Content:

Angel investor’s analysis of macro market & perspective on crypto art

What drives the generative artist into this field? Creative process sharing

Will digital twins or digital natives be the future creative trend for artists?

Time:

May 9th, 2022 at 12:00 UTC

Location:

Twitter Space

Host:

Daisy: CMO of BEAM studio

Guest Speakers:

Allen Ding: Founding Partner of Nothing Research, a research driven venture firm focuses on the DeFi field; Partner of BlockHive, a blockchain fund.

John Stevens: Senior Lecturer at Royal College of Art, and core staff member on the Global Innovation Design MA/MSc, a dual master’s program at Royal College of Art and Imperial College.

Reva: Algorithmic artist, crypto artist, engineer of computer graphics. Founder of WeirDAO, a decentralized organization for independent crypto artists.

Daisy:

Hello Everyone! Welcome to our AMA, I am Daisy from BEAM Studio. Before we start, I would like to give you several tips about how to use Twitter Space since many of you are new here. Spaces on web are listen-only. So if you guys wanna interact with us, switch to mobile app now. For those who are already on Twitter app, you can see there are several icons on the bottom. For example, you can request to speak in the Q&A session by pressing the mic icon , and you can express your feelings by sending emoji through the heart icon. (When someone says something that you want to react to, you can choose an emoji to show how you feel so that our guests can see your real-time feedback. Now please try and let me see your applause. Lovely reaction.

Now let the AMA begin. Today we are very honored to invite three guest speakers, Senior design academic Dr. Stevens, well-known crypto artist Reva, and Angel Investor Allen to have a cross-border chat of Web3. First of all, let me give a brief introduction about BEAM Studio.

BEAM Introduction

Daisy:

The first meaning of BEAM refers to Build Exciting Adventures in Metaverse. We formed an elite design team, composed of excellent artists and designers from all over the world. We are committed to exploring brand-new ways digital natives interact with information, space, and each other. You can go through our social media to see the projects we have done.

We have formed partnership with the most popular metaverse platforms, such as the Sandbox and Decentraland. We are the approved/whitelisted artist of the Sandbox. So if there is any landlord, brand or IP holders, you are more than welcome to contact us if you’d like to establish your presence in the metaverse. Currently we are holding the Kaleidoverse Design Contest and still calling for entries now. Participants are divided into two divisions: Student and Professional. Each division has four categories: Fashion, Visual, Product, and Space. The awards include generous bonus, exclusive NFT Trophy or medal, angels pitch day, and extensive showcases. And the final metaverse award ceremony and exhibition will be held in the Decentraland in August. Refer to our pinned tweet or medium for more info.

At the same time, BEAM, the word itself means bridge. In this case, we expect to be the first stop for every newcomer to the crypto world, not only creators, but anyone who holds passion for the new world. We aim to build a cutting-edge community, and we hope our members to be critical, independent, and rebellious, which are crucial qualities in Web3. We will provide frontier information, analysis, and insights of the industry, build a BEAM Wiki, a knowledge base where every community member can have access to and is encouraged to enrich the content. Of course, we will hold more activities, like this session. Feel free to let us know what subject you are interested in. While you can be the guest speaker. If you are an expert in certain area, which overlaps with Web3 or may have interaction with the crypto world, do not hesitate to contact me.

Guest Speakers’ Sharing

Daisy:

Let’s move on to the guest speakers’ sharing. In the next 30 minutes you will get plenty of food for thought. The first speaker is Dr. John Stevens

Dr John Stevens is a senior lecturer at Royal College of Art, previous course leader of Global Innovation Design, a dual master programme with the Imperial College. He researches humanitarian innovation through impactful NGO partnerships, and has experience as an independent design consultant for clients including British Gas, EMAP, Diageo, etc.

Today Dr. Stevens will talk about design constraints and how it is essential to understand them in the design process. Also, he will share with us his understanding of design in the real and virtual world. Let’s welcome.

John Stevens

Hi everybody, thank you Daisy for the introduction and thank you the studio for inviting me to join this today. I am very interested to hear the thoughts of the other speakers, and there really is a truly cross border discussion as you said Daisy so I thank you as you say my my background is I am not a created for the metaverse or digital artist. I am really concerned with research education around design led innovation. So I want to kind of talk about a kind of real-world design perspective, which I hope will interest that those of you creating artifacts for the virtual world, the emerging metaverse.

