Tag Archives: metaverse

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NFT’s research and analysis

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What is an NFT?

NFT stands for “Non Fungible Token” which represents either a digital file/ item. The token in NFT is an object that is built onto a blockchain, non fungible means that it is unique being different and 1 of 1 to the person who makes a purchase of it.

2 Lives exhibition

The “2 Lives exhibition” is Jerseys first Art exhibition the brings together Art and Finance, due to the introductions of NFT’s. It is a project that has been put together in order to build a future of the art world, as it seems to fade away with no technological advances being put into the art world. Therefore, this will leverage NFT’s as a tool leading to the creation of new communities, opportunities and even art overall.

NFTs in art

NFTs in terms of art is revolutionary for artists in this day and age. The reasoning behind this is because artists now have a second option of being able to sell there art online to anyone who wants to buy it from around the world. Whereas, if you where to sell your art in person you would have to put it up in a exhibition or auction in order for you art to sell. Moreover, if you sell a physical piece of art, you only get the money that the customer has offered for it and thats the money you earn. As for NFT’s, when you sell your own NFT you get money from that sale and when the person who bought your art sells it, you get a fixed percentage for every-time your art continuously gets sold off. Alongside this, the NFT you make becomes a certificate of authenticity in order to cancel out people trying to make counterfeits.

NFT’s in gaming

NFT’s in terms of gaming has also revolutionised as any items you buy in your game; for example skins on Fortnite, you would be able to keep these ‘skins’ if you where to stop playing the game and you could use them again if you like. Moreover, with these skins you could sell it on the game marketplace to other players who are going to jump onto the game. Alongside being able to sell them, you could use your skins for the appearance of your digital avatar for others to look at.

NFT’s for collectionist’s

People who collect items in the real world in order to flip there items to make money, now have a whole new platform of being able to purchase NFTs to make more money in terms of collectables. This change kicked into place during the covid pandemic due to the fact that the whole world became more digital as people could online socialise via internet. Moreover, this lead to a larger increase in people around the world trusting the internet more. Therefore, in society we now appear to have more people collecting digital assets as much as physical assets which can de sold through exhibitions or other places on the secondary market giving sellers a wide range of choice in selling of collectable items.

NFT’s in virtual worlds and virtual exhibitions

Virtual worlds have been starting up in the NFT’s space such as Decentraland and somnium space. Decentraland as an example is an online world where users have to create an avatar in order to express their presence online. Moreover, you are also able to communicate wit other peoples avatars online as well from participating in concerts, art shows and even being able to build your own digital house with other people as well. This is great as friends or people in general from around the world are able to share there own sense of community, or even mix culture together which can have people from around the world gain a better understanding of different communities and how they work. This is accessible on 2d screens which is via computer. Decentraland also have another layer of connection with cryptocurrencies in order for people to be able to make purchases on the virtual land that exists, art on the walls in galleries and making these purchases can give you ownership on the virtual world, leading to people being able to give users a say on how the world should operate.

NFT’s blockchain, cryptocurrencies, coins and defi

The next revolution alongside NFT’s is by changing the way we see and use money. People in todays society don’t trust authorities, which helped in the gradual increase of people using cryptocurrencies for a substitute to physical and money kept away in a bank with the creator being a random person that no one knows of. Therefore, this means that the person who invented cryptocurrencies has no ties to the government or any authority, its a universal currency having the same value everywhere across the globe and the market is open 24 hours in a day. A cryptocurrency is a digital asset that is designed to be a medium of exchange for real money, the individual coin ownership is then stored away in a ledger existing in a form of computerised database and cryptography is used to secure transactions and records, which controls the creation of additional coins and verify the transfer of coin ownership.

How to create, buy and sell NFTs

In order to create an NFT, you will need whats called a NFT wallet and an account inside FT platforms.

A digital wallet can be used as if it was your physical wallet but just virtually. Metamask appears to be used most commonly do far keeping your NFT’s, these wallets allow you to move your digital assets within the metaverse.

NFT PLATFORMS: Opensea, Nifty Gateway, KnownOrigin, Foundation, Mintable, Rarible, Hic Et Nunc, Zora, Makersplace, VeeFriends, NBA TopShot, Crypto.com NFT, Eenjin, Superrare, Sweet, Doingud.

