Step into the future with a branching NFT revolution. London’s new cultural hub, entitled The NFT Gallery, presents its second exhibit with a trio breaking into the metaverse. Welcome to The Evolution Project, where the real world seeds the new.
A new powerhouse hub whose newborn status outshines any hotspot on Dover street – right on Buckingham’s doorstep, is none other than London’s NFT Gallery. As it made way for a promisingly lucrative endeavour for collectors and spectators, on July 26, 2022, it was time to draw back the veil and reveal its second-ever exhibit. Enter: The Evolution Project.
As I stepped into a space-like universe with silver mirrored floors, a vast open space filled with mesmerising curiosities, I knew I had found the right place. With a click of a button, digital artist James Viggers, the co-founder of the project, lit up the room as he stepped forward wearing blue LED light-up trainers and a sleek black ensemble.
I had officially entered the future of art when Viggers shared that the artworks were classed as “generative breeding digital fine artworks.”
The Evolution Project is the first Non-fungible token (NFT) collaboration to bridge the gap between blockchain technology and Fine Art through a series of interconnected digital CryptoKD trees. NFTs, act like a digital certificate of authenticity. They also closely resemble a leaf on a tree – each unique and a collector of life.
With an NFT, users can buy, sell, and seed digital tree collectables. And examples of this were all around me.
Spread around the white-bearing walls was a mixture of physical and digital pieces that each displayed the notion of nature. Felt fabric trunks and custom-made crochet flowers stretched out like the hands of a humanitarian seeker. Every part overlaps and is threaded together to form vibrant interlocking patterns.
From raw to real, the exhibit embodies connectedness and unity as it plays with delicate yet strikingly reachable 3D patterns that jump out at you from across the room. Each piece showcases a vast passion for multimedia, from cast bronze, aluminium, textiles, ceramics, maps, written interventions, film, functional sculpture, installation and collage.
Spearheaded by his side-kick sister, internationally acclaimed artist Kate Daudy, joined the opening night riding through the atmosphere on a smartphone-controlled robot.
“As a shy person, I thought I would attend my opening as a Robotic Telepresence as a new experience. It also solved the problem of what to wear: sunglasses and an aluminium turban” – Kate Daudy.
Before Daudy explored the meaning of new materials, her eye-catching pieces were actually part of her original, innovative “tree” series. This continuation of a long-established scheme started in 2017 with her creative working partner, Nobel prize-winning physicist and artist Professor Kostya Novoselov.
It was here that the duo spent years building up charitable relationships, in particular with Syrian refugees. The Fine Art works displayed in the gallery were commissioned and transported to London after being physically threaded in refugee camps.
During her visits, the courage, perseverance and dignity of the people she met struck Daudy deeply. These positive core human qualities and the terrible collateral results of war, climate change, hatred and violence left an overriding message to humanity.
We can all help one another. We are all connected.
Like the calm before the storm, as more and more guests flocked into The NFT Gallery dressed in Gucci, bedazzled loafers, suits and draped in purple, yellow and red – it made the empowering trees feel more at home. With them, an exhilarating buzz of excitement poured in from the bustling city life outside, and before I knew it, the gallery had transformed into a united front.
Desperate to learn more and eager to follow suit, the most common murmurs bouncing around the room were always followed by “this is so exciting”.
As the market continues to heat up in this ever-changing digital world, Daudy and Viggers knew it was time to enter this exciting metaverse venture to explore NFTs as an artistic medium. Fine Art trees could link “the real, virtual and future worlds with a generative breeding mechanism,” says the co-founder of The NFT Project, Lilien Hornung-Mary.
The trio encapsulates the artistic DNA of Daudy’s work by taking the compositions, tree works, materials, words, science themes, connections and curiosity and places them into a computer program. After a series of algorithms and coding that make up over 20 descriptive words per piece, the connected elements all come together in 15 seconds, resulting in an extraordinary masterpiece.
“The visual DNA of her physical trees has been identified, codified and incorporated into the new NFT artworks”, explains The Evolution Project, “critically, the digital works retain the DNA structure from their creation, allowing the future interbreeding of digital trees to create new “seedling” NFTs”.
Besides the fact that each completed tree has been named after each team member, other words like chaos, love and hope play a significant role in the make-up of the digital triumph.
“In this network of artworks, we have encoded the connections between the trees. We used ‘love’ as the dominant gene because it is the most powerful force in the universe, the word ‘chaos’ for its creative benefit of the world and that no matter what, there is always ‘hope’,” explains Viggers.
Naturally, as the exhilarating opening night drew to a close, I just had to ask what the future held in store for The Evolution Project:
“This is a platform for collaboration. It’s all about connection,” shares James Viggers, “we intend to continue to work with galleries, critics and collectors to help bridge the gap between fine art and NFTs. Creating new genes, new imagery – the possibilities are endless.”
So, step into the future with a branching NFT revolution.
Explore The NFT artworks through the gallery or on OpenSea.