Mint Gold Dust Podcast

This week, Eleonora Brizi and Seth were able to sit with Tony Barnes of Hipgnosis Songs Fund and start to talk about how NFTs can be applied to distribution of music, how artists can expect to use NFTs to create enhanced experiences for their fans and their communities and begin to discuss how blockchain technology can help make sure royalties are actually paid to the artists for their work. Mint Gold Dust  

Eleonora Brizi was in Paris last weekend to attend the single day event NFT Paris.  She shares with us her takeaways (which were very positive) and her positive outlook on the coming year in the world of NFTs. Mint Gold Dust presented work with Eleonora on screens at the event a photo can be found here. In the podcast Eleonora speaks about John Karp a link to his work can be found here.  

Sean Sullivan is a photographer, art director and curator.  He started the blog, THE IMPOSSIBLE COOL in 2006 and has seen the way the internet connects with digital photography change and morph over the years.  He gives his thoughts on the Mint Gold Dust podcast regarding NFT Photography, and how he sees it both as an archival tool as well as a new platform to connect directly with collectors.    

ART FOR EVERYONE, ANYWHERE, ALL THE TIME! Eleonora and Seth sit down and talk about the age of art we're in, where we can show art anywhere at any time, and how the coming digital advancements open this up wider for the experience of art. We had some technical difficulties, around 10:45.  We started the conversation one week and finished it the next. To introduce Eleonora in more depth here is her bio from her website https://breezyart.io/ Eleonora Brizi is an art curator based in New York, Rome and Beijing. She graduated and specialized in contemporary Chinese art. In 2018 she started her new path dedicated to “art and technology” in New York. Before landing in the world of art and tech, she spent six years in Beijing, China, where she worked for four years as assistant to artist Ai Weiwei and two years as assistant and representative in China under the curator Jerome Sans. In New York, she studied blockchain technology and its application to art, especially its use in certifying and monetizing digital art pieces. She looked to open the discussion on attributing a “new” value to art and  spreading the doors to a new form of collecting. As an art curator and gallerist, she deals with and promotes digital art. These works are created through different means: from Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, to raw code, to virtual reality, to painted canvases and ink papers animated on the computer. She combines her knowledge of the art world with the need – of the art itself – of speaking the language of the time. The current dialogue is digital and technical. In China she started her career as an art curator. Working on independent projects gave her the chance of spending time cultivating her favorite activity: relationships with artists. Once in New York she became very active in the flourishing crypto creative community, promoting and participating in many projects.  She co-curated and published The Rarest Book; a book about Rare Pepe, the first ever project of digital art on the blockchain; she organized an art auction of digital art during the Rare Art Festival as well as conferences and panels on art and artificial intelligence and art on the blockchain. She then started the adventure of her “Breezy”.

Mint Gold Dust founder Kelly LeValley Hunt (@LeValleyKelly), Eleonora (@eleonorabrizi) and Hannah (@hdgulledge) all at down to debrief from their collective - at times overwhelming - but throughly enjoyable time at Art Basel in Miami.  The discussion floats along from how NFTs were represented at the fairs, to an imagined augmented reality nature walk for public art in the city of Miami as well as the idea of an alligator as a mode of transport - all covered in this round table discussion. 

As NFTs began to shape together into what they've become today, what came before that was a Bitcoin minted collection of what became called Rare Pepe's. Theo Goodman (TWITTER) sits down to give an historical recount of how the Rare Pepe scientists came to be, how their process influence the process of how NFT projects come to be, and the importance of these micro experiments of self-governance that support the ideas of a decentralized system of society.  

Augmented reality has the ability to connect the physical and the digital, facilitating the emergence of a new form of interaction and socialization.  Illust Space is an environment for viewing augmented reality NFTs, but that's just the superficial.  It goes somewhere else.  Listen along, it goes deep.   Seth (SINUOUS RILLS) & Eleonora (BREEZY ART) sat down with Tim and Rob, co-founders of ILLUST SPACE to talk about a geo-dropped art show at Art Basel in Miami featuring art minted on Mint Gold Dust's marketplace and displaying art from the vault of Whaleshark.   To experience Illust.Space's NFT platform, on your mobile phone use your browser to navigate to ar.illust.space and use the map at the top right corner to find NFTs in your area. 

PART 2. . . Curve, Seth and Eleonora!

American artist CURVE TGE (@the_curvazoid) sat down with Eleonora Brizi (@breezyart.io) and Seth (@sinuousrills) to discuss how graffiti as we know it today fits into cryptoart, digital art and the blockchain.  The phone discussion went on for a while, and so we offer this glimpse into this conversation in two parts.  This is Part 1.    Our episode goes off in many directions, and discusses many ideas.  Graffiti artists are just beginning to understand and explore the possibilities blockchain has to offer this community. We explore what graffiti means within the metaverse, and how graffiti will be preserved on, and also changed by, the blockchain.  

