Before I start, let me sell... go pick up a coin(s) for Edition 5 and The Passage- it's 100% worth it!

WHERE IT ALL STARTED

I’ll breeze over Edition 1. Its so vastly different from anything, but I urge you to check it out. It was an experiment. A live poetic short documentary that was shot, performed and edited live. Sold a free token on hicetnunc in May ‘21, it got picked up and that served as the entry to watch the live stream. Lucky buggers who picked that up for free selling it now for 200 tz!

So yeh that got me thinking..

Shvembldr and the secondaries that fed my kids

I’ve been creating VR experiences to some great success with premieres at Venice Film Festival, Cannes and other great spots and I wanted to bring that to the blockchain. So this first experiment I did with Edition 1 got me thinking. Why don’t I create a virtual experience and work with artists to create an environment around their art. That idea, as simple as it was, has carried through.

And then I saw Shvembldrs ‘Memory Cell’ and it blew me awaaaaaay.. I didn’t know too much about generative art at that point and the possibilities just kind of opened up my world from then on. So I approached him, found his telegram, kinda stalkerish vibes but he loved the idea.

Specifically I thought it was fascinating that a piece of art could be a 1/1 but still part of a general collection, that could evoke a memory through your participation. In Memory Cells case the way Shvmebldr talked about the artwork, the mechanics he had around it, and how it was seeded from your wallet address, felt all so personal to me. That idea seems so simple now, but that personalisation is really key in HERE & NOW’s story.

Here’s a screenshot of where it all started.

He kindly agreed! I got working on the experience. I had no budget, things were super tight so I took assets from a bunch of different experiences I had created over the years and I hobbled together a working prototype while Shvembldr was creating the tokens. Originally I wanted to showcase a live dance performance that I wanted to create and have participants experience inside the experience (which we actually ended up doing!) and streamed live inside but soon felt like I really had an opportunity to work with all these amazing artists I’m seeing pop up on the hicetnunc feed. So I approached a couple who stood out. I started with an IRL mate The Giant Swan who agreed and quickly found a crazy roster of artists I was so inspired by. Sutu, Mumu, Marissa Noana, The 4th Perspective, And Aston Archer (who has been a massive part of this journey and done the audio for almost every single one!). I launched the tokens for the experience used an old asset of a coin from a vr experience I made and changed the texture so it said Edition 2. Who would have thought these coins would represent so much years later!

Oh this is a fun fact. Two days before I was about to launch and had spent 2 months working on it. Hicetnunc got hacked. That was a fun month, thats sarcasm by the way. I pretty much resigned to the fact that all that work was for nil while I listened to comforting interviews with Rapha- there might be sarcasm in that too. At that point though I was addicted to hen so there was no way going back. Also I was in lockdown, what the hell else was I going to do!

And I sold them for 2tz! 2 freaking tz. We had a fun burn mechanic which was an insane amount of work. Where if you bought a coin, you had to burn it and then I’d send you your Shvembldr tokens. MANUALLY! We sold 550 of these coins, so yeah that 550 manual sends during the days of hicetnunc was a freaking effort!

But this is where it went nuts. Shvembldr suddenly started getting noticed and so did my lil 2 tz coins. And before I knew it they were sold out in a second, and then secondary went nuts. They started selling each for 2000tz! With a 15 percent royalty. I was suddenly seeing the 2 months of hard work coming back to me! It was an insane period and I know it’s still some of the biggest sales collectors have had in the space. But before I say anything further, I need to acknowledge Shvembldr and please spend a moment to read a bit about his recent troubles.

That whole experience has become a bit of an iconic moment in tz but what happened next was really what cemented it all.

EDITION 2 TOKENS CAN BE FOUND HERE

EDITION 3

So flash forward a couple months and now we’re onto Edition 3. Looking back at the turnaround we achieved was short of a miracle. No, let me rephrase. Short of insanity.

This was tricky because I knew we would never get the same heights of those secondary sales that Shvembldr had. I had to be careful. I had to make sure the experiences were the reason why people were buying these tokens and that the generative art was a part of that reason, not the sole reason. So I didn’t tell people who the artist was until all tokens were sold out. And I was lucky to have worked with liasomething who was an incredible collaborator. We did the same mechanic but I learned from my mistakes of manuall sending everyone their tokens and CodeCrafting built me an automatic took. So that whenever somebody bought their coin, I would run a script and it would automatically send their token. Phew. Working with liasomething really informed much of how I wanted to work with generative artists in the future and how this became a part of the DNA of HERE & NOW. Some of my favourite moments are seeing the results of the generative art and the magical outputs that surprise us, each having some kind of hidden meaning and connection that we manage to find ourselves.