What might these things mean, what lessons can we learn?

Actually I am an old person, I worked in web1.0. But in the late 1990s, I was working in design for the emerging world wide Web and I saw have the whole discipline of UX design for the Web kind of matured and developed as roles emerged and people’s understandings grew. People got understood better, how to do UX, design, and what skills and knowledge were useful for that and getting those early days. Those things were not clear, and I think that we’re probably in a similar state now with the metaverse. And so there may be some points about it that I’ll try not to talk for too long, but I think what a start with, as Daisy mentioned is a word about constraints and constraints really are so sensual. In what defines to me what defines design, good designers find ways of understanding. The contextual constraints, those are things like what, where and how will something be used? And by whom? I was something be experienced as it was the situation in which the object or the product or the system or the service will be interactive with. And of course there are technical and technological constraints, what’s possible and what can be achieved. About perhaps based on their own intuition and or other aspects of their own personality with a green. Into this picture in order to achieve a purpose, so that’s a kind of one way of encapsulating what I think design is a bad. And so, in designing for the real world, the designer needs to understand the constraints so that he or she can explore the possibilities within them and then make choices. Then there are other kind of really key issues in design like accessibility, who can use things and who cannot. And those things are going to be just as important in the virtual world, but in different ways, perhaps as we see. And gaining another other immerse of experiences already, things like mapping real world gestures. To the virtual world to make something intuitive and accessible. And also to make something comfortable and safe to use, but those are the sorts of basics. Thus, before we get talking about that really fascinating stuff, I think as artists and creators we’re interested in creating an emotional impact, creating a merciful, impactful experiences. In product design, we often talk about delight and there’s an assumption delight is the kind of keyword of what we want to create in our users, we want people to love the products we make, are the experiences we create. Now in a fictional world, a story, a movie, stage play other kinds of narratives again. We might not necessarily want those, I’ll come back to that, and maybe other kinds of emotions that will be explored. Other really important factors in real world design is relevance. Does it matter to anybody? Who cares I will people care about the thing that you are creating? Whether it’s about caring enough to buy it, to spend money on it, and keep it up an income for your business orbits about a higher purpose and a bigger sense of purpose in the world. Bigger question, where does your work? Where does our work as designers as creators set? And the world away, making a positive contribution to the world. And the thing they were starting to touch on the kind of artistic side of what designers do. Another kind of pragmatic aspect of design, and I want to mention this principle we call a for dance. Some of you and many of you are familiar with it, this idea of objects of her possibilities, a physical object, or an app enables. So an object cannot afford certain uses a door handle affords pulling somebody that has a great I can turn it, I can pull the door open and said the sign of a good door handle. A chair affords sitting on. But it also affords hanging my jacket or wanting a door closed so no one could come in. Or if I’m an angry cowboys in a saloon bar fight, it affords me hitting someone so. Real world users find afford inches which are not intended by the designer. And the ways we use the things that have been created can be can vary enormously depending on the moment. And the place, the situation, and I think that’s a very interesting prospect for designers of virtual objects. Because as far as I understand it at the moment, behaviors of objects had to be kind of coded in to those objects, so. It’s difficult to see how they might be improvised and hide those ideas of usage couldn’t evolve. And the way that our physical objects until they have. I don’t know if anybody’s got any thoughts like on that, I’d like to hear them in men, and maybe it’s not far off, maybe with enough. Description of an object and a system can allow people to improvise with them and find different uses. But I would love to see how this might be leveraged, especially if you’re creating digital goods that can move across Metaverses from one virtual world to another. And a related point, I suppose, is about standards versus uniqueness, where you see we’ve already seen some emerging standards to simplify. Certain interactions to kind of. Create shortcuts in understanding. To make systems interactive and in an intuitive way, but there will certainly be periods of experimentation, and I think right now there’s a lot of experimentation and trying out new visual languages. A new interactive devices, for example new ways of navigation, ways of presenting options, and ways of interacting with virtual objects. And to draw a very, very simple example when I was back in the 90s. And everybody wanted buttons to be different on a website it sounds ridiculous saying now, but you know one simple thing that’s just emerged as. Let’s just keep it standard so people know where to click.

