Tag Archives: NFT

Community NFT – Artist Research

Cindy Sherman – Untitled Film Stills

Cindy Sherman (1954-present) is an American filmmaker and photographer who focuses her work on critiquing themes of gender and identity. In her early years Sherman created fine art, however abandoned painting for photography while attending the State University of New York at Buffalo, and in 1976, moved to New York to pursue a career as a photographer. Her work has been the subject of many museum exhibitions, including those at The Museum of Modern Art in 2019, and at the National Portrait Gallery, in London during 2019. Sherman captures self portraits, her most notable body of work are her ‘Untitled Film Stills’ which feature the artist herself as a model in various costumes and poses, and are her portrayals of female stereotypes found in film, television, and advertising – all captured in black and white. In the film stills, rather than quoting from recognizable movies, Sherman suggests genres, resulting in characters that emerge as personality types instead of specific actresses. The first six images of the series depict the same blonde actress at various stages of her career. Later, the character appears as a seductress, waiting at home for her lover – then afterwards Sherman might be seen as the trope of the diligent, stay-at-home wife who remains attractive and available to her husband.

Sherman’s Film Stills have been described as “a hybrid of photography and performance art that reveals femininity to be an effect of representation.”. Sherman states “I like making images that from a distance seem kind of seductive, colourful, luscious and engaging, and then you realize what you’re looking at is something totally opposite,” she reflected. “It seems boring to me to pursue the typical idea of beauty, because that is the easiest and the most obvious way to see the world. It’s more challenging to look at the other side.” Sherman on being a female photographer; “There’s a theory that there were so many women photographers at the time because we felt nobody else was doing it. We couldn’t or didn’t really want to go into the male-dominated painting world, so since there weren’t any artists who were using photographs, we thought, ‘well, yeah, let’s just play with that.’ “

I love the way Sherman can create such a strong narrative in her images, each one tells a story and forms some sort of message towards the representation of women. Her style of photography is so interesting to me, her images are intimate and close, allowing the observer to feel connected to her scene. The black and white filter also evokes a sense of melancholy in her work, and her exaggerated ‘feminine poses’ seem to mock the portrayal of women in a patriarchal society. Her work holds strong links to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, and her ideas on ‘The Male Gaze’ stating; visual media that respond to masculine voyeurism tends to sexualise women for a male viewer. This sexism within the film industry is what Sherman has captured in her Untitled Film Stills, shedding light on the negativity of some feminine stereotypes.

In our project, we really want to take inspiration from Sherman’s series of images by replicating her stereotypical style and narratives. The ‘house-wife’ character is one we wish to represent in our NFT film, using ideas surrounding what stereotypically ‘should be a woman’s place’ and filming in the setting of a kitchen. We plan on our images holding hints towards a woman’s innocence eg, wearing white flowing dresses etc to show her purity and goodness. As we plan on using these shots in the early stages of our project, the timeline will begin in the first wave of feminism and will hold reference to the suffragette/suffragist movement of the late 1800’s – mid 1900’s.

Clare Rae – Never Standing On Two Feet

Clare Rae is an artist and photographer from Melbourne Australia, in her photographic practice Clare explores ideas of performance and gesture to interrogate and subvert dominant modes of representation. Her work is informed by the feminist theory, and presents an alternate and often awkward experience of subjectivity and the female body, usually the artists’ own. In 2017, Rae undertook an artist’s residency with Archisle: the Jersey Contemporary Photography Programme to research the archive of Claude Cahun works held by Jersey Heritage. It was during this time that she created the photographic series ‘Never Standing on Two Feet’, paying a homage to avant-garde artist Claude Cahun (1894-1954), drawing upon Cahun’s photographic archive to explore the female body, self-hood, ritual and the male gaze in cultural and geographical landscapes.

A quote from Clare Rae, on ‘Never Standing on Two Feet’ – “My series, Never standing on two feet, considers Cahun’s engagement with the physical and cultural landscapes of Jersey, an aspect of her work that has received little analysis to date. The photographs Cahun produced in Jersey are intimate. They explore an idea of self within the immediate environment and were produced in collaboration with her lover, Marcel Moore. Many threads of inquiry emerged for me while viewing the archive: Cahun’s performative photographic gestures; the nature of photographic performance for a lover; and the repercussions of imaging a woman’s body aging over time, to name a few.”

