Platonics: On a Budget #6/66

Traffic explores a crossroads between the metaverse & reality through organized chaos. The complexity of this aural / visual landscape demanded over 200 hours of design time between Slimesunday & 3LAU. Every detail of this piece was built from scratch, from the reflective puddled pavement to the stabbing synthesis of the song. We think we'll be spending a lot more time in the metaverse in the future, don't you?

This is xerox (or copyart) work that was originally on an A3 sheet of paper. Probably from 2009. Now it doesn't exists anymore. So someone can say that's really cryptoart. I don't care about tags and art categories. This is also the original title. From my archive, now tokenized forever in this digital form.

The term “Fuku” refers to fortune or good luck. “Shiva” refers to the Hindu deity who represents strongly polar qualities, both severe and delicate. On a beach inspired by adventures on Phi Phi island in Thailand, three youths cavort. Two are representational figures and the third is psychologically rendered. A dynamic relationship ensues between the triad; a reciprocity of active and passive states. The boy on the right engages in maneuvers of evasion, defense, and is dressed in a speedo which reiterates the colors and symbolism of the caution tape on the left and upper right frame of the composition. In concurrent reaction the psychedelic figure shoots out a rocket powered paper airplane. The nude boy seated in the froth and sand approaches in passive repose, and is met with active attention but equal physical reserve by the psychedelic being. Perhaps the most naked figure is also the least representational. Looming large, dynamic, and active, it engages its companions playfully. Various symbols interject into the otherwise naturalistic scene, most notably a beach ball and two contaminated barrels nested in the sand. The upright barrel reads “FukuShima” in Kanji. The barrel laying down reads “Dharma”. To the left the scene is bounded by caution tape, reiterating the danger of the nuclear waste while also hosting alien archetypes, whose presence, as is the nature of these entities, runs up and just behind the consciousness of the psychedelic figure’s eggshell-like skull.

CONGRATS!

Artist notes: the halving ceremony is the most unusual part of modern bitcoin production in which the owners bet on how efficiently an alpha can inseminate the market.

The second imagined space in the series. Created during the lockdown period whilst being confined to the same place every day, this piece is part of a series of imaginary places that I dreamed of being able to work from.