Imagine extracting Charles Darwin (or perhaps just his theory of evolution) from Victorian England and implanting him two centuries into the future to a time when technological and human intelligence are inseparable. In our age of AI, advanced medical science, and engineering, how would Darwin chart the survival of the fittest? Would man-made inventions be considered the building blocks of life? And who would the most likely survivors be?
Read MoreFor the past nine years, over the course of a week in early November, Dubai Design District [d3] transforms into a hub of creativity. True to its name, the district is the location for Dubai Design Week, a festival that provides a platform for both emerging and established designers, architects, educators, companies, and all creative practitioners. In addition to attracting industry professionals, it is also something that engages the public with large-scale outdoor installations, exhibitions and public interventions – and it's free to attend, which means it’s something everyone can enjoy.
Read MoreAbu Dhabi Art 2023: a preview and a summary
Read MoreIn Shakespeare’s 1601 poem, The Phoenix and the Turtle — known to some as the first great metaphysical poem — the two protagonists die. Interpretations vary but it is assumed that the poem charts an unrealised love affair between two birds — a phoenix and a turtledove — who represent truth and beauty. Its tragic end is countered with a hopeful prayer that this ideal union will re-emerge — like a phoenix from the ashes.
Read MoreIn a 2014 essay titled ‘Artworld Ethereum — Identity, Ownership and Authenticity’, Rhea Myers expounded upon the concept of smart contracts, a term that was coined circa 1993 by computer scientist Nick Szabo. In doing so, she drew upon Lawrence Lessig’s 1999 argument that “code is law”, cleverly and swiftly moving to the notion of truth. The phrase ‘code is law’ had become popular in the blockchain era with suggestions that code should replace law for blockchain based transactions due to its technological prospects for certainty. Or as Myers says: “it is a libertarian attempt to reduce the costs and uncertainty of having to trust human beings and interpret ambiguous human language, or possibly a dystopian replacement of rights and safeguards with binary logic.”
Read MoreDADA is a collaborative art platform where people worldwide speak through drawings and creative collaboration, resulting in participatory works. It is a decentralized community committed to building a blockchain token economy for the arts. The 2017 launch of “Creeps & Weirdos” an NFT project and collection containing 108 unique pieces created by 30 platform artists, established DADA’s position among the pioneers of crypto art.
Judy Mam and Bea Ramos, the founders of the movement talked to MORROW about the roots of DADA, the Creeps & Weirdos collection and the Invisible Economy that they are creating.
Read MoreSince 2001, Steven Sacks, has been exhibiting works of the foremost new media artists, building an audience and collector base whilst prioritizing history, context and flawless presentation. His gallery, bitforms, in New York has an impressive roster including: Manfred Mohr, a German artist who has been working with algorithms in his art since the 1970s; Beryl Korot, a pioneer of video art; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer who creates large-scale interactive installations in public spaces; and Refik Anadol, whom he exhibited before he reached international fame.
Read MoreAs an artist and legal scholar, Primavera De Filippi has been researching ways to investigate the challenges of copyright in the digital realm, both academically and artistically for many years. In 2013, she went to Harvard University to investigate the legal challenges of digital technology, with a specific focus on peer-to-peer technologies and decentralized networks. In this context, she was initially fascinated by Bitcoin During her fellowship at Harvard, she decided that Ethereum would become the core focus of her research, and in particular the legal challenges and opportunities raised by smart contracts, DAOS and blockchain technology more generally.
Read MoreOne day in early 2014, Edwin Rosero, a self-taught digital artist and graphic designer who had been tinkering about in Photoshop since a friend gave him an early Wacom tablet in high school, saw an online open call for a pop-up exhibition slated for later that year at London’s Tate Britain museum. The event Loud Tate: Code was a one-day event of art, music and performance exploring how code in language, fashion and technology shape culture. The work he created for that show was a digital derivative of English-born artist Peter Monamy’s 18th century painting Ships Distress in a Storm and was part of a wider series where he used a synthesis of 3D modeled geometry, digitally painted texture mapping, algorithmic pixel sorting and color-channel processing. His conceptual framework — an exploration of technological singularity, and the continuum of consciousness — is still topical today and speaks of the surprising prescience that Rosero also had about the way blockchain technology could impact the art market. In 2014, as he was learning and reading about Bitcoin, he had the idea to hide a public key in the color channels of his art, then send funds to that key, thus proving its provenance using blockchain’s immutable ledger.