I really enjoy the way Rae’s self-portraits explore the coastal geography and Neolithic monuments of Jersey, relating body to place and creating a sense of mystery. Similar to how Cahun used self-portraiture to subvert the dominance of the male gaze, Rae has created a series of images that tease at the idea of women’s bodies being objectified, and women fighting back against this. As her portraits show parts of her body hidden away by the landscape, it conveys the ideas of 3rd Wave Feminism and the fighting women did for equal rights (including pay, reproductive rights, the ERA etc) during the early 90’s and 2000’s. The monochrome filter on these photographs creates an interesting atmosphere of mystery and sadness, representing the oppression of women still holding significance in society as time moves on.

For our community NFT project, we wish to take inspiration from Clare Rae’s ideas on women standing up for what they believe in and taking action towards their oppression. We have the idea to represent Women’s Rights Activism throughout the late 20th Century, using Rae’s technique of hiding parts of a woman’s body to make a statement on its constant sexualisation. We wish to do this by using a woman’s rights poster in shot, which will be lifted to hide our models torso as she walks past the camera – demonstrating activism, and hinting towards the exploitation of women.

Lissa Rivera – Beautiful Boy

Lissa Rivera is a photographer based in New York, she received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, where she became fascinated with the social history of photography and the evolution of identity, sexuality and gender in relationship to material culture. Rivera grew up in a small town, without much excitement or things to do, therefore she had to create this excitement and wonder herself in order to capture images of meaning and significance. Most of Rivera’s images are staged and hold an almost regal atmosphere to them – her style of photography is expressive and vibrant, something our group wants to portray during our NFT film. Our group discovered Rivera from her project ‘Beautiful Boy’, where Rivera and her domestic partner use staged portraiture as an expressive way to explore male/female identity and reclaim a personal definition of beauty.

A statement Lissa Rivera made about her project in ‘Metal Magazine’; “Beautiful boy was born out of a series of conversations between my friend BJ and I about femininity, fantasy and gender. At the time we were not in a romantic relationship and had no idea of the future. On a subway ride home from a queer film screening, BJ (who is now my sweetheart) confessed that they preferred to be feminine and often wore dresses. In college he was able to be open about his gender expression, but since moving to the city and taking on a new job, it had become more complicated. We spoke about the struggles that we both felt with femininity, how femininity is still considered weaker and less valuable in our culture. I offered to take BJ’s portrait, so that he could see himself.” Additionally, Rivera states “It is important to show his femininity as strength. I want to feel empowered as well, and to have an intimate muse. Together we investigate feminine fantasies presented throughout the history of photography and cinema. The project is a way to “step inside” images that we have found alluring and examine what it is like to live each scenario out. We explore both our captivation and our ambivalence towards these depictions of femininity. By presenting my partner within the lineage of great beauties and populating the media with our images, we are reclaiming in our voice what is attractive and beautiful.”

I love the way that Rivera can capture such innocence and bravery in these images – they inspire and break gender norms that societies have created over the years. The compositions of her photographs hold symmetry and leading lines which draw the observers view towards the main subject. I really enjoy Rivera’s use of monochrome colours in her images, the blocky pinks, blues and browns hint at ideas of simplicity in a world of chaos – where one can truly be themselves without judgement or oppression. This theme is one we wish to take from Rivera’s work, the idea of being free as yourself, feeling comfortable in your femininity and allowing yourself to feel confident without the need for it to be sexualised.

For our NFT project, we are aiming to take inspiration from Rivera’s regal setting and style of photography. The curtains, chandeliers and extravagant wallpapers are all aspects we wish to replicate during our photoshoot due to their link with confidence, power and authority – all of which a woman must fight hard to have. We have the idea to use Rivera-style videos/images at the end of our community project, representing the timeline of women’s rights with this ending demonstrating empowerment and luxury.

