Artists Introduction

• BlockTrain host ：John Stephenson, primarily a musician but also an art researcher interested in generative art NFT.
• Speaker ： ssshihtung (Luo Shih Tung), an artist based in Taipei and runs a small art space ( OCAC ) with some friends for many years. And was introduced and involved in the world of NFTs since last year.
• Speaker ：Peter Wu, an artist based in LA. He founded and created a space called Epoch Gallery . It’s a virtual art gallery, which basically recreates the context for artists to have group shows within each exhibition. They have 12 now and they were all in different environments.
• Speaker ： Hung Yu Hao , a visual artist. Most of his work is like video art, and the method of creation is using 3D scanning, or like using a drone to take shots. His work was in one of the exhibitions last year called Replicants , which recreated all of the streets in Hong Kong Queen's Road, and gave it a Blade Runner treatment.

Your previous experiences of curating with NFT

John “Today’s topic is “Why do NFTs need exhibition?” which is a very basic but also quite a vital question. Could you share your experiences so far in curating with NFTs?”

Peter “Epoch began with quarantine when all of our artists lost opportunities and stuff. I curated the first exhibition and thought of putting it in this virtual environment. March or April of 2020 no one wanted to be in the exhibitions. Eventually after the first exhibition it just caught on kind of like wildfire.

When NFTs all around, all the people that I was working with, and usually there are people working with usually digitally-based before NFTs or analog artists where I help analog artists kind of translate their work into this virtual realm.

When NFTs came around many of the artists were poised to do it. I was like, okay, how am I gonna do it? How am I gonna do it differently? And what is missing in space?”

A kind of potentially new method of collaboration

“I decided to do a lot of research, and I started inventing the entire exhibition as one NFT. I also introduce an equitable smart contract with all the proceeds between all the participating artists. 70% of our proceeds are split between seven or eight artists that are participating in each exhibition.

So kind of went from there, and I sell the works directly from my website and there's an edition sometimes between 5 and 10. So it's been a really great journey and it's been really quite successful to this point.

I just tried to think of it in a different way rather than replicate the same kind of systemic problems that were happening in the real world. Say in a group show, if you are in a group show in the real world and sell your work but you won't get a cut.

A lot of times when individual artists sell their own works, and put it up and it doesn't sell. There's this kind of feeling that maybe it was a failure or there's a lot of pressure. On the other side for a gallery or the people putting it on curating that it might be a disappointment. So what I was trying to do is alleviate that stress from artists and so that one participating in an Epoch Exhibition doesn't really impact your individual prices or your floor prices or whatever.

And so in that way, it was kind of squirting around this thing but also building this kind of artwork in itself with a collaboration of sorts. It's getting around these kinds of issues and thinking about how to do things differently rather than you know.”

ssshihtung “I'm just getting started to learn the DAO that I am involved in called VolumeDAO. We curated our first NFT show early this year in real life and mostly from our own collection. For us it's more about how to introduce this digital native tool material to the people in the real world. Somehow it’s still difficult.I feel like people are hesitant to consider, “Is it a real art experiment?”and “How it compared to the traditional artform or exhibition or way of expecting art？” So that's what we are trying to work on continuously.

10/28 it will have our second show《Support of Dreams, Surface of Things》in real life. This time I tried to put my own background and experience of curating in real life in the contemporary art world and trying to bridge NFT artists, generative artists and contemporary artists in one place.

I want to create a new experience across the digital native world and physical world and across the screen to the room and see how the audience will experience and how they understand this kind of combination.

We will see tomorrow if we have more audience from the on-chain community or more audience from the traditional conventional contemporary art audience and how they would engage in the same room.

I was introduced a tool called Deca. It's an online curating tool that allows you to rearrange and curate your own collection. It interests me because it's kind of a very loose idea of curating. For me It's a new area of curating that whether you're experienced or mature, you can still feel your own story, be your own narrative with this very supportive tool. It became like not only a curating space but also a social media for people who love NFTs and arts.”

Yu Hao “I think I'm more like a creator. So I’m more curious about what NFT really is or how NFT can be used in the artworks. My friend and I curated an exhibition and we invited several artists to think about this topic.

We hope artists present their work in three parts. One in the NFT platform and one in the virtual space and another in the gallery space. And try to think about what kind of transformation NFT has achieved in their works.