NFT’s environmental impact

For NFT’s to not damage the environment the use of renewable energy would be useful such as solar and wind. However, NFT’s are only a small contribution to this as the energy consumption it takes to mine a singular etherium is 0.0006, which in comparison is the same as watching a youtube video.

mining crypto takes a lot of electricity, needing big computational work by hardware. The process of mining and rewarding the miners for closing a block of the blockchain is called Proof of Work, that was the way Bitcoin was applied in 2009, until now.

In the crypto ecosystem there has been a transition from the ‘Proof of Work’ to ‘Proof os Stake’, which is a lot more environmentally friendly. This is because POS doesn’t require miners anymore, but validators. These are the people that deposit their owned crypto to validate block transactions, then the reward is given on a random basis.

In some ways, NFT’s can also be good for the environment, this is because Fashion at the moment is the 2nd most pollutive industry in the world. Therefore digital clothing could revolutionise this issue that is currently taking place across the globe.

  • NFT Clothing Revolution

Here is a link to a website called the 2 lives exhibition, which gives out additional information on NFT’s, Metaverse and Cryptocurrencies. https://2lives.world/

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NFT Community – Final Presentation

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Film

https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/7f2e5973-fc97-435e-8d97-632fd5209787

Digital Image

Final Statement

Title: Online / Offline
The concept behind our NFT video is that two friends each have two separate lives; one offline and online. Our video shows how anything can happen on an online medium, but real connection and friendship occurs in real life. As technology develops relationships of all kinds are growing apart. An example of this occurred in the height of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. People only experienced contact with family members in the same household and the only way to speak to people outside was via an online medium. This effected the mental health of everyone and looking back on the first lockdown we can see how much we relied on technology to keep connected with family and friends.

Creators: Oliver Shiplee, Matthew Brown, Michael Kenealy and Reuben Jeanne

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NFT Community – Recording

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Principal Shoot Plan

Before we planned teh shoot we established initial ‘job roles’ for the project:

  • Matthew
    • Camera man
    • Animator
  • Reuben
    • Actor
    • Secondary editor
  • Ollie
    • Director
    • Manager
  • Myself
    • Main Character
    • Chief Editor

We will shoot our video using a DSLR paired with a drone. Referring back to the story board, the DSLR will shoot close up shots and eyelevel perspective shots, while the drone will take the birds-eye-view shots.

Image preview

We will shoot during the day time, during overcast weather to remove any harsh lighting and add drama to our footage. We found an open field area with a cliff which is were we will film as we plan for the main character to appear as he is isolated when shooting birds-eye-view shots. The cliff also adds to the drama and the cliff will add more sublime romanticism to our footage. We want our narrative to be obvious and we are using characters who will act out this narrative effectively. In terms of props we will be using a VR headset which we have crafted ourselves using accessible materials.

Behind the scenes:

Matthew controlling the drone while I ran towards it
Me showing off the central handmade prop

Am I satisfied that I have enough images/ material? – Yes I am satisfied we have shot an abundance of imagery.
What are you going to do differently on next shoot? – Do not rush the takes as much and refer to the storyboard more directly.
How are you going to develop your ideas? – Add animation and editing to piece the narrative together and further add visual effect to the piece to relay a more emotive campaign.

Film Inspirations:

Editing:

Video

I began by laying delegating the task of finding a backing track for the video. We found a royalty-free electronic song with a fast paced beat which would complement the narrative and visuals well. I then laid the soundtrack in a new sequence in Adobe Premiere pro. Thereafter, I began introducing clips into the sequence and cutting them to the beat. Once satisfied with how the clips where positioned and the overall sequence, I moved onto the next element of post-production, colour grading and Effects. I added a grade on all of the clips using adjustment layers. I went for a high saturation and high contrast grade to dramatize the action in the video. I then added video-game style overlays such as the one below.

For the split screen concept I first had to motion track my face to stabilise the clip more so that my facial features lined up with the animation characters features. The animation was designed by Matthew. You can see his editing process for this HERE

This involved an intricate frame-by-frame masking process.

I added speed ramps to add a sense of hyperreality and the idea that time is controllable in the metaverse more. Finally I added sound FX to add a more immersive feeling.

