Proof of Culture: Where 2D, 3D, and Augmented Worlds Meet | Karatina Feder, Rob McCarty, Nadia Taiga

Everyone, good morning. Uh, glad to be here again today. Um, my name is Elena and I curated the art gallery here at IT Denver this year. This is my first year at IT Denver and I'm super excited to be here today with my wonderful guests who helped me actually to bring the live to the gallery today. Uh so Naddie is a wonderful curator who brought uh some really interesting videos to the event and Rob is the founder of Elust which is a really cool augmented reality company.

So maybe you guys start with introducing yourselves really quickly and then we can go into some questions.

Uh hi everyone. Does it work? Yeah. So I'm Nadia Tiger. I I'm creator and cultural entpreneur as I define myself.

Um since the last 18 years I have been working with artists introducing them different mediums starting from glass to blockchain and now augmented real u AI. So uh my main focus always was how medium change the cultural paradigm and behavior of our reality and artists um are the best uh pusher or the best innovators to actually prove the cultural paradigm or prove the tool and new tools. So I have been working uh with uh public big public projects and um exhibitions across different institutions including the Hermitage Museum and uh Venice bianial contexts. Um so I'm very excited to be here because um since 2018 uh we have developed and introduced blockchain as a new medium to the artist with a company snark.art that time uh and og.

art and we were experimenting introducing blockchain to them to see how artist that never worked with technology can redefine and reshape actually the technical from technical aspect to bring it to conceptual and we have built um few collections that you can see at the gallery that Elena kindly invited me co-curate and uh we developed uh dynamic NFTts that time I don't like word NFT because we have started before NFT exists and it's a blockchain art. Um, and it's just more about the co-creation and I think that's what amazing that new technologies help us uh co-create with artists. So, I'm very excited to be a part of it.

Thank you, Nadia.

Okay, there we go. Uh what's going on everyone? My name is Rob McCarti. Uh I'm one of the co-founders of Illist. We're a noode augmented reality creation platform where you can place digital stories anywhere in the world.

You can kind of think of us like a Pokemon Go for culture uh where really the world is a canvas. So we work with artists, creators, uh musicians, storytellers to essentially co-create these augmented reality experiences in the world. And uh the component that is really important to us is this idea of archiving culture. And that's why we are integrating blockchain technologies into our stack so that we could be able to create a record of experiences in the world for future generations to see.

Super cool. Um so for this talk I really wanted to focus on different mediums and that's why I wanted to go from 2D to 3D. So my question to both of you is actually how an RAS goes from 2D to 3D which tools can they use whom should they ask if they're super interested I myself worked with a few traditional artists and I know how tough it could be of a journey to go from one medium to another. So maybe if you could both share your thoughts on that that would be great.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, the the quick the quick answer is there's so many tools out there now for content creation that it really comes down to just figuring out where you want to focus on. A lot of people will say Blender is great for 3D. Even before Blender, like we do an education course on creating your first AR experiences, you can create just from a text prompt in an AI platform, just a a model that you want to see visualized in the world without having any experience with the 3D software.

I think it's a good first step just to see that this is a usable tech and you can immediately see it in the room with you and then you can go down the steps of learning Blender and becoming a more uh you know being able to produce more higher fidelity types of scenes and meshes. Um but I would definitely say like try out some of the like some of these tools are free and um yeah just test things out. Hey, so um I really I really think that it's not about two-dimensional or threedimensional, it's not about dimension, it's about relation. Um when we say two-dimensional, three-dimensional or augmented space or um immersive space, we don't really change anything. So we speak about what relationship we can build with a medium and um it doesn't matter what dimensions are there but what relations and what new kind of structure we create uh using the new tool or using a using the new medium.

So through my experience working with um contemporary artist let's say starting with glass that never worked with glass before and I experienced in since 2010 that high resistance uh from the artist from conceptual artists to try the new medium because it's dangerous for famous artist it's a it's a friction they challenge they start they struggle they don't understand the medium medium. So there should be people like you, like me who translate that medium, introduced it in a safe way, secure way and see the potential because the most powerful thing in artists is conceptual way not like the aesthetics. Aesthetics just only can be multiplied tomorrow in many many things. We saw it in a NFT mania time when bunch of beautiful pictures were created but they didn't really survive the hype. So the with artists come from two-dimensional to three-dimensional or augmented or immersive or AI field always need to see the possibilities and the limits of the medium.

