As a reshaping of The Floor Is Too High project under the new guidelines set by Creatives DAO, we would like to propose an artistic research grant pilot program aiming to contribute to the future of Creatives DAO organization by engaging with worlds outside of NEAR by selecting outside-community research projects that produce high level art in the VR artistic domain.
Our goal is to bring new people into the community, three artists per month, characterized by a deep relation with VR content production not only from an artistic perspective, but also from an institutional and commercial perspective. We hope that after three iterations some of these artists might become new members of the VR-DAO council, bringing artistic and technical knowledge that could be useful for the whole community.
Each month should bring different aesthetic and technical perspectives, inline with the conceptual ground already set in the previous curatorial work, representing different territories and relation with the world.
STRATEGY
For this, we have resumed our curatorial research aiming for a kind of artist not only characterized by the consistency and maturity of their artwork and VR exploration in an early stage of their career, but also by the institutional and professional relations that such artists might have shaped through their career in their own ecosystems. We aim for artists in an early stage of their career that still depend on side or freelance work to subsist, giving them a chance to dedicate more time and effort to their own artistic research for a month period, an not to artist that are already in a stage of their careers that allows them to be selfsufficientish exclusively by means of their art production.
We intend to fund three artists each month, trying to bring together a group that already might have a relationship. We hope this strategy might help them to accelerate their artistic process, since as artists are always different individuals with different perspectives and technical relations and knowledge, they might support each other filling the gaps of technical specificity, potentially producing stronger works in shorter time spans. We as curator will encourage them to share their process and collaborate with one another.
During this period we would ask them to share substantial (in terms of quantity and aesthetical strength) content reflecting the research process, which will be the main material for VR-DAO social media reactivation. We will not demand any artistic production as a mandatory outcome of the grant, but we will inform as well as possible about the possibilities artists have to display and trade their works through the platforms at our disposal, hoping to provoke the use of these technologies. Since we believe it is the interest of professional artists to participate in art trading systems in a decentralized organization.
PROPOSED ARTISTS FOR JULY EDITION
For the first edition we propose three artists currently based in Berlin, Chloé Lee, Samuel Perea-Díaz and Vanta. They all have an artistic relation with “Matters of Activity”, a cluster of excellence of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin that explores VR as one of its main media for science communication. Each one of these artists have a unique perspective and approach to VR, with different technical relations and levels of technicality.
They all have developed a strong body of work in their own aesthetical and territorial contexts and they have previous experience collaborating with one another. Chloé Lee and Samuel are a visual and sound artist with different and relevant institutional relations, and Vanta is a sensible developer with significant experience in commercial and industrial applications, which from a personal perspective, makes them complement each other in aesthetical aspects, and also in terms of institutional and commercial relation.
Chloé Lee uses color, collage and drawing to create densely layered, moving and still images which explore where digital and analog worlds meet. Her most recent fascination has been with 3D and VR environments and how these new spaces can be used to explore memory, identity, and how we make meaning. Chloé was recently named a Fulbright Scholarship and New Media Caucus grantee for a VR project she is developing called Memory Palace in collaboration with Matters of Activity Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Germany. She resides in Brooklyn, NY, where she is pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College, at City University of New York.
Samuel Perea-Díaz is an artist, transdisciplinary spatial designer, and architect based in Berlin. Their practice incorporates exhibition scenography, curating, and sound. Samuel often works with site-specific installations and sound objects. Their installations set contextual data by working with sonification, relocation of sound, field recording, and virtual reality. Recent exhibitions include shows at Tieranatomisches Theater (2022), 48H Neukölln (2021), SoundsAbout (2020-2022), CLB Gallery (2020) and the Akademie der Künste (2019) in the context of the Biennial for Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art, Kontakte´19.
www.perea-diaz.es
VanTa is an experienced developer, with a strong focus in Computer Graphic Images. In his creations, he always tries to find a balance between geometry, abstraction and chaos. At the age of 8 he already left home to found his own aerospace startup at his parents porch with very little venture capital. Having a background in Environmental Sciences, his work revolves around the intersection between art, science and technology. He loves when digital elements align with the real world; either in Augmented Reality overlays, projection mapping on architectural landmarks or pixels floating in thin air. VanTa also performs as a VJ and musician in different locations and festivals all around the world. When he finds time, he teaches coding to designers and artists.
www.vanta.xyz
FINAL REMARKS
In a way this project set the ground for a strategy to bring new people and knowledge that already is active in other environments and markets, engaging with worlds outside NEAR beyond the individuality of each artist, but also with the institutionality and commercial experience artists might have. It makes sense to think about how to articulate such institutional relations in ways that the NEAR community can expand their current projects and its communication strategy. At the same time, each artist as an individual can contribute not only through creation but also sharing knowledge. If hypothetically we project this exercise for three month we would count with nine new members with strong aesthetic and technical backgrounds.
These artists have already been contacted, and they have been informed about the methodology of funding, the expected outcome, and how we would like to gradually include them, in one way or another, into the organization of VR-DAO. They have already accepted our invitation, and understanding that this is a fund that still needs to be requested, they have already made their NEAR wallets and NEAR Forum accounts.
REQUESTED VALUE
We would like to fund each artist with 750 USD, an amount we estimate might be enough to cover close to half living costs. For the continuity of the curatorial and production endeavors, which include the production activities of July iteration (communication, coordination and support of the funded artists) and the curatorial activities for August iteration (research, selection, contact, support with NEAR platforms) we consider 1000 USD.
Total request: 3250$