Storyboard/Statement of intent

NFT Storyboard

Statement of Intent

For our NFT group project, we are focusing on Jersey as an environmentally friendly community. We are going to use a model who will travel around Jersey on an Evie Bike and buy locally and ethically sourced food. This will show Jersey as environmentally friendly as a lot of Jersey produce is grown or found locally, which reduces a lot of pollution from shipping food in from abroad. We will us music in the background of our video to create an upbeat mood and take shots at a high/low angle to create interest for the viewer.

animation-Gif

GIF

I created my first GIF following these instructions:
1. Create layer for each image
2. Window > timeline
3. Select > Create Frame Animation
4. Drop Menu > Make frames from Layers
5. Timeline > select Forever
6. File > Export > Save for Web Legacy > reduce image size to 720x 720 pixels

Embroidery

We used embroidery with Yulia Makeyeva and we recorded an image using our iPhone of every step when we creating our embroidery by cutting our figures, shapes, words and re-stitching. Our embroidery had to be related to our groups project which is feminism. I chose carefully my fabric, I chose a fabric with flower pattern to demonstrate that women were compared to flowers because of how “delicate” they were. I also went for a satin white fabric to represent how women had to keep their virginity to be considered as pure, or fit for marriage. And pink for a “for the colour of femininity”. the pieces of frabrics are attached with a red thread that means the blood that women lose once a month. in the middle there is the word Femmes which means women in French.

First intent:

Seconde intent:

After we finished taking several images we re-assembled our images as a GIF on a timeline using Adobe Photoshop. This first intent wasn’t successful since the video wasn’t long enough and didn’t much detail into it. So for the seconded GIF I decide to have a minimum of 10 photos so it could be longer, I ended up putting 14 photos in my GIF and I prefer it than the first one.

NFT Community – Artist Reference

Davy Evans

Davy Evans is an award winning multi-disciplinary artist and designer based in Brighton. With a background in graphic design, Evans fuses practical effects and digital techniques to create ethereal abstract imagery. He often manipulates light and liquid to replicate colour, form, and distortions inspired by natural phenomena. His work is combined into beautiful still, eyewatering creations:

Davy Evans - WuKa

And also animated distortive art visuals:

His works combine real life natural elements such as flowers with hyper realistic and futuristic astrophysical elements into one hypnotic visual. His work makes me use big words like I just did; to describe what is to be seen in Davy’s work is quite a challenge as it is so out of this world. Davys work sets a bar for what is possible for the future of digital art and the world of NFT’s.

https://www.davyevans.co.uk/work

His work inspires th efuture of art, not only for how evolutianary and digitaly advanced it is but also for how he creates it, remembering the basics of the creative process.

“I try to play with new materials and photography techniques whenever I can, allowing for happy accidents to form organically,” he says. “I like the challenge of making something out of nothing; for example, I’ll often try to use everyday household items to create effects.”

I want to include the digital design and colourful abstract elements of Davy’s work into my NFT project.

The above image is from Evans latest series during the UK’s lockdown from the Covid Pandemic. He created this work using the simplicity of flowers, water and glass. The simplicity of the arrangement adds to the absurdity of the artwork. Turning simple elements into such a complex looking, hypnotic piece.

The composition of the piece is chaotic with many elements for the eye to take in. The water droplets forming perfect cell like structure in the foreground combined with the colour they adapt taken from the flower in the background, make for a staggering piece. The image looks like a digital artwork with how supernatural it looks. Colour leaks into every corner of the composition, leaving no pixel monochrome. For how abstract the image is, Davy still manages to include tonal elements, some of the pink/salmon areas of the flower are bright and highlighted, while in the centre of the composition and the frames of the waterdrops, we see shading. I also like the blend of cool and warm temperatures in the same composition.

William Kentridge

William Kentridge contemplates history and creation | The Economist

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-kentridge-2680

William is an artist from my hometown Johannesburg, South Africa. Unlike the majority of successful white South Africans, he still lives there, and operates out of the heart of ‘Jozi’. He makes drawings which he often turns into animated films. Sometimes there are also performers in front of the animated film and his work integrates into a theatrical piece. He describes this as a ‘drawing in four dimensions’. His process all starts from charcoal drawings. He uses charcoal for a varied number of reasons but mainly its flexibility, room for change and experimentation in the animation process. “You can change charcoal as quickly as you can change your mind”.