So every medium has it. So an artist sometimes looking at the medium like with blockchain we introduced it to to the artist and we had the same resistance like with glass uh I had many years ago because it was very dangerous. It was controversial that time 2018 2019 and people were like oh crypto what why we should do this like what I can really compromise my um concept my glory or something it's dangerous so to navigate the artist through you kind of create the real translation from the conceptual approach to the possibilities of the medium and push the limits. So when the artist pushes the limits of the medium then something new innovative things happen and I believe that artists are the best uh people and innovators as well uh the best people that can really um create a new relationship with a medium then it become so uh accessible for for us right with some now So we use blockchain in many ways sometimes people even don't know that they are part of AI or blockchain behind so it's become very conventional so for me it's mostly that artists needs to or people needs to push the limits of the medium tool itself doesn't really bring the change but the relationship with that tool and what we create with that tool. That's great.

No, thank you. Thank you, Nadia. I couldn't agree more. Um, so speaking about tools, uh, I actually wanted to speak a little bit about augmented reality tools. I am myself a big fan of augmented reality.

I think it can extend the experience of an art piece dramatically and it's relatively easy to use. So, I do want to see more augmented reality art around me. So maybe you can share a little bit Rob how you came up with the idea of eloost um and how can RS use it and I don't know anything else.

Yeah sure. Um yeah, many moons ago uh was working as a consultant with Meta to help them launch their Spark AR platform or like AR creator tools and it was one of the most fun experiences ever because it combines all the things that I love digital art technology and locations and in in different scenes. And so, but the issue with with that platform, and I was trolling through the terms of service one day, and it said that, and at least for Metaspark, as a creator, you're assigning away your IP rights and a galaxywide galaxywide exclusive perpetuity license to Meta, uh, which is about as strongly worded as you can get for an IP clause and a terms of service. So that was kind of the awakening of well a we we you can't sell the artwork originally even though these are amazing works of art. The only way you can make money as a creator was to do commission works through uh you know a brand or a record label that was looking to do promotion uh through through Instagram.

So that was kind of the impetus where my business partner came from the snap ecosystem. similar story. And we started to basically built out back in 2020 the like one of our our first uh basically ERC721 contract for minting uh our AR assets and we got to partner up with um the hip hop artists MF Doom before he passed away and did like an AR NFT drop of his mask which was a limited run and uh that was basically what kind of kicked off our whole story and in the space.

Very nice. Um Nadia maybe you can share I don't know we we spoke a little bit about a story uh often artists of a traditional artist going into digital space I don't know if you want to briefly mention that story or any advice to the artists art collectors art enthusiasts that are here today I think would be super cool to hear from you

I don't know how many artists are here or developers so or collectors so because to Artists and collectors are two sides of the same coin. So that because artists deal with internity and collectors chose the safer past in the beginning and then when they gain their wealth they kind of realize that money don't buy eternity but art does. So and they start to collect art. So that's my kind of approach. So with working with contemporary artists uh yeah I had many interesting stories how you can break the ice and ice uh and make artists uh excited about the medium.

Uh every artist want to experiment every artist. But the challenge is when uh you are young and you don't have anything to lose, you are experimenting with anything. But when you reach a certain point when you are already developed your career and you depend on the gallery sale uh important gallery sale, museum shows. So you become more cautious and that's very big challenge and I've seen many artists on the highest point of career when they had this fear in the eyes to approach the new medium. It's scary.

You can lose everything. And um so with our experience we in 2018 we were walking around New York and uh I was connecting and putting dots together with many artists and I can bring to experiment and many of them were skeptical many of them turned me down and uh it's fine. Um we usually you visit the studio of the artist just friendly vis visit and you walk around and this is what we did with um our artist Michael J. He was in um already in a stage of his career when he achieved many things but it was not already expanding. it stopped ex stopped growing and um so in a way I think he was curious and ready to try something new and we were walking around his studio and we saw crystals uh on this on the table that he digged himself from uh the activity in New York they let people like touristic tourist activity you can dig some crystals and he mentioned to us that every crystal is unique there is no another identical crystal.