Read MoreKevin McCoy’s Quantum is widely credited as being the first NFT. It appears as an octagonal aura, floating on a black background with color pulsating from its core. Kevin McCoy has described the work as his interpretation of the moment of creation. Minted on the Namecoin blockchain in 2014, and later on Ethereum, after which it sold at Sotheby’s Natively Digital sale for $1.4 million, Quantum is now iconic, standing as it does at the first intersection of the blockchain and art.
Read MoreIt was a play on words that sat atop another play on words. When Sarah Meyohas envisioned Bitchcoin (2014) and launched the project in January 2015 as a physically-backed asset on a fork of Bitcoin, she was fusing art and tech with a clever metaphor. Bitchcoin was a spin off from Bitcoin, itself a name that references the financial worlds of gold, mining and speculation but Meyohas added another layer — gender.
Read MoreNili Lerner experienced an ‘aha’ moment in 2008, in the wake of the global financial crash when she realized that her artistic practice could delve into the subject of money. She was interested in the role of money in society and how one’s financial attributes represent the productive potential of each person. However, while she saw money as a superpower in the capitalist economy, she was also interested in the potential of technology to build a new kind of world.
Read MoreA fattened cow, with disturbingly bulging udders, from whose back protrudes an urban metropolis and around which Super Mario’s Rainbow Road twists and turns, is upon the mothership. The ‘Mothership’ is an American Apparel (or is it American Airlines?) space rocket and hovers to a pulsing and somewhat ominous soundtrack against a champagne sky.
Read MoreAn underground musician, Shamanic practitioner, cut-up artist, coder, and a “post y2k experience mindset state of being” are just a few of the ways that halluciphile describes himself. His personality and artistic approach are infused with so many references and influences that his output is widely varied, conceptual and not easy to define. In a nutshell, one way of putting it is that, he reaches for things beyond reach.
Read MoreSince MORROW collective became Publishers on Nifty Gateway, we’ve curated a bunch of drops with our artists and we are excited to be collaborating with the platform for Art Dubai Digital 2023. Here, we had a chat with Matthew Ferrick, Creative Lead at Nifty Gateway, to give us some insight into what makes NG tick.
Read MoreSuperRare token holders ($RARE) are in the middle of a Space Race, voting for projects that they believe will add value to the NFT community. MORROW collective are part of the Space Race and we are also collaborating with SuperRare for our Art Dubai Digital drop UAE First Immersion happening in the first week of March.
Read MoreAn interview with Marc Billings, founder and CEO of Blackdove
Q: How did Black Dove start?
A: In 2002 while visiting Art Basel I fell in love with the moving image artwork from Giles Hendrix. Raw, using the technologies of our time and unapologetically digital, the work symbolised the new generation of artists that would come after him. My co-founder Marisa and I were collecting and engaging in this new medium and built Blackdove for our own use. Only over time as the medium began to grow, did our friends and family begin to ask for our software for their own homes and offices and eventually the company was born. It has been a journey of love and support for all involved.
Read MoreWhilst most artists connect with a need for creativity at a young age, Raphael says he was brought up as a child to be fluent in the language of art. “I quite literally grew up inside a piece of art,” he said. “My mother was a painter and when she would run out of canvas she would just turn to the walls, gluing on shards of mirror and painting around them. She was an abstract expressionist and my father was a musician fluent in Middle Eastern woodwinds. We lived in a very rural area in Northern California, surrounded by woods. We had no electricity, no TV; it was just art.”
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