Autore: Thelma Vita

The Aura Protocol Project aims to address the broken and corrupt art markets operating under old-fashioned models. The artists are almost powerless in changing the market dynamic and rules of the game. Yet, they are the only elements in this professional system that, if eliminated, would make the entire system obsolete.

Existing NFT platforms are essentially centralized market infrastructures. For example, the largest NFT market platform Open Sea is a publicly traded company with a typical vertical CEO and staff operation model. Its participants have no way of influencing the development and policy.

The Aura Protocol will be governed through DAO governance and ownership model, where key participants of the art market system such as artists, critics-writers-researchers, curators, collectors, and galleries will have a say in its development and policy. The Aura Protocol is meant to be an open-source protocol, not yet another marketplace platform of digital commodities. It can largely promote itself as a bottom-up initiative of infrastructure built by artists for the art. This implies more trust amongst the genuinely dedicated and engaged professional artistic community.

Corn is one of the most important crops in Mexico, both culturally and economically. It is its birthplace. There are 64 different corn breeds that exist in the country, each with its unique features and characteristics. These plants have played a crucial role in the history, culture, and economy of Mexico. The rich diversity of this native plant has been adapted and maintained thanks to the effort and practices of environmentalists, farmers, and indigenous populations.

Cristobal Ascencio Ramos will create an NFT collection of 3D models of each of the 64 different corn breeds that exist in Mexico to highlight the significance of corn and its diversity. The 3D models will be designed to showcase each breed’s unique features and characteristics. Each model will be a unique representation of a specific breed, and there will be only one NFT per corn breed.

The creation process will involve a collaboration with experts in the corn industry, agriculture, and cultural heritage. The team will work together to research, design, and create 3D models of the different breeds using photogrammetry techniques. It will also involve the participation of local communities and farmers who will provide information and knowledge about the different breeds and their cultural and agricultural significance.

Blockchain’s impact on the Earth has ecological, social and economical consequences.  The distributed promise of blockchain relies on a network of miners established at a geographic point, moving along wires and crossing borders. As Gavin Bridge points out: “borders are imagined (and constructed) as places of abundant emptiness”. It is precisely these imaginary borders that are being used to legitimize crypto-colonialism – which in a second layer consists of experiments by companies and governments to extract economic benefits from those suffering the scars of historic colonial expansion in the Global South. (Howson, 2020).

Escudero’s proposal “An atlas to track Crypto-colonialism.” use “the atlas” as a method of understanding how crypto-colonialism affects life on a planetary scale. The objective is to investigate and visualize; a) relationships between planetary resources and energy consumption; b) the called “Blockchain for good ” and its surveillance consequences . The final outcome will be an online digital artistic atlas, (also in a free download .pdf.) Including interactive maps, diagrams, illustrations, data visualization and texts capable of depicting the ecological, economical, and social consequences of blockchain crypto-colonialism.

“Datangible” proposes to join a decentralised storage network based on blockchain as a node and at the same time, unfold this network as a scenario where to compose and show a route through the materials that make up the same the device that is being used as a node. 

Aluminium, PVC, copper, lanthanum or cerium are some of the materials that form part of the node-device in use. These elements will be the starting point for tracing the long supply chains behind them and finally elaborating a series of images and data that will form the content which will be hosted across the network. These contents will comprise a variety of 3D images and textual information and its carbon footprint will be taken into account as an important factor.

Like decentralised networks, supply chains in the electronics industry are fragmented, dispersed, cryptic and global. The project thus becomes an exercise in dissection that participates in decentralised networks and problematises this very participation by interrogating their own environmental effects.

“Datangible” aims to approach a genealogy of artistic practices in the network in which the telematic infrastructure itself goes from being a tool to a fundamental part of the piece, questioning its own particularities, in this case, focusing on decentralised networks with blockchain.

Dropstream Economies imagines the use of blockchains in environmental steward-ship by modelling smart contracts after the behaviour of river ecosystems. The project proposes on the one hand to develop possible web3 applications and new economies built around a “Dropstream Blockchain”. On the other it works to turn on-chain and off-chain computations into an “audible dashboard“ in the form of a sound installation. 

The goal is to provide accesible ways in which think of uses of these technologies by prototyping an application to monitor the life cycles of rivers, whilst empowering the diverse communities that participate in their regeneration and hold accountable those who damage them.

This project proposes listening as part of a design practice when working for and with natural environments, immersion becomes a way of cultivating affects and relation. It also allows for a deeper exploration of the metaphors and practices that give a voice (and lend a vote) in multi-species governance systems.

The installation would bridge the abstractions brought by remote sensing and planetary scale computation and the intimacy of an embodied experience.