RNDR Artist Spotlight: Kyle Gordon
Kyle Gordon is a multidisciplinary artist, avid RNDR supporter, and most recently donated artwork to the latest NFT charity auction
Kyle Gordon is an award winning multidisciplinary artist, creative director, experiential designer, and entrepreneur currently residing in San Francisco. When asked how Gordon would describe himself as an artist he said:
“If I had to describe what I do in one title, it would have to be ‘Professional Art Person.’ My work is heavily influenced by my love of music, natural/organic patterns, anime, contemporary art, life adventures, friends and family, and community.”
Between his company, Studio Ziro, and his contract work, Gordon has spent the better part of the last decade creating a vast array of works. You can see works ranging from audiovisual experiences and multidimensional video installations, to brand identities, projection/lightwork experiments, working with globally recognized brands, and working on animated content for internationally acclaimed Grammy nominated artists, in social entrepreneurships and non profit organizations, and music and cultural festivals. Gordon says, “Odds are if you’ve been to a music festival or concert in the last decade, you’ve probably seen my work at least once…maybe twice if you’re really a hardcore festival junky.”
Gordon was recently featured as a key artist in the Social Alpha Foundation’s event CarbonDrop, an NFT art auction to raise funds for the Open Earth Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing global accountability to help increase planetary protection. Gordon’s piece Izanami sold at auction for $22,008.00 and was offset 62.5 CO2e tons of carbon, making it a carbon negative NFT.
Much of Gordon’s work is inspired by Japanese culture, anime, and fantasy, so he named his piece after the Japanese mythological goddess of creation and death, Izanami. This work is one of the first pieces Gordon has released that fine tunes years of notebook scribbles, notes and thoughts, visual deep dives, experimentation, and endless troughs of Pinterest boards into a single piece of work, a true representation of his aesthetic.
Gordon commented on the symbolism of naming his art piece after the goddess that he visualized:
“I felt Izanami was the perfect embodiment of our climate drop’s statement to the world. We have the responsibility to educate ourselves and others to be better to our home planet, because while it has the ability to provide beauty and life — creation, it also has the power to create destruction and chaos — death.”
This auction raised a grand total of $6,662,054 for the Open Earth Foundation. The contributions from the Social Alpha Foundation, the Open Earth Foundation, and the 8 amazing artists that donated their artwork have made an unbelievable start to the Open Earth Foundation’s awareness campaign, which ends on April 22nd 2021 in honor of Earth Day.
The Story Behind Gordon’s Latest NFT
The importance of Izanami to Gordon is that it allows him to tell a story through his artwork and to set an example for other creators to use their art for positive impact. In 2020, Gordon pivoted from client focused work to creating his own artwork and projects in the NFT space, making this particular artwork an important milestone in his artistic career, he comments on his journey:
“I haven’t released much of my own personal work in the past few years, and often struggle with honing in on my own style/aesthetic since I jump between so many mediums and aesthetics from project to project. It also doesn’t help that I’m a perfectionist and a harsh critic of my own work. Like no joke, I will literally spend DAYS fine tuning colors, getting the grain “just right”, or experimenting well past where a normal person would consider a work complete.”
Gordon’s finding his own voice as an artist and the work put into getting his artwork to feel ‘just right’ points to his determination and perseverance in becoming a strong artist, displaying a level of honor in his work that makes clear just how much his artwork means to him. After this past year of personal growth and years of creative exploration, taking the risk of doing his own personal art projects led to the birth of his own aesthetic. As Gordon would put it, his unique flair is “silly, vivid, and weird,” something which he said “feels right to my core.”
Gordon is mindful of his own carbon footprint and is mindful of the impact he has on the planet. He spoke of the compounding effects of implementing small changes that add up over time, creating a lasting impact. As someone who cares about the impact of climate change, Gordon speaks of how small changes can add up to make a larger impact,
“One of the most important things we can do as individuals who care about climate change is educate others (politely and constructively) on how they too can make little and simple changes to their habits and have long term positive results. I’m not telling you to throw away your iPhone or stop eating meat cold turkey (see what I did there?), but arming yourself with knowledge about how your purchased goods are made or not eating meat for every meal really do go a long way over a lifetime.”
“We’ve only got one planet Earth, and unless we want future generations only living on Mars (thanks Elon), I think we should be more mindful and aware of how our actions today are bringing about serious damage on the future viability of our planet.”
Rendered on the RNDR Network
Gordon has been following the RNDR Network since 2017, joining as a genesis token holder and later as a node operator during the Genesis Mainnet release. Gordon has been an Octane user for years and while he was frustrated with the lack of innovative blockchain applications in the creative field, he was inspired to become a genesis node operator, supporting the RNDR Network, a network with a solution to these problems. Heading into the CarbonDrop event, Gordon said he was “stoked to finally use the network on the other side” as a creative artist.
“[I] recently started leveraging the network for my own work after downsizing my workstation setup to be more energy conscious and because most of my work the last year has shifted from 3D to 2D design and conceptualization rather than execution.”
Outside of the eco benefits provided by the network, Gordon highlighted how integrating RNDR into his workflow made it possible to turn around a piece as ambitious as Izanami in the time he had available. After optimizing his scene as much as possible, he still found that his single GeForce RTX 2060 Super workstation was only able to render at an average of about 20–30 minutes per frame, which was not going to cut it given the time available.
“RNDR saved the day by giving me the flexibility I needed when time was not on my side. Even after using the RNDR network, I had all 1620 frames back at rolling increments throughout a 12–16 hour span, allowing me to press on and do preliminary compositing tests, lock in my looks and color correction, and wrap start of rendering to completed composited animation within 24 hours.”
Compared to conventional in house rendering, Izanami would not have been possible at the scale Gordon imagined within the time he had available. RNDR allowed Gordon to “unlock a lot of possibilities that normally constrain your workflow,” by removing normal limitations in creative work. Knowing that RNDR would be able to back up whatever vision he had in mind, Gordon was able to push the limits with Izanami, and it became clear that the extra effort paid off when his NFT ultimately sold for $22,008.00 at auction on NiftyGateway. Without RNDR, that may not have been possible, or as Gordon put it,
“If my math serves me correctly, RNDR saved me roughly 800 hours of render time on my weaksauce workstation…Not to mention having access to affordable and accessible rendering solutions opens up a whole plethora of opportunities for creators who don’t have the means to build render farms or multi-GPU rigs.”
As the RNDR Revolution expands, we’re hoping that more users share Gordon’s RNDR experience, saving themselves not only time and money, but having limitless creative freedom to join the Metaverse.
