Projects: June 8, 2022, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm EST
YouTube live:  https://youtu.be/wdPkSCeLLnE
Moderated by Michael Rees with guest panelists:
David Henry Brown Jr (@davidhenrynobodyjr), Michael Joo (OG Crystal Reef), and Casey Reas (Feral File)

Platforms: June 9, 2022, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm EST
YouTube live: https://youtu.be/XcxD0q9WFns
Moderated by Michele Thursz with guest panelists:
Sofia Garcia (Art X Code), Jennifer, and Kevin McCoy (Monegraph), and Nadia Taiga ( Snark Art)

On Wednesday, June 8, 2022, and Thursday, June 9, 2022, starting at 2:00 pm est until 3:30 pm, the Center for New Art at William Paterson University is hosting a colloquium to discuss artists PROJECTS and distribution PLATFORMS that take on the nft and blockchain as a medium and an economy. We will hear from the artists, curators, and distributors how their uses relate to contemporary art history and its market. We will explore how these disparate activities will affect a burgeoning culture. The events will be on zoom and live cast to youtube. 

In 2021 the world came to know the digital subculture that is nonfungible tokens or NFT's. Headline breaking news of emerging new markets featuring a new asset class netted some artists' hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. Many articles and conferences focus on how to access the NFT goldmine for the artist, what they are, and whether it's worth it to buy a jpg. It also brought widespread understanding to cryptocurrencies and the blockchain. 

But for many artists, the question wasn't how to get on the bandwagon but if there is a nascent culture reflecting how art has been practiced over the last decades. NFT markets range from the populist to the elitist, from Open Sea to Super Rare. And these look a lot like Instagram or mirror an elite art auction site. Some felt the art was mixed at best. Categories broke down as many different fields got into the action: internet influencers, the NFL, Art Critics, advertisers, just to name a few. Does this "everyone is an artist" ethos dilute the high values of art or invite egalitarian access? Are these phenomena just some crazy disembodied insta-swap meet, or is there a place to conduct meaning and culture? 

The art world is no stranger to outrageous prices and hard to understand valuations of contemporary works. When confronted with what seems to be the rank commercialism of NFT,  participants defended it by pointing out that the modern art object is a token already. It is claimed that the new Non Fungible Tokens are egalitarian and fair. They represent the possibility that artists could take it directly to their market, without the imprimatur of art galleries, exhibitions spaces, and museums. Even so, many artists work with galleries to present NFTs. 

But the question begs: can NFT's embody something that reflects the epistemology of contemporary fine art culture when so much of NFT art is eye candy?

Projects and Platforms seek to present NFT art from a reflective ecology of art practice. It also looks to platforms that expand the media to a new economy.  Taking the form of a colloquium, we will explore what transformation is at play in a post-NFT world.

Projects and Platforms: Exploring the Culture of NFTs is organized by Michael Rees, Director of the Center For New Art at William Paterson University, and Michele Thursz, Cultural Producer and Director of Seek-Art, LLC. It is a collaboration between the Art Department and the Communications Department and is supported by Academic Affairs. We are partnered with Anna Ehrsam, editor of the Battery journal, Brooklyn, NY, Josh Knoblick of Gardenship Studios, inc., in Kearney, NJ, and by Kadena, a blockchain company that provides the security of Bitcoin, virtually free gas, unparalleled throughput, and smarter contracts that are multi chain. 

The colloquium will take place virtually on Wednesday, June 8, 2022, and Thursday, June 9, 2022, each starting at 2:00 pm est. until 3:30 pm. The event will be on zoom and live cast to Youtube. Add links…

Sponsored By: Kadena | Battery Journal | Sculpture Magazine | Gardenship Studio | William Paterson University .

Korean-American conceptual artist Michael Joo manipulates a wide array of unexpected materials, from antlers and human sweat to fiber optics and magnets, to explore places, people, and objects by reinterpreting perception, asking, “Why do we perceive as we perceive?”. Amid a profusion of themes and styles, certain natural and spiritual motifs emerge, particularly animals and the Buddha. For example, in Bodhi Obfuscatus (Space Baby) (2005), a stone Buddha statue wears a halo of interconnected cameras, which then project close-ups of the Buddha onto screens mounted in the space around the statue. OG crystal Reef

A collaboration between Michael Joo and Danil Krivoruchko, OG:CR transforms static NFTs into a flourishing digital reefscape, where each uniquely individual piece of digital art grows every time it is re-sold.  All 10,301 OG:Crystals will become a direct reflection of both their owner and future transactional  history, creating a visual record of combined digital and organic processes.  Like the living architecture formed by the exo-skeletons of coral polyps, past, present and future coexist, offering a new take on NFTs, value, and the creative process. 
 project: Organic Growth Crystal  Reef 
portfolio: website