There was a lot of experimentation and a lot of really finding the right things to standardize and there finding the right things to make your own as a designer. I also want to mention a couple of other things that were already at I mentioned narrative forms like film and theater and games. Where we see there’s much more creative opportunity for really wildly new and unknown experiences, so then that those constraints are effectively decided by the creator by the author of that world. But. You need that means you need to pay great attention, take care over the learning curve isn’t mentioned this kind of idea of how people will. Find their way and whether they need to learn and a whole set of difficult rules. And then internal consistency within that world, so things making sense. And I so yeah, I’ll come back to that in a moment, but I think that’s something that the writers always have to do, even if it’s like a sci-fi story or another world. We still, if we’re going to be carried along on that journey, we need to really believe it. And so within that world, things need to make sense. And as I mentioned it, if it’s entertainment we’re talking about, we can explore all indeed artistic expression we can explore. A wider range of emotional impact, rather than just trying to create an enjoyable experience we might think about things like. Fear suspense of Rizal of the excitement. Which kind of new different from product design? So think about what States of mind you want to create for your users, and in the longer term, what sort of personalities that they want to be, do they want to be themselves? Maybe in some ways they do, and in other ways they don’t, nothing that’s positive is that something that we are figuring out is how different do we want to be from Ontario cells. And that’s probably going to vary. From day to day, from moment to moment. And I think you know that coming back to that context, understanding the context in the real world. Designers need to think about the real environment of the user, the physical and psychological aspects, keeping people comfortable and safe. When they’re in the virtual world, that means, simply creating a way to engage that is economic and think about the posture we think about repetitive injuries and eyestrain in these kind of issues which are emerging now. And so that’s kind of the real world as I am immersed in a virtual world, I’m still also in the real world. You have to think about disorientation and nausea, motion sickness is an issue, so why do issues like privacy and security? And then also, after all the times between, when people are in the real world, away from the virtual world. And there the digital twin is still existing, but their real self needs to beware of short and long term effects like anxiety or socialized social isolation, compulsions. And these are all broadly related to the designer’s remit to think about, and then, within the virtual world was a context there, we talked about rewriting the rules as as you guys are artistic creators, you want to throw the rules. Out of the window and write your own, **but you gotta have something that makes a coherent sense.**Even if you want to create feelings of uncertainty or familiarity on old. So we’re even if you’re whether you’re creating something that could exist in the real world, like a building or something completely fictitious space center or another world. People can’t interact with it if they can’t make sense of it. So that means essentially uses, being quickly able to understand the internal rules. But you know, if there’s no gravity or there’s some interesting physics in a well, then they need to understand that and there needs to be consistent. Things shouldn’t just come out of nowhere or for no reason, it’s a bit like the principal checkouts and some Chekhov’s the playwright is. Chekhov’s gun there’s been it may have heard of this you can look it up at this principle of. Internal consistency in the story is kind of Chekhov’s gun and reverse that you don’t want something. They just appearing in a world that doesn’t make sense. Um. You don’t usually course there may be no deliberate choice, that’s another story. I think while social interactions are important, designers think a lot about what the impact on wider influence of their creations will have on the communities. Rather than individuals, communities and even societies. So that will is also being created virtually and designers will shape it, creators need to understand how the real world works, to think about the social interactions, the transactions, and structures. That will be created in this new world and the major rural sociology, cultural anthropology, architecture, city planning and so on, so there’s a lot of kind of. And more cross border collaboration thing is likely to happen and so there’s a bass on my my main thoughts on there, so lastly I just want to finish this thing, I think it’s unlikely that. That any one designer can be all these things. So I would say, focus on building the skills and interests of building on the skills and interests and opportunities you already have. Okay, thanks for that, Daisy.

Daisy:

Thank you Dr. Stevens for sharing with us such a profound view towards design. I think the point you mentioned about how affordance can be leveraged for digital goods that can move across metaverse is a good question for every designer to think about. We should also bear in mind that creating in the virtual world doesn’t mean that there are no constraints on design. It’s essential to have some level of sense, otherwise people barely comprehend the works, let alone appreciate them.

Our next speaker is Reva. She will talk about the motivation that drove her into Web3, her creative process which can surely inspire our creators.

After working as an algorithm engineer in the movie, VR and AR industries for 6 years, Reva then started her career as an algorithmic/generative crypto artist and engineer of computer graphics. She also established a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) for independent crypto artists called WeirDAO.

Now the space is yours, Reva.

Reva

Okay, thank you BEAM team for hosting this space. I’m so happy to make new friends, but I need to say sorry in advance for my connection here is no stable. I’ll start to share some of my own experience of getting through this field. I was an algorithmic engineer, a former engineer. So before I started to treat generative arts I was working in the film making industry. I studied computer graphics during my undergraduate and post graduate time. But after these years of working as an engineer, I found myself more interested in art. So things since 2018 I have been teaching myself digital art. And lucky for me I discovered a field of algorithmic and generative art which combines my interests and tech and technical skills. And I really enjoy the process of coding to make art, and actually, so actually my time as a creator is not very long. Oh, it’s not more than four years till now, but a half of this time I was creating or building in the Web3 world. And that is, in the beginning of 2020 I heard about crypto art and NFT at the first time from an article. And it was when the covid19 started to become a worldwide disaster and many of my offline art projects have to be canceled. But I feel really excited about the crypto art because I do have trust in the technology of block chain. And long before I have read through the white paper of Bitcoin. And thanks to her my technology background, I quickly understood that the blockchain is the base of the next generation of Internet. And in my understanding, the application of art on chain will be a brand new media of art itself too. So since then, I devote myself to the research of crypto art. And I participated in the communities of many NFT platforms. And so lucky that I can I could find a group of collectors that like my work. I can’t imagine when I was in the Web2 world because I don’t have an art background. So I would have never dreamed that my works could be collected by people. And also web3 gave me a lot of opportunities. So this is about the process of my journey into the web3. And that’s all, thank you.

Daisy:

Reva, thank you for taking the time to speak to us. I think Reva’s personal experience is pretty insightful for both creators and developers. Everyone can seek for diverse possibilities in the metaverse.

Our next guest speaker, Allen, will look into the future, forecasting future development of the metaverse.

Allen is the founding partner of a research driven venture firm Nothing Research and also the partner of blockchian fund BlockHive. He used to work as Chief Analyst and Head of Staking Operations at Huobi Group. For those who have registered in the professional division of our Kaleidoverse Metaverse Design Contest, you will get the chance to pitch your projects to him once you are selected as finalists.

Let’s welcome Allen.

Allen Ding

Yeah, I’m very honored to be invited here to share some of my idea about Metaverse. First, I wanna give a brief introduction about myself and I am Alan. The founding partner of a research driven venture firm Nothing Research and also the partner of blockchian fund BlockHive. J used to work as Chief Analyst and Head of Staking Operations at Huobi Group. And right now yeah, I’m managing my own crypto found called Nothing Research and my found is a research driven crypto found. We focus on investing in Defi and Metaverse project.

And in my opinion, the metaverse is a very promising track, an infrastructure level track. And has a lot of upside you may start here about metaphors this word in last two years, but actually. RD concept become in actually some of metaverse project like crypto, bustle and d center, and are created before 2018. Ah, so it’s not a new concept, it’s not a new industry as you can see some Metaverse works already have lots of user created content. But for an industry, I think the Metaverse is still in its early stage if we measure the life circle of a new industry by a scale of 1 to 100. We are currently you may be at the stage of 1 to 5 of metaverse. In this stage you may see capital and money start pouring in into this industry, this is what has happened in the metaverse in the past year. A large number of projects have been you have been giving large valuation by investment institution. And the retail investors, many projects virtual land can be sold for more than 100 million dollars overnight, I think it’s a bit overvalued currently in the next stage, the hype and manipulation of capital will be reduced, I think. And everyone will focus more on the quality of the project and the prosperity of the ecology. The value of the project can really produce these other very important. Good content creators will play a very important role in the future. And probably we can actually experience almost any behavior in real life in the metaverse, like shopping, seeing a big show, studying, traveling and even doing our own business. As an angel investor, I’m pretty happy to see more ideas came up, yeah. And. Yeah, that’s what I want to say yeah yeah, thank you.

Daisy:

Your insights into the development of Web3 were both fascinating and penetrating. Thank you Allen for providing us with an investor perspective on the potential of metaverse.

Panel Discussion

Daisy：

And we don’t stop there. Let’s move on to the panel discussion.

The first topic we are going to talk about is really the №1 big event in Web3: Yuga Labs. They acquired Crypto Punks & Meebits, issued ApeCoin, launched their metaverse, otherside. It seems to me that every whale in the crypto participated in the mint of otherdeeds. What’s your opinion on the recent moves of Yuga Labs, specifically the launch of Otherside?

Allen

First of all, I am very optimistic about yuga labs, because he defines the paradigm of this wave of nft season, such as issuing 10k pfp, giving each nft the use of commercial copyrights, airdropping to nft holders, creating sub-pfp, and a series of recent actions For example, issuing ape token, issuing Otherside, selling otherdeed, etc. all these models are created and carried forward by Yuga.

There are obvious shadows of traditional capital behind yuga labs, such as Hollywood. Bayc is very good at marketing and brand building. They have lots of collabrations with celebrities, traditional companies and brands. They have strong capability to break down the barrier between the crypto and traditional industries, which is the core capability of a nft project from my side. So I am very optimistic about yuga labs and all its products.

However, it does not mean that it is a good time to invest. I may feel that in the short term, with the continuous increase of US dollar interest rates and the increasing uncertainty of the global economy, there is a relatively large downside risk in the crypto. So I suggest to slow down your investment.

Daisy：

In the next topic we are gonna pay attention to the emergency of metaverse. The items related to Web3 have become talking points in recent years. Though people have mixed reviews towards this emerging area, the majority still hold a positive perspective on its development. It is widely said that blockchain and the metaverse have opened up the era of creator economy, so what opportunities do creators have?

John Stevens

I think experience is evidence that testimonial of the opportunity to hear your story is really fascinating, the journey that you’ve made. Because you have, come quite early, you’ve seen the opportunity and you’ve made that transition yourself. It’s clear to me that it’s growing and it’s growing very fast, the opportunity that is. not alone is important, but it’s also changing to the growing which means there’s gonna be plenty of work there will be waves of demand for creative. As Web three hype rises, but then it will fall probably. I think you know they’ll probably be a kind of hype by curve, or the hype cycle, if you are familiar with that this idea of very high expectations and then a deck of frustration and disillusionment, and then the there will be a kind of maturity reached where more people understand the value realistically. I’d also skills are established. Amongst not just the creators, but everybody else involved required. To realize these very ambitious ideas, and I think what’s the opportunities? So there’s a kind of financial opportunity that there’s work to be done, there will be demand for that. But I think creative opportunities are in the new forms of expression and the experiment are now wants to take a look at some of the generative stuff that. There is so much further that we will see, we will see digital creation which is not limited to motion graphics and 2D images, but all kinds of digital artifacts that might have behaviors encoded into them, and maybe they’ll be more like the conceptual art of objects that have behaviors. But I’m not behavior might be responsive and unique to the owner. All kind of more and more responding to the owner and other objects and artifacts that the owner has. And I think that creates a different relationship between the object, the artist’s creation. And the owner of the collector. And of course I think in a pragmatic sense also the. There are markets emerging as we’ve already heard, and markets for the direct selling of amenities. But they seem to be dominated by creators who have established. Strong followings in social media and finding a market to sell their creations. And I think those are the my thoughts on that I think is very, very exciting area and I’m even more excited and interested to see where things go after this conversation. Thank you.

Reva

I’m more familiar with critical art. So I think the simplest way to join in is to create artworks. And in your own style, but of course there are, there are plenty of options to choose. We can be an architect of its developer, musician of an art project or a writer of introducting projects, or even a gamer or a runner, but no matter what career you choose, you’re actually a builder of a community. What touched me most is that you have the right and freedom to choose the community you like and trust. I think this is the most precious thing in the Web3.

Allen

And I have something to add. I think the entire web3 is supported by creators, and the metaverse is a very sexy topic in web3. A good web3 company usually formulates rules, and then turns everyone into creators within the rules, and builds the world together . