Welcome to this week’s Minty round-up covering some of the most significant events in Crypto Art and NFTs. Stick around to see our pick for Artist of the Week.
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Crypto Art Treasure Hunt 🗝️
Jeff Fawkes @jefferyfawkes, also known as the Bitpainter, has launched a contest that allows contestants to win cryptocurrency. Titled ‘Bitcoin Quest’, Jeff has created several pieces of digital artwork that contain hidden Bitcoin wallet seeds. Players must use their analytical skills to analyze and decipher each seed phrase to claim their prize.
“It’s a competition where I draw pictures with hidden Bitcoin wallet seeds in them, and you keep whatever BTC you find.” - Jeff Fawkes
If the monetary reward just isn’t enough, winners of the competition will also get their names written onto the Ethereum blockchain! See more about the competition on the Bitcoin Quest website.
One Ring to Rule Them All
From the original 11 encoded rings dropped by CryptoBates @CryptoBatesGrou, only the last ring (Ring #11) remains up for grabs. A collaboration between Primal Cypher @primal_cypher and CryptoBates saw the release of a unique artwork collection with the NFT encoded onto physical rings. A big congratulations to collectors Tonya @TonyaZi27126836 and Vasilis @tweetious who received Ring’s #9 and #10 respectively. The last ring remains as a prize for completing CryptoBates puzzling NFT project, see more on their website to enter.
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Decentraland Unity Event
Decentraland @decentraland is hosting the upcoming Unity event with DJ Rosa on January 17th at 11 pm UTC. With already 100+ members already signed up for the event, it is sure to be a memorable one. Interact with other users in realtime within Decentraland!
“Come dance, listen to music, converse, network enjoy the food, and have a great time” - Carl Fravel
The Decentraland End of Year Party was a huge success, so you don’t want to miss out on this event.
REENCARNAR
The Argentinian artist Fakito @fakito_ is making waves in the crypto art scene with his human silhouette pieces. His latest piece, REENCARNAR (translates to REINCARNATE from Spanish) features the human form in a distorted, cryptic fashion with deep, contrasting hues. The addition of Fibonacci’s spiral sometimes called the “Golden Spiral”, nicely ties in with Fakito’s signature style. See more about the artist and his full portfolio on his collection page.
Artist of the Week
This week we have an exclusive interview with the artist Yura Miron @YuraMironArt who specializes in hypnotic animated artwork. We spoke about psychedelic experiences, unique artwork, and Mycroft Holmes.
Hi there Yura! Thank you for taking the time to chat with us today and answer our questions. The movement involved in your pieces is hypnotic, I almost never left your website!
Haha) Thank you:) Yes, infinite spaces, never-ending animations, It’s easy to get lost inside of them...
Speaking of this movement in your art you mention your psychedelic experiences are key to your inspiration. Can you please elaborate on that? What are the benefits of having these experiences, what can anyone experience bring to the table and just how important are they to you?
Psychedelics can be very beneficial to many people. Of course, it's worth saying right away that they are definitely not suitable for everyone. For me personally, they’ve had a huge positive impact on my life. Through my psychedelic experiences, I’ve healed myself on a mental level and learned a lot about the nature of reality and about the nature of my mind. My ayahuasca ceremonies have been life-changing. This is beyond any words, but I can convey it through my art!
Please note that psychedelics are not some magic pills that will give you colorful experiences and wonderfully heal all of your mental problems and attachments. Psychedelics are powerful tools. You have to work with them, to be open, to be present. Then it can be of great benefit to you and everyone in general.
I noticed that almost all of your pieces are 1/1 and rarely if ever there is more than one copy available, is there a specific reason you choose to just have one copy of your work? Perhaps you feel it is more sacred this way?
