“Weekly Top 10 Picks” can be contributed by anyone in the SR community. To participate send your weekly 10 favorite artworks on SuperRare to [email protected] and we’ll get your picks featured!

Arseny Vesnin (Twitter: @designercollector), founder of Designcollector Network (2003) and curator of the Digital Decade initiatives, exhibitions and online collaborations. Interdisciplinary mediator guiding artists and communicating the future of art. Based in St.Petersburg, Russia. 

Sneaky by @floraborsi

DC: You’re already a successful and well established artist, what made you pursue NFT art as a medium? 

FB: NFT is the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen! I’m so happy to see artists who made art just for fun and for their followers are selling for thousands of dollars! Somehow with my moving imagery I couldn’t fit into Photography nor Digital Art, so NFT was the perfect solution for me to monetize my Animations.

DC: Tell us a little about your work 

DA: Back in 2015, I created Ultra – Fusion, a seven minutes long animated loop. It was my follow-up project to Zombierina and my second sculpture after I’ve decided to focus more on the aspect of sculpting and sculpture in virtual space, rather than doing character animation. Being able to delve into form, light, texture, and materiality with all its artificial intensity was a very appealing experience for me. Now six years later Ultra – Fusion making Its way onto the blockchain through a nonfungible token, or NFT.

DC: What inspired the work in your first NFT drop? 

DD: The first NFT drop will be the series I shot with Daft Punk for Lemon Magazine. 6 images in single edition, no other copies have been sold until now and no other copies will be sold. These images will only remain in the blockchain. When thinking about Daft Punk I had this coming to mind: Does the intervention of machines / masks on our bodies enable us to get closer to whom we truly are? So I proposed the magazine to shoot them integrating a 3D cyborg woman into the existing pictures, thus proposing my own vision of an augmented human being. For the little story the cover was a Daft Punk tribute to David Bowie “Heroes” album cover. But I recently discovered on the net that a few years later, in 2014, David Bowie shared the photo on his FaceBook account during the London Music Week Award. And magazines published the image the next day saying that he was wearing Daft Punk’s helmet. But I can confirm it wasn’t him but the Daft Punk. 

DC: Is it important to you to be a part of a creative community of people?

ST: The audience feedback is very important for me as an artist. And not only from like-minded people and other artists but from strangers and admirers. As I dedicated the main part of my life to photography art it is important for me to be a part of the community and find new sources of inspiration, and to be the same for others, and to earn for living. That’s why I follow trends, communicate with followers and clients and run collaborations. 

DC: Tell as a little about PiO? 

AC: PiO – Your personal informational organism, inseparable friend and adviser. It is your personal trainer, doctor or even a guardian angel. A team of dozens of bioengineers, neuroprogrammers, biochemists, pharmacists, immunologists, biochip and cutting-edge software developers worked in laboratories to build an organism capable of providing all your needs for information, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, security, and even needs that you don’t know you have yet. Forget about the constant search for a charger, you no longer need wires! This new, unusual device is a hybrid of a leech and a smartphone; it feeds on the blood of the owner, thereby maintaining its working capability: simultaneously it collects medical data (e.g.,monitoring heart rate and blood pressure, carrying out blood tests) and if necessary, it can synthesize various substances, such as insulin, and introduce them into the blood of the owner. Dare to wear it? 

DC:What is behind the work? 

DM: This animation is influenced by the events in May, 2020. We live in a great time where people have all the means to live a full and safe life, so we must not let our basic instincts take over. I’m against any violence, both by the police and by the demonstrators. Only love and kindness can make the world better and the people stronger. 

DC: What inspired the work in your first NFT drop? 

SM: My genesis piece for SuperRare is my first ever NFT, it’s also the first installment in my new series ‘Verses’. It explores the afterlife, reimagining classical paintings with an emphasis towards South Asian futurism and the surreal. 

I am interested in the potential of 3D animation, digital representation, and the Metaverse to create diverse futures that act as modern historical reenactments and rewritings. ‘Verses’ questions the european view of classical painting through highly dimensional, futuristic tableaus focused towards digital humans of color. 

DC: Tell us the concept behind this great work 

PL: {Guild of the Fallen} is the upcoming NFT project dedicated to the artistic view on myths and legends of fallen angels. The first angel is Gaderel and all other angels to be released later this year. Gaderel is cast down from heaven to earth by higher powers, and is frozen in the atmosphere in a dramatic moment of triumph when some Gods win over others. Between heaven and hell, an angel reaches its genesis. The Awakening is the first chapter in the ‘Verses’ collection, a digital mythology born out of moving chiaroscuro paintings. Each piece is realized through bespoke motion capture, animation and 3D lighting techniques. This work is a part of collaboration with Dmitri Melnukoff.

DC: Speechless.. 

SK: Indeed, because it was inspired by the Aphrodite ritual performed on a full moon. The purpose of the ritual is awakening of self love and acceptance and celebrating feminine sensuality and beauty. Note it! 🙂 

DC: This is a great piece from your Equinox collection. Tell us about it 

SG: We follow a skater as they perform tricks and stunts in a skaters paradise, located in the Utah Great Basin. The idyllic sunset scene bears witness to the transfer of energy between this floral figure and the contrasting graffiti-soaked concrete environment beneath. The figure, acting as a catalyst, pollinates the park causing nature to reclaim the concrete.