Dreamverse: A Crypto Party
How does the world’s biggest NFT crypto art collector show off his collection? He throws a crypto party and calls it ‘Dreamverse.’
Dreamverse was an NFT crypto art show/concert event, held in New York City on November 4, 2021. Its highlight was the reveal of Beeple’s, Everydays: The First 5,000 Days, the first standalone NFT to be sold at auction that hammered for $69.3 million earlier this year. Throughout the day there were 3 floors of crypto art on display, including VR and augmented art. In the evening, performances by DJs: Maachew, PLS&TY, Stretch Armstrong & Eli Escobar and Alesso; as well as a hallucinatory AR experience 7.8 by Carsten Höller. The concert event provided viewers with a one of a kind NFT digital art experience.
Metakovan, now identified as Vignesh Sundaresan, is the founder and financier of the crypto fund Metapurse. He recently captured the world’s stage when he bought high profile artworks such as Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5,000 Days, a complete collection of Dada.nyc’s Creeps and Weirdos, and Beeple’s Everydays: The 2020 Collection. Metapurse turned the collection into a virtual museum, B20, which allowed fractional ownership through a system of tokens. Dreamverse was not just another rich tech guy showing off his collection or a lavish invitation-only art event, instead, the event gave both crypto art owners, artists and those just curious what all the hype is about, the opportunity to connect as well as provide an opportunity to experience digital art on a grand scale with hi-tech curated displays throughout the three-story venue. This was the first live event for Metapurse in its attempt to position itself as a promoter/producer of artists in the Hollywood movie studio style.
Dreamverse strategically comes on the heels of the NFT.NYC convention, which ended just the night before, acting somewhat as an after-party for the crypto community that flew in from all over the world to attend. Designed by artist Alotta Money, the tickets to the event are considered collectable digital art as they are issued in black and white and can only become ‘coloured’ when electronically scanned at the event. To further promote the NFT concept and technology, tickets could only be purchased digitally with the YellowHeart app at price points ranging from daytime entry to the gallery at $30 to $2,500 for the VIP music concert tickets.
The daytime gallery event held in New York City’s Terminal 5 hosted 3 floors of 161 digital artworks, most of which are owned by Metapurse. They were displayed on more than 50 screens, not including those on stage (curator screens were Panasonic 4K, the Intersection screens were Samsung and the scaffolding screens were a mix of LG, Samsung, and Sony), 5 virtual reality booths which included a curated gallery of Creeps and Weirdos by Angie Taylor, Glitter & Sparkle Hands by Violet Forrest, and two augmented reality booths. As one entered the building under an arched tunnel of LED tubular lights display, to the left were a collective of twelve artists from DADA traditionally painting one large colourful artwork on four adjoined life-size panels. To the right was a stand selling T-shirts and caps sporting NFT slogans, looking much like a merchandising booth at a concert. Just beyond it was a digital display by 40 artists for the Genesis Collection of TIMEpieces, which included 37 unique artworks which were turned into 4,676 NFT artworks in September 2021, for some of these artists it was their first creations in the NFT crypto art world.
Cover of Time Magazine that featured artwork by Beeple and stories about the NFT commerce.
Displayed on monitors throughout the venue, were digital artworks with QR codes. The intention was for the QR codes to take viewers to the artworks’ NFT platform, however, there was a glitch so the Dreamverse team chose instead to use the QR codes to take viewers to the artist’s Twitter profiles as “the main conversation in the NFT art spaces happens on Twitter,” said Brooke Walter, Operations Manager of Metapurse. The second floor also featured the 2017 Creeps and Weirdos in a curated display by Judy Mam, Dada.nyc co-creator which is a project created in 2017 consisting of 108 limited editions drawings made by artists all over the world that has a total of 16,600 digital editions with 5 different levels of scarcity, which are significant as they were the first to modify the Cryptopunk’s smart contract and their resale rights provide royalty fees which go to the collective.
Still from VR Glitter Sparkle Hands by Violet Forest provided by artist.
On the third floor, guests could experience the VR artworks with the aid of hands-on experts, who put the headset on viewers and taught them how to “walk” through the virtual galleries. The VR artwork Glitter Sparkle Hands is an edition of 5 NFTs and allows the viewer to interact virtually with the work through hand tracking and gestures. For the VR Creeps and Weirdos Museum, Angie Taylor took the complete set of 108 works to display on the walls of her virtually created gallery and added 3D models of the Creeps & Weirdos created by Marko with the Mostermash app, each one with its own animation. She used them as railings for the stairs and hallways, stating that she did this because Judy Mam was commenting that she always falls off the stairs in Virtual Reality. Taylor said that this work was a part of a larger VR artwork that she has been working on for over two years called Scattered Mind. She intends to donate the Creeps and Weirdos Virtual Reality Experience to Dada.
At night, the lights were darkened, which enhanced the displays the monitors were attached to. The bright lights of the LEDs on the display walls made it difficult to see the artwork on the monitors, but it gave the venue an atmosphere of a hip nightclub and made the frames of the displays seem like artworks. For the concert event, only the artwork beneath the stage was removed for the audience to listen, dance, and watch a series of DJs (Maachew, PLS&TY, Stretch Armstrong, Eli Escobar & Alesso) perform on stage. Close to midnight Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5,000 Days was revealed on a billboard-sized screen on stage as a digital short movie. Walter explained that the video Metasouk was designed to demonstrate the virtual building which Holly13, an architecture firm, is building in Decentraland where people will be able eventually digitally view Everydays: the First 5000 Days by virtually flying up and down for close viewing. Then, Carsten Höller attempted to create a strobing light effect that would give the audience a psychedelic experience, however, only a few members of the audience were able to download the app and no one appeared to be having the intended experience. Afterwards, the screen was filled with the now-familiar image of coloured squared boxes of Everydays: The First 5000 Days, which panned, tilted and zoomed in and out of the large work, occasionally landing on a close up picture from the work. The audience cheered as Beeple, Metakoven and Twobador appeared on stage and said a few words about NFTs and art. Although the event seemed more like a combination of art happening and a trendy nightclub, the predominantly young audience seemed to be enthusiastic about the opportunity to engage in an in-person digital art experience until the wee hours of the morning.
Beeple, Everydays: The First 5000 Days, NFT
Altogether, there was so much going on between the art and the experiential that enthusiasts could easily spend a whole day there to absorb the artworks and connect with the NFT artists and influencers. Overall, the artworks, displays, production value and massive staging were impressive. The event as a whole felt validating for the NFT art community, and a pulsing, collective excitement and energy could be felt throughout the space, leaving plenty of room for anticipation until MetaPurse’s next NFT event!
Sophie Delaplaine
Contributing Writer, MADE IN BED
