M○C△ Into 2022
After a year of building and expanding, our team is moving forward with a grand vision for the future.
Community Ladder, Phase 2
The Community Ladder gets over $400,000 in $MOCA into the hands of the most active NFT communities and their members. Phase 1 entailed the distribution of 33,333 $MOCA among the top-10 most activated projects in M○C△’s Community Collection. On December 31st 2021, Phase 1 officially concluded — thank you to everyone that participated! We want to congratulate BOTZ NFT, a project which, despite minting at the end of December, skyrocketed up the Community Ladder to claim first place, overtaking previous leaders, Mooncats and Artvatars, by the slimmest of margins. Rewards for the top-10 most activated projects will be sent out to community treasuries or directly to community members this month.
Phase 2 began on January 1st: it gives out 66,666 $MOCA in total (5555 tokens a month) to each month’s top-10 most-activated communities over the next 12 months. If this is your first time reading about the Community Ladder, we encourage you to start by creating your Member’s Pass (it’s easy) and support your favorite communities by activating those NFTs into M○C△’s enthusiast-curated Community Collection. Use the M○C△ dapp to earn $MOCA for your community (or yourself), and curate your NFTs.
M○C△’s SuperRare Space
SuperRare held the first-ever vote (among holders of their token $RARE) to decide which NFT projects/institutions/collections should receive the first of Spaces -“SuperRare Spaces are independently operated storefronts in the SuperRare Network.” M○C△ placed first overall in voting with approximately 7 million $RARE put up in our favor. We are incredibly grateful for the response, and proud to be recognized alongside 33NFT, MoCDA, Monograma, and Metafisica.
Our Space will first, refocus energy and effort around the earliest creators of crypto art and second, uplift under-recognized and radical crypto artists. We aim to showcase the art of both individuals and collaboratives. Keep an eye out for this soon!
The End of Art (as we know it) (again)
M○C△ will be publishing a critical examination of the Crypto Art ecosystem titled The End of Art (as we know it) (again), composed by our lead writer, @CohentheWriter. From months of research, and a series of interviews with artists LuluXXX, SamJ, and Hackatao, Max explores Crypto Art’s tenuous relationship to the PFP craze and the larger political and economic context.
Thoughtful, investigative writing is essential to an accurate understanding of Crypto Art and its cultural implications. These essays reinforce M○C△’s ultimate goal of being not only an advocate for the movement itself, but for meaningful dialogue and personal exploration. Take a dive into previous essays by Wesley Semkin:
- Ideals, Technology, Art, Empowerment, and the Carrot
- Physicality, Medium Etc.
- It’s Nothing
- Community and Crypto Art
- Stepping Into & Out of the Museum
- Art & Value & PFPs & & &
ROOM and ROOM Pass
We want to challenge the concept of “Architecture” just as we continuously confront the concept of a “Museum.” Integral is the bringing together of metaverse architects, designers, artists, and enthusiasts together to create virtual worlds, museum environments, and exhibits of surreal style and scope.
ROOM and ROOM Pass sustainably, equitably, and consistently offer our community the ability to erect personalized exhibition spaces for their crypto art in the Metaverse. ROOMs themselves are the aforementioned spaces: hand-curated, and designed by architects for the display of the metaverse’s finest crypto art. ROOM Passes are the mechanism by which ROOMs will be auctioned off to the Crypto Art community. For more information, take a look at our dedicated primer on ROOMs and ROOM Pass.
The Forum Board
The cultural conversation currently lives on Twitter, we can all agree that discussion needs a more permanent (less hair-trigger) home. We hope M○C△’s Forum Board can be an authentic place for learning and connecting.
Just as BitcoinTalk became a historical repository for the experiences and murmurings of those within the early days of the cryptocurrency world, we want to use our Forum to tell the stories of how all this –beautiful this! — was created, who was responsible, what factors produced it, and what it all means. This community-minded Forum represents M○C△’s commitment to being an agnostic nucleus and record-keeper for the discussion, analysis, and reflection of Crypto Art, of Web3, and of the community of developers, artists, collectors growing within. The Forum is currently in its beta version, and we’ll update you all as it grows.
M○C△’s Virtual Curator
Imagine if you had a personal, intelligent guide walking you through an art museum. Imagine if there was someone beside you to answer every question you had about an artwork, someone knowledgeable and experienced and personable too. The Virtual Curator is our way of providing this to the crypto art community.
A fully-functional AI companion, built from a GPT-J-6B model and trained upon hundreds-upon-hundreds-of-thousands of words of art criticism, blockchain timestamps, community input, and descriptions. The Virtual Curator has been in the works for the last six months by karan4d — an artist seeking to redefine human and machine compatibilities.
The Virtual Curator will be a radical museum appendage, unique and personalized and, we believe, paradigm-shifting in digital art experiences and education. 2022 can be a year to explore a greater transhuman narrative.
We jump into the projects that challenge our collective preconceptions r.e. artistic status hierarchy institutions, and anything that pushes them forward. Everything in our horizon advances this ethos. What we do this year, on the front and back ends, in print or online, IRL or in the metaverse, is pushing towards a larger-than-us cultural revolution. These are just a few of the imminent ways to propel forward. And we look forward, as much as anyone, to what the rest of the roaring 2020s will bring.
Thoughts? Ideas? Find us here: https://forum.museumofcryptoart.com/