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy are New York-based digital media artists whose works extends from film and video to installation and generative software. Recent work includes generative software that uses blockchain technology to create long-term ecosystems for images to live, die and evolve. In 2014, artist Kevin McCoy minted the world’s first digital art NFT. He also co-founded the blockchain company Monegraph. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. They received a Creative Capital award in 2003 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011. Their work is represented by Postmasters Gallery in New York.  
Platform: Monegraph
portfolio: website  

Casey Reas, born 1972 in Troy, Ohio. Lives and works in Los Angeles. Reas' software, prints, and installations have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, and Asia. His work ranges from small works on paper to urban-scale installations, and he balances solo work in the studio with collaborations with architects and musicians. Reas' work is in a range of private and public collections, including the Center Georges Pompidou and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Reas is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Media Arts and Sciences and a bachelor's degree from the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. With Ben Fry, Reas initiated Processing in 2001; Processing is an open-source programming language and environment for the visual arts.
project: Feral File   
portfolio: website

Over the last 6 years, Sofia Garcia has become a noteworthy leader in the Generative Art space as a curator, advisor and community builder. Sofia has been honored with Apollo Magazine’s 40 Under 40 in Art + Tech | Business as the founder of ARTXCODE, a generative art house. She currently sits on the curation board for Art Blocks and is also an advisor for the company. She previously worked at Onyx by J.P. Morgan as a blockchain technical design strategist and as Director of Education of Code/Art, a non-profit focused on teaching young girls how to make art with code. platform: ArtXCode

 Nadia Taiga is the Executive and Curatorial Director at snark.ar and a digital art consultant. Snark.artart market that since 2018 has experimented with blockchain technology as a revolutionary, interactive art medium. Together with artists Snark.art pushes the boundaries of artistic concepts and technology aiming to create an entirely new genre of art that will remain in history. The projects developed and presented by Snark.art include interactive, performance, music, literature, fractional ownership and revolutionary dynamic generative NFT art projects by international established and emerging artists. Prior to joining Snark.art in 2019, Nadia Taiga operated as an international Exhibition Producer, Art Consultant and Curator. Her experience includes ten years of management of Collateral Events at the Venice Biennale of Art and nationally recognized museum exhibitions and large-scale public art projects; work as an Art Consultant and Dealer with collectors globally; and project collaboration with over 200 artists from distinct countries. Taiga is helping to increase the value of life through art and new technologies. platform: SnarkArt 

David Henry Brown Jr. is an Interventionist/immersionist performance artist and sculptor who works in diverse mediums, often placing his physical body into the work. Frequently riffing off of the dark side of American popular culture, he has been showing his work since the early 1990’s both in the New York art world and as a renegade underground figure and as a collaborator. During his many different artistic periods, his work often involves the creation of characters that perform and make objects. His work first became notorious when he Impersonated New York socialite Alex Vonfurstenberg crashing VIP parties for one whole year in 2000. Sixty photos document “Alex” meeting the Clintons, Puff Daddy and other luminaries. The project was shown as his first solo show at Roebling Hall gallery In new York and created an international news scandal in the Media, appearing in The New York Observer, The Globe and on ABC’s 20/20 with John Stossil, to name a few. His work has been collected in prominent private art collections.
project: @davidhenrynobodyjr
portfolio: website 

Michele Thursz is an art professional based in New York. She studied painting and art history at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received an MA in Curatorial Practice from The School of Visual Arts. She specializes in Postwar, Contemporary art, and Emerging art. She has organized exhibitions internationally, regionally in and outside institutions. She has written and led public conversations about contemporary art practice and the market.  She is an Accredited Member of The Appraisers Association of America and USPAP compliant through 2022. She is on the Board of Directors, Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center; New York Editorial Board, University of California, Academic Journal, Resonance: Sound and Culture.  platform: a post media network

Michael Rees was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1982 and a MFA from Yale University in 1989. He is a professor of Sculpture and Digital Media at William Paterson University and the Director of the Center For New Art. He has shown work in public venues, including The Whitney Museum, the Museum of Art and Design, Grounds For Sculpture, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Lenexa, Kansas, and others. He has also shown work in one-person shows in New York galleries including Bravin Lee Projects, 303 Gallery, Pablo’s Birthday, and others.  He has produced Projects and Platforms along with Michele Thursz and will host the Projects panel. portfolio: website