NFT.NYC was a spectacular occasion.  The noise in the background of this conversation is representative of the, at times chaotic, fervor and energy that powered this amazing conference, at the beginning of November. Seth (@sinuousrills), producer and newcomer to working in the crypto space, sat down with Theo Goodman (@theog__) a gentleman who has been involved in crypto for many years. Theo broke down his idea correlating The Rare Pepe to the Amen break, the roots of NFTs and the roots of sampled music, planting the seeds for more conversations on Rare Pepe in the blockchain community and understanding how we got to where we are today. For more on the Amen Break, we found this video to be helpful and informative.  It is a video representation of an art installation, but gives an in depth view on this piece of music. https://youtu.be/5SaFTm2bcac  

A duo of prolific multi-discipline artists of Chinese descent, Lily Honglei's art explores the duality of opposing forces and the ensuing result as well as their experience as immigrants and Asian Americans.  Their work remains consistent and ripe with humanity as they explore and sample a variety of mediums, from AR art, to VR art, to video art as well as more traditional static mediums.   Lily Honglei has had their work shown in museums around the world as well as countless exhibitions and presentations. Lily Honglei is one of Mint Gold Dust's eight Genesis artists, who are each creating an art piece centered around the them of gold dust.

Giant Swan sculpts stunning, exquisitely detailed, ethereal creations.  However he does not chip away at marble or mold clay; instead he plies his craft with a headset and controllers in the multi-dimensional medium of virtual reality.  The pliable fabric of virtual reality allows for his conception of movement and form a freer reign than a static medium ever could and produce eternally memorable work.   Giant Swan is one of Mint Gold Dust's eight Genesis Artists. He is creating a piece centered around the theme of gold dust which will debut at Mint Gold Dust's launch.

Stuart Ward shines a penetrating spotlight on the world of repetitive form in his works. A lifelong artist, he ran a successful experiential design studio in Canada collaborating with the world's largest brands who sought out his unique aesthetic. However, with advent of the pandemic and large brands shuttering their operations, he rediscovered, amplified and augmented his own personal artistic voice through the platform of digital art. His immediately identifiable style resonates with artists and collectors worldwide and he continues to create mesmerizing, deeply personal pieces. Stuart is one of Mint Gold Dust's eight Genesis artists who are each in the process of creating digital art pieces centered around the theme of 'gold dust'.

In the world of cryptoart, and increasingly the world at large, Hackatao needs no introduction.  A pair of artists who live and work together outside Milan, they are true originals in the digital art world, both in their immediately identifiable aesthetic as well as their status as early pioneers of the symbiosis of art and blockchain.  Their immense artistic vision has led to high profile artistic collaborations but, as always, they tirelessly continue to create, experiment and explore their own artistic roadmap and the ever-unfolding possibilities of the blockchain.   Hackatao is one of Mint Gold Dust's eight Genesis artists who are each in the process of creating digital art pieces centered around the theme of 'gold dust'.

Bard Ionson approaches his art with the inner drive of an artist equipped with the raw skill of a computer hacker.  An experienced programmer, he trains AI with thousands of images, creates complex models and schema to manipulate his images, incorporates viewer-participation through micro-payments and utility and, like a modern day Da Vinci and his cryptex, Bard embeds hidden messages within his art for those with the skill and drive to find them.  Bard is one of Mint Gold Dust's eight Genesis artists who are each in the process of creating digital art pieces centered around the theme of 'gold dust'.  

Ben Snell is a creative force who wields a protean conception of form and implicit meaning in his art. His works explore the meeting ground of technology and humanity and reveal the act of creation of art as much as the production of the actual piece itself. Ben is one of Mint Gold Dust's eight Genesis artists who are each in the process of creating digital art pieces centered around the theme of 'gold dust'. Ben has received numerous awards and accolades for his creations and is currently based in New York City.    

In this episode we speak with crypto artist, photographer, and light aficionado GiselXFlorez.  Gisel is one of Mint Gold Dust's eight Genesis artists who are each in the process of creating digital art pieces centered around the theme of 'gold dust'. Gisel began her artistic journey through the lens of a camera; however, her lifelong pursuit in the development of her own unique visual language, and the intrinsic role her love of light plays in that journey, led her naturally to the vast potential in the digital art world.  In this episode she talks about how she feels she has found true freedom, both in the art and the crypto community, with her place and path in digital art.

In this episode we speak with watercolorist-turned-crypto-art-virtuoso Le Lapin Mignon.  Lapin is one of Mint Gold Dust's eight Genesis artists who are each in the process of creating digital art pieces centered around the theme of 'gold dust'. Lapin creates deeply personal, mesmerizing and unique pieces, and the technology of digital art has allowed her to more dynamically create and populate her artistic world, which she dubs her 'metaverse'.   We speak with Lapin about her path into crypto-art, her love of the crypto-art community, how technology has enhanced her use of watercolors, and her upcoming artistic works and exhibitions.  

In this episode, the three collaborators behind the Mint Gold Dust digital art platform come together to illustrate the beginnings and vision of Mint Gold Dust, from their backgrounds and paths into the worlds of blockchain and digital art, to their fateful encounter at a digital arts festival in a Brooklyn warehouse and the ensuing pursuit to track down and pay a reclusive digital artist for his work.