Image

Matthew made the the digital image in photoshop. He used a screen grab from one of the videos of me wearing the VR, and the 5 animated scenes all at the same timeframe so the character lines up.

He then added some glitched text effect by using 2 layers behind each text. To make it better he added some blending mode features, such as, emboss and bevel, etc.

He used shapes and clipping layers to add all the images into to ensure all the shapes are even.

This is the final image which represents the whole NFT film. It shows the most important scene, which is the split scene that includes the animation as the NFT exhibition is called 2lives (online and offline), it shows the real world and the virtual meta verse.

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NFT Community – Statement of Intent

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3 Words

Interlaced

Divergent

Immersive

Sentence

The future of community in Jersey as a metaverse will be an extremely diverse and flourishing digital environment.

Paragraph

The future of community in Jersey as a metaverse will embrace physical elements of community and embrace them on an active and divergent digital platform. The community will flourish and connect many islanders no matter where in the world they might be. I see this being in a highly technologically advanced and immersive fashion. The metaverse will be a mostly amiable platform however I pre-empt some of Jerseys overly, patriotic, protective and xenophobic idiosyncrasies unfortunately lingering into the future.

Content

Our film will feature a seamless combination of real digital images combined with a more metaphysical and fictional animation side. We will use a split screen method to combine the two elements of film. We want to use futuristic props and a consistent, futuristic colour scheme. We want to use a futuristic, fast-paced soundtrack with an emphasise on synthesised instruments. We will also used strategically placed text to further convey our message.

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NFT Community Project

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This project will be based off of a central question, (below) and we will have to create a 30 second video and a still image in a group of 4. After, one of our creations will be minted as an NFT (non-fungible token) on the public Ethereum blockchain as part of the 2lives NFT exhibition based in Jersey.

What will the future of Jersey look like as a community in the metaverse?

The word “Metaverse” is made up of the prefix “meta” (meaning beyond) and the stem “verse” (a back-formation from “universe”); the term is typically used to describe the concept of a future iteration of the internet, made up of persistent, shared, 3D virtual spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe.

Mind Map

First, we got into groups of 4, to create a mind map about the different communities we related to/know of in Jersey.

The communities we thought of were mainly the hobbies we did out of school and subjects in school, such as, Online Community, sports communities, friend groups and the photography community.
Where as, other communities such as race, religion and gender we still wrote down as they are some of the biggest and most known communities in the world.

Mood Board

After we we made a mind map, we discussed what communities we thought we wanted to move forwards with for our project. So we chose the communities we were most involved with, they were the online world and the how its a different identity compared to in real life.

This ties in nicely with the 2lives exhibition and how we have an online presence which is different to our real life.

Since, the metaverse is virtual there is no limits. So we all thought it would look highly advanced and futuristic. There is a film called Ready Player One, which is what we think it will look like.

It is a dystopian world and people use a utopian metaverse to escape poverty and corruption. The concept of living two life’s; online and offline, is an idea which we liked, and relates to the exhibition name, 2lives.

STATEMENT OF INTENT

Together we are interpreting the theme of community as online and offline. And how we have bonded with people in person, but online they can be a totally different person. Also, online you can basically do whatever you want in a virtual world with anyone you want, where as in person you are limited to what’s around you. We plan to make a short film which visualises friends in real life and what changes when they go into the virtual world online.

CONCEPT: What will the future of Jersey look like as a community in the metaverse?

Describe in:

3 words – futuristic, modern, advanced

A sentence – St Helier will be a futuristic, modern, advanced world where people are living the perfect utopia life.

A paragraph – The community of St Helier would be idealised as a perfect utopian life in the metaverse. It would have futuristic, modern, and advanced qualities, as there is no limit to a virtual world. It would most likely to be sunny all the time, with flying cars and trains, with holograms everywhere. To people living in St Helier, and their community would mostly communicate online using screens, rather than in person as quality of life would be increased and the way of living would have changed.

CONTENT: How will you make your film?

Our 30-second film will be very visual, so we will be using mostly photo and video responses, video recordings, animation, analogue/ digital montages to create a story about the online and offline community of St Helier. The use of audio and sound effects would be impactful to exaggerate actions in the video, and possibly some loyalty free music. We plan to animate some parts of the video to represent the online world, where as the other half we plan to meet up and record some scenes based off the storyboard.