the next image could be, etc. It is an interesting fact to know that Fabin has minted the Mona Lisa itself through this work, which attracted a lot of critical appreciation in the NFT community.
Fabin has marked his presence in a handful of NFT marketplaces from Makersplace, KnownOrigin, Foundation, to Async. Art, Hicetnunc, Art blocks, Rarible, Opensea, and collaborative work in Superrare. He has sold more than 70 1/1 NFTs and a collectible project which has sold more than 700+ versions.
Among his notable collection of works, lie the masterpiece — Alappuzha, the generative art. The work changes to a different view based on the viewer’s location in Alappuzha, the seasons, the time, and the weather as well. A seemingly simple image as it may seem which is just under 38kb, it is an artwork that is created with no drawing tools, animation tools, SVG, jpg but pure code alone. The project employed multiple algorithms such as noise, vector fields, fractals, and many more for sketch, animation, and interactivity. Thus in total, the project Alappuzha offers a unique glimpse that shouts out the beauty and elegance of Alappuzha with millions of variations.
When asked about his advice to artists who are stepping into the world of AR/VR generative art side of NFTs, Fabin replied
“Be experimental. When I got into these domains, there were hardly any guidelines. A lot of trial and error, and experimentation got me along the journey and even helped me define guidelines. Many often designers and artists fear to program. I would say jumpstart, experiment, and hack your way into learning it. Once you start you will see it is not that difficult. Also, for anyone who is interested in learning generative arts, I would recommend starting with Processing (or p5js). The coding train tutorials by Daniel Shiffman would be a great place to start. “
Although the Indian crypto art market is in its nascent stages, Fabin believes that there is real value in recognizing different forms of digital art as part of mainstream art in India.
“ NFTs have a cultural impact in making the local-global and being much more participatory and inclusive. As such there is a tremendous opportunity for Indian artists in NFT if they are willing to explore.”, he adds.
He also feels overtaking of “collectibles” over “art”, the limited collector ecosystem, and potential overflooding of the market are areas of improvement for the same.” This is a new art movement and it has raised the capabilities and reach of artists in our country and around the world. And I am sure going forth (with more technological advancement) there will be more opportunities in NFTs, not just for digital-only artists but for all kinds of artists.” Fabin shared.
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Blog composed and compiled by Mahesh Krishnan (Bohomonk)
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