Charcoal is easy to erase and it has an abundant granularity to it. Its tonal range is good for photographing. It is also not as meticulous as other art mediums and has a speed and flow that the artist can adopt. William creates his animations frame by frame. This means his process involves making slight adjustments, step by step, and making photographs in between each adjustment. This proves to be a timely method and therefore the speed the charcoal adapts it important.

Williams normal animation setup in his studios include a physical walk from the camera to the canvas where his drawings are made. His frame by frame process involves his walking between the camera and the canvas hundreds of times. He describes this process as a physical but also mental process when new ideas are suggested.

William believes that art needs an initial impulse which has to be enough to get the first drawing done and then in the physical activity of making the drawings, new ideas emerge and new possibilities engaged with until the piece takes shape.

William Kentridge - That which we do not remember | Solo Show | Artfacts

Williams position as an artist is one of self awareness, this is prevalent in every piece from start to finish. Williams art holds political and polemic weight. He describes himself as a child of privilege – he grew up a white middle-class South African who had the first 40 years of his life under the white privileging apartheid regime and the other 20 living in the South African democracy. He is highly aware of his privilege and also the lack of privilege the majority of South Africans experience. His work highlights both his insider and outsider aspects. This is why he choses to stay in South Africa and not flee the madness of it, is envelopes him in his work focusing on the community.

https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/south-african-politics-8463

These two artists have two different takes on digital art. Davy’s work encapsulates a movement of new ideas and forward thinking. This is represented in his very colourful and digitally advanced work. His work is much more futuristic and out of this world. His work is very much a part of the metaphysical and futuristic aesthetic that is emerging in modern times. Williams work, however, uses a much more tactile form of art, and one that is very much a classic method of expression dating back to when cavemen would draw on walls. He uses this dated method and gives it new life by going through a digitisation process and animating it. Unlike Davy, his art reflects on events that have already, or are currently raking place, instead of focusing on movement into the future. His work is a lot less colourful; for the most part William only works black on white.

NFT Community – Research

Recap Ideas of Identity and community in Jersey

Before embarking in the research of my NFT project I want to recap on the foundations of the project: community in Jersey.

The Government of Jersey is currently consulting the public about what makes Jersey special through a project called Island Identity.

I brainstormed a reaction to what the above question was asking to set a foundation for my NFT project.

The ISLAND IDENTITY project has produced a website and a report that has identified distinctive qualities of island life in Jersey. It discusses:

Constitution & Citizenship
Communities
International
Economy
Education & Sport
Heritage, Culture & the Arts
Environment

I want to keep these themes prevalent throughout our NFT project.

What is an NFT

An NFT is a “one-of-a-kind” digital asset that can be bought and sold like any other piece of property. As with crypto-currency, a record of who owns what is stored on a shared ledger known as the blockchain and maintained by thousands of computers around the world.

FTX, Dolphin partner for NFT Marketplace - Ledger Insights - enterprise  blockchain

NFTs can be used to represent items such as photos, videos, audio, and other types of digital files. This therefore marries the art and photography with the digital, crypto realm.

CoinDesk: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Crypto News and Price Data
CryptoPunks – one of the first non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. The project was developed by American studio Larva Labs.

In economics, a fungible asset is something with units that can be readily interchanged – like money.

With money, you can swap a £10 note for two £5 notes and it will have the same value.

However, if something is non-fungible, this is impossible – it means it has unique properties so it can’t be interchanged with something else.

It could be a house, or a painting such as the Mona Lisa, which is one of a kind. You can take a photo of the painting or buy a print but there will only ever be one original painting.

NFTs are “one-of-a-kind” assets in the digital world that can be bought and sold like any other piece of property, but which have no tangible form of their own.

The digital tokens can be thought of as certificates of ownership for virtual or physical assets.

Traditional works of art such as paintings are valuable precisely because they are one of a kind.

But digital files can be easily and endlessly duplicated.

With NFTs, artwork can be “tokenised” to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought and sold.

Most expensive NFT sold to date ($69 million):

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/03/30/crypto-investor-metakoven-beeple-nft-art.html

2 Lives Exhibition:

https://2lives.world/

The idea theme that this digital art exhibition is going to fixate on, is the idea that we all live two lives and these lives co-exist between tangible and virtual worlds.