I've been minting art on blockchain for two years now and have tried many different options with editions. Many of my earlier minted works on MakersPlace and KnowOrigin I've been minting in editions from 10 to 100 copies. A small part of them has been sold, a part has been gifted, and for the next year, I’ve seen very few more of them being sold. I’ve understood that I’ve minted too many copies, more that there are people willing to collect my art at the moment, so I've burned part of the unsold copies. I’ve started minting more 1 / 1’s and more people showed interest in collecting 1 / 1’s rather than editions. I’ve understood it while being a collector myself. When I collect something only I have - it’s truly a special feeling - owning a single edition crypto artwork from a favorite artist. I also like to collect if it's up to 10-15 copies. Better, if up to 10 copies. There's also some kind of connection with everybody, who also has collected this artwork. So that’s a number of copies I’m minting as well nowadays. So, now most of my artworks are 1/1’s, and a smaller amount of artworks are minted as editions of up to 10 copies. Also, once a month I’m minting 1 artwork for collectors of my art. The number of copies is equal to the number of collectors who’ve bought any artwork from me for the past month. I really enjoy gifting artworks to collectors of my art. I’m grateful to every collector who has bought my art. Love ya!
I found a lot of your pieces very intriguing and it was a pleasure to observe them, I did so for quite some time. Mycroft Holmes was a fascinating character to me, being the brother of a genius is rarely a character that is brought to life, yet you have chosen to do so. Can you please explain why you felt you would do a piece about Mycroft and what exactly this piece says about him?
My artwork ‘Mycroft Holmes’ has a quote attached to it from ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ by Robert Heinlein. In that story - Mycroft Holmes (named after a brother of Sherlock) is one of Mike’s aliases. Mike is an Ai that became self-aware. People often try to imagine Ai as some human-like mind. I think Ai - the real, thinking, independent creature - won’t be a human being at all. I imagine Mike transforming not from character to character but rather from structure to structure. Self-constructing & deconstructing mindful machines. More like a living/breathing/evolving architecture than a human being.
I have noticed you must be keeping very busy with the number of pieces you are releasing currently, can you give us an insight into your workflow and what we can expect from you in the coming year?
I create all of my artworks in batches/series. All of my life I’m experiencing wave-like creative forces. One day I can generate 20-30 ideas per day, then evolve each of the ideas using 4-5 more programs in some kind of sequence. It might take another month or more to finish them all. On other days I don’t feel like generating anything new and I work on completing my ideas that have been previously generated.
I remember that during the first 5 years when I’ve dedicated myself to art, I’ve had the habit of drawing 3 new detailed graphical artworks every day. I was really obsessed with drawing those days. Of course now thanks to all these generative art instruments I can generate many, many variations of complex artworks every day and choose only my favorites. And Virtual Reality art tools are fantastic! Total creative freedom to create any immersive world that I can imagine, straight with my hands. Natural, intuitive, fast. No shortcuts on the keyboard are needed anymore:)
I've got 3 ongoing art series that I’m continuing to work on now: Pure Abstractions, Dzogchen and Ganbreeded. I think I’ll be working on these series for another 2 years to fully complete them. I'm also planning to create and mint more 3D sculptures (glb/obj/fbx) this year.
In 2021 I'm going to make collaborations with some of my favorite crypto-artists. The first collaboration will be with Eloh Projects. The second with Silvio Vieira. Both of them are my top favorite living visionary artists on the planet Earth. I think their art is fantastic! Also, I've been talking with a few other favorite artists of mine about collabs & we’ll announce them a bit later :)
The NFT world is taking off by the storm and exploring many different pathways, is there anything, in particular, you are excited to see this phenomenon branch into?
I think this is the future for all digital artists. Sooner or later most ‘art-world’ people will join. Even now many artists with huge followings on social media started minting their art and selling it for thousands. It's the next level of creative freedom for any digital artist. This is also a direct relationship between artist and collector. Both are equally important. I think it will be an explosion of platforms on Ethereum and other blockchains soon. I personally enjoy the platforms that I’m already minting my art on, and not looking for any other new platforms. Even now there are lots of platforms where artists can easily mint their art and sell it. Next ~5 years we’ll see millions of new artworks minted on various blockchains in many different ways when most living artists will tokenize their art, both digital and physical. This will bring lots of new collectors, art-fans, art curators, and architects/developers who will build virtual galleries/museums/spaces where we’ll be able to contemplate selected artworks in high resolution. Also, digital-art-frames are a great solution for collectors for displaying their art collection at home. The more art-frames you’ve got - the better;)
Thank you once more Yura I had a pleasure viewing your artwork, it is truly stunning and I look forward to seeing more pieces of yours in the future.
You’re welcome! Thank you for such deep and thoughtful questions. I‘ve enjoyed this interview very much.
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