It's like a fingerprints. So we be like, "Oh, interesting." Because it was exactly what blockchain actually allows to do when you could really have something different. There is no multiples but something new. So and we started to think through and we came up with an idea why the collectors would not be become a catalyz catal Catalyst sorry so cataly catalyzer catalyzer for the artwork let's say the time when they push the button or something that some data that they will include there will emphasize the final look of the artwork so they will become a true co-creators of the artwork so we were so excited about that idea but the problem was we didn't have any money to develop that project.

We were just in the beginning of 2019 already and uh in front of big pandemic coming and um so we kind of didn't succeed in finding people who will do it volunteer for free like mathematicians or some coders behind. So we pushed it back and during pandemic we thought okay let's let's take a risk. We put two people together. So Michael J as a as an artist who was ready to experiment and has a very conceptual strong conceptual point behind the crystals. Why crystals?

How they grow? How what qualities they have? What properties they have? and Daniel Karuchko who was one and he is one of the best 3D uh 3D artists. Um so we put them together introduced them and let them build some understanding not interfere.

So this is how the project has started and then of course during that we started to really develop the idea that most important that it's become the collaborative piece in the end. So when people bought a seed of a crystal initially they don't know what they build they buy but crystal seed goes into the crypto wallet and reads its data and the first shape is creating created then in order to make it grow you had to sell it to another crypto wallet and another crypto wallet data emphasizes the look of the second part. So in the end it become a collaborative piece. So that was kind of breaking through. But what I want just to mention that Michael J for his bravery now is rewarded very well because other artists started to ask him after that success.

We like we sold those 10,000 crystals for 4.5 million in 4 hours.

Amazing.

Yes. That time right now.

Wow. And of course everyone like money proved the concept. many artists started to like send us um inquiries to work with them but we couldn't take many we because it's very short uh long development so Michael Juno uh because of this introductory to the new medium he has started to develop other derivative artworks based on that concept he's in a major museum shows around the states and I can't announce you what is going to happen this this year. I will do it in interview because two days more I can't announce it. So that's bravery paid back.

Super cool. No, I mean it's such a great story. I really wanted you to share it because it's a very inspiring story. As we are coming to a close of this panel, Rob, do you want to add anything? U

Sure. Yeah. I think looking at AR as I mean it's it's in it's in the the framing of it. It's augmenting reality. And so you can have standalone AR experiences and we we do have those in the gallery, but I think I want to challenge anyone to think about how can we take something that exists in the real world and then add another layer of storytelling to it.

So anything could be augmented. So whether that be, you know, uh, you know, a wall that you see, a mural, a logo, uh, you know, if you want to add an audio clip to along a walk, uh, you can sort of kind of create these these like seeds for this future metaverse that's going to exist outside. And I mean, I it sounds maybe a little too futuristic, be like, oh, there's a metaverse outside. But just looking at the numbers of the amount of Ray-B bands that are going into production now, the meta ray bands, uh we're looking at 10 million up from 2 million last year because the people right now are be becoming completely open to this idea of having a wearable based device that is contextual and can be able to provide this. So Samsung and Google are now partnered up on their XR glasses that they're working on.

And then we also have uh you know SH Snap that's coming out with theirs later this year. So I I think right now the the form factor is a mobile device, but it'll eventually be something where we're untethered from uh something that we have to hold and it's going to become natural. It's part of our everyday experience. So I I think it's great just to kind of take a step, you know, jump jump in a little bit. Um but it's it's something that's coming and it's something to to think about.

Yeah. Can't wait. Everything can be augmented. Let's end on that. Thank you so much for joining me and we will have another talk at 2 p.

m. at the art gallery if you want to hear more stories from this.

Thank you Elena. Thank you everyone and thank you Rob. It's a cool project you developed. Good luck.

Appreciate you all.