2 Lives was created by Francesco Vincenti & Claudia Runcio

nft project

NFT

NFT, Non-Fungible are used to authenticate images, or any object on the Internet. For example, you can freely download images from the canvas La Promenade de Monet, but there is only one original. An NFT can be used to certify that you have the original from Monet. Of course, art isn’t the only thing that NFTs could change on the Internet. The NFT will globally impact the notion of digital property. NTFs could be used to prove ownership of domain names, for video game items, but also physical objects.

A community of the future will celebrate diversity, equality and inclusion and propose a new digital world; a metaverse where everyone is equal regardless of class, race, gender and age. A digital ecosystem that transcends all virtual identities into a utopia for peace, prosperity and progress.

Feminism

For this project, in groups we made a brainstorm and a mind map to answer at the question of what is a community and how communities may change in the future. A community that we were exited to represent were women so we decided to base our NFT work around the subject of feminism. We produced a mood board presents communities of women fighting for our rights, role models that we can see in movies or in the real world. Is important that we show a world of equality, diverse and freedom in our group project. But for that we need to look at the history of feminism how did it started, who were the woman involve, how it is in our society now and how could it look in the future. For the animated video, we decided that it would be interesting to separate our video in three parts. The first is inspired by the artist Cindy Sherman, and it would be about how woman were represented media/movies at the time. After the second part we want to take inspiration from Clare Rae to show how women no longer want to be sexualized and be treated like objects so they hide their bodies from men. The final part is about gender equality, how now woman are free to show their bodies without being sexualised, accept diversity in woman…

NFT Project Introduction And Artist Reference (Identity and Community)

What is an NFT?

NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token representing a digital
file/item. A token is an object built on the Blockchain, non fungible means unique. Any digital file can be turned into an NFT, such as music, art, and sports. NFT’s allow for a creator to create and sell their work independently without the need for a manager , client or institution. A creator will receive a percentage of their product sold within the secondary market if their product is sold on.

What is the Metaverse?

The Metaverse is a virtual twin of our physical world, it is also the total amount of all the digital assets that live on the web and on the blockchain, creating a digital ecosystem. The Metaverse is a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, NFTs and the Internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token

Examples of NFT art

Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million - The Verge
“Everdays” – Beeple (Mike Winkelmann)
Art by Mad Dog Jones
“Bad Idea” – Mad Dog Jones ( Michah Dowbak)
Greg Mike | Every Day Counts (2020) | Artsy
“Everyday counts” – Greg Mike

Trevor Jones artist study

Conor McGregor, oil on canvas drawn by Trevor Jones. Photo: Trevor Jones
Conor McGregor, oil on canvas drawn by Trevor Jones. Photo: Trevor Jones (2021)

Trevor Jones, originally from Canada, moved to his current home in Scotland when he went travelling in 1996. He then graduated from Edinburgh University and Edinburgh College of Art with an MA (Hons) Fine Art with distinction in 2008. Before discovering the world of NFT artwork, Jones worked as the Director of Art in Healthcare, a not-for-profit providing art workshops for people with disabilities, he worked here for 7 years before focusing on his own career. Jones’ work consists of his hand painted artworks being virtually brought to life through animation. Jones sold is first ever NFT art piece for over $10,000, he also has the highest selling piece of NFT artwork in the form of his ‘Bitcoin Bull’, which sold for $55,555.55. 

https://www.trevorjonesart.com/about.html

https://niftygateway.com/collections/trevorjones#:~:text=Trevor%20Jones%20is%20a%20Scotland,sold%20there%20for%20over%20%2410%2C000.

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

  1. Diverse, Inclusive, Intelligent
    1. I think the future of Jersey in the metaverse will be more inclusive as a community
    1. I think the future of Jersey will be a lot more diverse and inclusive within the metaverse. This is because class and social status are completely irrelevant in the metaverse, therefore everyone is free to be who they want to be without judgement or restriction. I think the metaverse will be a safer place for younger generations because the rates of oppression such as racism and sexism will be lower as everyone in the metaverse would be equal.

NFT Community – Statement of Intent

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.