I think it's very interesting because all the artists use different types or different methods to do the same thing. So maybe some artists think NFT is like a record in their artwork or a puzzle that can make their works complete.”

More about the working process of Epoch

Peter “Basically release shows every two maybe three months at the beginning. It's doing it every month and a half to two months. But now, the environments are becoming more difficult to create and recreate. Recently all the exhibitions that I've been doing are taking the real world architecture and environments, placing them in the virtual and trying to make a connection between the two.

And I don't have a team. It's really just me working with artists and putting things on the blockchain and marketing and doing the Twitter spaces. So I take right now maybe three months to create a show. Creating the environment and modeling the whole thing probably takes me about three weeks.”

“When I'm working with somebody we go back and forth as a collaboration of what we want the space to be or what the show is about. And then I'll get the artist on board. After they see the history of artists I work with they will usually call each other asking about how it is working with me. Then I start building at the same time as they’re working on their works, and usually get done before they finish their work and start installing their works at that time.”

“For this next exhibition, which is opening up on November 12th, I'm recreating Biosphere 2, which if you don't know is this whole kind of Utopic kind of building they try to do in Arizona and the United States.

I'm recreating that space, and curating a bunch of really amazing artists inside that which include read afterlist. We have Cassils, Lans King, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Nicole Wilson,Pussy Riot, Sputniko! and Xin Liu.

It's curated by Katie Peyton Hofstadter for the first time and she wrote an article from RIGHT CLICK SAVE (an online publication about NFTs). She wrote something about data and 《BODIES ON THE BLOCKCHAIN》 .Then we're expanding the article into a virtual exhibition.”

What are the differences you discovered between traditional, conventional curation of curatorial work and NFT curating？

Yu Hao “The big difference should be the execution. If the exhibition is completely planned in virtual space, we can do much communications set up online. I think it is more important to consider how the work can be well presented in the virtual world. And NFT in the exhibition is a direct way to connect collectors and artists.”

ssshihtung “I'm still asking myself and our DAO friends about what kind of experience that we can create in real life extends our understanding, storytelling and values that we had on-chain.

Actually it’s harder than our exhibition because bringing all the NFTs to real life it just needs a lot of screens. But even the video art exhibition doesn't need as much screen as the NFT exhibition.

If we arrange some activities and events or exhibitions online or on-chain, it'll be much easier to access for most of the community. And I really enjoy this a little bit of loose curation and engagement. It makes things easier to connect the people who are interested.”

The idea of loose curation

ssshihtung“What I mean by “loose curation” is more like what I just mentioned about the tool Deca. You just simply arrange your own work, bring your own narratives, give the meaning and story behind that I will consider as curating. In a serious definition, it’s still a long way to the “serious curating” but this kind of loose curation in my opinion, embraces a larger audience somehow.

Maybe just expand on my experience. I've been working within the traditional art gallery system for a long time, and got kind of fed up with it. But I notice the whole difference between curating within a white wall space.

You have to build context between works, provide text, provide where your thoughts are going and why these things are linking up and why they make sense next to each other and why not. You need to try to give new context without providing any context because it is really a white wall. So I think curating in virtual spaces, I already have the context. It's much easier than curating within the white wall space.”

What kind of things would you advise other people if they were to curate their own shows. What kind of details should people pay attention to?

Peter “It all depends on what kind of the work you're trying to curate because everybody has different ideas. You have this space and there's no limitations on physical or monetary or scale. So they kind of think of something really grandiose.

I kind of try to steer them into representing who they are as artists themselves. The artists I usually work with already have a very strong body of work or they're already investigating ideas.

I'm more into conceptual art rather than something that has to do with a static. I don't really care too much about what it looks like. The idea is the most important thing for me.

So for curating, within concepts are easier and better ways to approach it. Rather than “this color looks great with this color.” I kind of go more conceptual and think about what the artist is doing and try to bridge those lines and those gaps.”

Yu Hao “As an audience, because I don't have a lot of experience in curating, it's really important whether the work has a connection with the topic of the exhibition.

For example, if an exhibition is about environmental issues and one of the works was plants, it would look like it was talking about ecology, right? But if the artist was actually talking about digital technology, I would be confused.

