Art Blocks in Rio

I’m back home from Brazil and wanted to share a dispatch about our participation at NFT Rio. It was an amazing experience in a new part of the world for Art Blocks and everyone’s excitement and kindness was truly contagious. Conversation after conversation, I was impressed by the enthusiasm and optimism about the power of Web3 and NFTs to be a social equalizer and vehicle for good, and I return reinvigorated by the potential of our work.

I arrived on Thursday and gave a one-hour presentation on Arte Generativa and NFTs. I was humbled by the positive response and it was great to connect with many artists from the Brazilian creative coding community. The remainder of the conference programming was in Portuguese, but I was lucky to have a personal translator for Computadores fazem arte, a rich philosophical conversation about using computers and AI to create art with our own Vamoss and Jorge Ledezma, along with Thiago Yaak. Day in and day out, the presentation room was completely packed to standing room only.

The entire event took place at Parque Lage, a historic public park in the middle of Rio de Janeiro housing a school of visual arts. Yes, that’s Christo Redentor up on Corcovado! What a stunning setting.

In addition to the talks and presentations, there was also a museum-quality exhibition hall for NFTs designed by SuperUber (Vamoss does a lot of the technical work for SuperUber and I was also able to spend time with the Artistic Director Liana Brazil). The main room consisted of a historic presentation on blockchains and NFTs, and beyond that were a series of interactive displays using motion-sensor technology where conference-goers could gesture to select and view individual NFTs. Next to the main hall was an immersive projection room, consisting of a number NFT playlists synchronized to music. The attention to user-experience was really top notch. We exhibited artwork from 8 Latin American Art Blocks artists (Monica Rizzoli, Vamoss, Jorge Ledezma, Autonomoses, gcrll, hideo, k0ch, Falko) as well as 5 “classic” projects by request of the organizers (Dmitri Cherniak, Tyler Hobbs, Jen Stark, Jeff Davis, Snowfro).

Wrapping things up, Sunday turned out to be a really special day. Vamoss invited us to visit Lanchonete<>Lanchonete, a community center he supports in Gamboa where children and mothers have a safe place to cook, shower, learn, and make art. We also got a sneak peek at the neighboring building where Vamoss is funding a technology lab through the charitable proceeds from his Art Blocks project We. It was a truly inspirational experience that demonstrates how life-changing this all can be.

Thank you once again to everyone at NFT Rio for your hospitality and generosity. A personal thank you as well to Marcus for inviting us, and to Byron, Guilherme, Liana, Yaak, and Vamoss for showing us the best that Rio has to offer. We love you Brasil and can’t wait to come back! ❤️🇧🇷❤️