EDITIONS 3 TOKENS CAN BE FOUND HERE

Where Edition 2 was cobbled together with old assets, Edition 3 was bigger, bolder, much more expansive and purposely made with a vision and story in mind. I worked closely with George Bulleen, our 3d Modeller, and we created the worlds that you see here. I unbelievably managed to secure each artist I wanted to get! And we were off to the races. I really wanted to make a point that each artwork that was made for the experience was enhanced by the environments. So the journey to get to that piece felt like it was part of the dna of the piece itself. The artists we worked with for this edition were Jenni Pasanen, Rubenfro, Classic Katsara, Kira Bursky and Tim Maxwell. It was a big success, all the art sold out quickly and we also were able to support many up and coming artists in the tz scene as well.

From a storytelling perspective this is probably what I take most away from Edition 3 and something that is also now a part of our ambitions. Though most people would argue that the most iconic thing from Edition 3 was the elevator of death. Every edition we’ve built an escape game and I’m pretty sure there are still some lost soulsl stuck in there in some form.

GARCIN!!!!

It was during edition 3 that I had this big moment of realisation where collectors were starting to collect memorabilia inside our experiences. These tokens and art that had stories and nostalgia to them and all recorded on the blockchain. It got me thinking. Why not somehow start to conceive an idea to use those past tokens in a way to influence their journeys in future experiences. So that all these tokens that they’ve collected start to have a kind of 1/1 impact on their journeys.

And then I had what is probably the biggest idea we’ve had to date, the most ambitious and also the thing that truly nobody else has done.

EDITION 4

THE PASSAGE with MACTUITUI

Now you all probably know this by now, but THE PASSAGE is an experience that shapes your generative tokens by the choices and journey you have in the experience. This thing was a beast. Honestly, it was so complex and challenging that it almost broke us. So the thinking was, instead of burning the coins to get a generative art. Why dont we have an entirely new experience where the coins gives you entry to a world that feels like the token itself, a real-time emotional generator. An alternative to the click and mint that we’re used to. The main question I asked myself and the team was ‘how can we create an emotional journey that connects to the dna of the generative art itself.

For this we worked with the genius that is Mactuitui, and his advice and early discussions really shaped alot of the decisions we made inside the experience. It was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences I’ve ever created. It was the magic sauce, the piece that felt like we had truly innovated and something which could evolve into who knows, but definitely something.

The main edition was also crazy, and bigger and bolder and we got to test a bunch of things and again work with amazing artists, and sell a bunch of art! We made another escape game which was very challenging with a bunch of great rewards like ‘Botlord’ from Xer0x and a whole lot of other great nft prizes.

It’s been a year now since we launched Edition 4, by far the biggest gap between editions, but there is a very pointed reason for that. I have been experimenting, building and figuring out what HERE & NOW is. I’ve had conversations with peers, artists, and mentors. We have created oncyber galleries, done bi monthly art tours with Undrgrnd. We created the highly successful and fast to sell out ‘The Collab Room’ curated by Xer0x. We have done a lot in the last year and I believe we’ve found a direction that really feels like home. What we do best is create memorable experiences, and we want to really focus in on that, so each Edition is a range of activities and events just for collectors. And by now, you should know. We love to surprise and I like to always leave a carrot dangling.

So… there is something that has been in the works for two years which I’ll announce after The Passage launches. A new direction, a cross move that will grow HERE & NOW even further.

And here we are.

EDITION 5

EDITION 5 TOKENS

We’re a couple days away from launching our biggest endeavour yet in THE PASSAGE powered by fx(hash). This will hopefully be a historic event for the year and something to keep evolving The Passage with for future experiences.

We have 12 extraordinary artists and it is curated by Chris Ostoich.

Ivona Tau | Jeres | 1mposter | Aleksandra Jovanić | Kesean | Karan4d | Victor Doval | Sasha Stiles | Daeinc | Sam Tsao | Jimena Buena Vida | William Watkins

I’m nervous, hopeful, exhausted, excited, but also confident in knowing that no matter what happens, I’ll have the community to back me, and the need to experiment and build not too far off, niggling at me.

So thanks to all of you who got this far, in both this article and with HERE & NOW. End of day, you are the audience, we do this for you and as that plague reads in the entrance of Edition 2.

“This is my manifesto to you. With every edition I push what experience can be on the blockchain.. To create emotional connections to moments in time, so that every time you look at that NFT in your wallet, its stirs a memory, a piece of nostalgia just for you”

website: hereandnow.events

Twitter: hereandnow_exp and wideawakebeets

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