The artist's work in exhibitions must be very different but if you can see or feel the topic of the exhibition from the work of each artist I think it should be a great exhibition.”

ssshihtung “I really appreciate how Peter has created and curated the exhibition space that allows people to explore and create their own memory. Because for me blockchain is like an autonomous machine that archives everything, or remembers everything in time. It creates the memories or the spirit of the blockchain of the network itself. It’ll be pretty amazing to see if the audience and amateur can create their own stuff with their tool.”

Peter “If you want to cure it within a virtual space you can use Mozilla Hubs which is a really easy way to put things together. If you want to curate your NFTs in the platform on cyber, what I recommend is, don't jam everything in there. Let things breathe. People are always putting everything right next to each other. It's not about showing everything is about being kind of selective in that way.

I agree with Shih Tung. I don't see myself as a curator, I see myself as an artist first and organizing these events.

This is like bridging and it's about theory and bringing things together in a really appropriate way or non-appropriate way. So, if you put two things together, you will know how to have a conversation between two things.

That's kind of the basis of what a high level curation is doing in a certain way. And I'm doing that. I don't really write anything because the context that I'm building says more than what I can actually write about it.

All these different ways of doing it, reiterate to encourage people to explore different ways to curate it but also really think about the message you want to get across, and that is the most important thing for me”

About “Don't cram everything together and be reasonably selective.” Whether that's more conventional or more academic, how do you approach that question of selection?

Peter “I see that as more of a problem within these NFT spaces and on cyber. When you go to those galleries, everything is huge. You can make variations and make something big doesn't necessarily mean it's important.

You can place things specifically saving in the corner of a room that could have more importance than placing it greatly in the middle of a room. You can drive different attention. So it's the way of thinking spatially within the virtual, giving room for the work to breathe.”

Thinking about future projects or future directions, how are you planning to curate NFT type work in the future based on expectations or your imaginations of what could be possible?

Yu Hao “About the future of NFT, I imagine that perhaps NFT is used as a tool in the exhibition allowing the audience to interact with a smart contract in an exhibition based on some conditions.

Some NFT in their wallets can combine, reduce or trigger. Then they can see or feel the clues of the topic in this exhibition. I think it would be to deepen the experience of the audience.”

Peter “The three shows I really want to do next year are probably going to be with generative artists in a specific way, dealing with AI and text prompts.

I'm trying to build 360 environments and using a stable fusion and seeing how I can accomplish that in a sort of way. I've tested it if it’s possible. The resolution is high enough right now.

And the show after that, I'm gonna try to go into Octavia E. Butler's archive, which is here in Los Angeles. Some drawings of architectural spaces in her books were like drawings done with little pieces of paper and stuff. I would love to recreate one of those and curate an exhibition of Octavia E. Butler.

And then at the end of next year, I'm going to be doing a curation space at Honor Fraser Gallery, which will be the third iteration of my last series. You can just check out the first two on the website and they'll be the third.”

ssshihtung “I'm very excited about the exhibition that we created opens tomorrow (10/28) and really excited to see how things will go.

As we probably experience nowadays many events and activities of NFT in real life, it's about creating an onsite experience life like meeting and a celebration. I feel that's really fun and also what we should do to engage with different people.

For the exhibition tomorrow, our goal is more about questioning if we can create and curate an exhibition for meditation by bringing the NFT art and the contemporary art together. So I'm curious to see what will happen.

About the artists we involved in this project, one will be Yenting 許雁婷, a sound artist. She will give the whole base tone of the space by bringing her sound work. ileiv oivm (AluanWang)王新仁, Jin-Yao Lin 林經堯, Yi-Wen Lin 林逸文are the generative artists. Contemporary artists will be Hsin-I Chuang 莊馨怡 and Yu-Ta Lin 林友達 (古睖‧久古).

Our idea is that what Peter just mentioned for his virtual space experiment, we also not just not want to put everything like all together but more about how we can give room or the flow to the audience, to create a new experience of stepping into the NFT crypto art or generative art world. I hope it works.”

Postscript

Later, we talked to Hung Yu Hao about Blocktrain's PixelBoard project, which is like a large-scale virtual city curation event. Everyone can create, select works by other creators, or curate as they like.

BlockTrain NFT works are like a large exhibition field, where you can see everyone showing their favorite themes. From this perspective, this work also seems to provide more possibilities and imagination for the future of curation.

Official Links of BlockTrain

akaSwap (PixelBoard) | Website | fxhash | Twitter | Discord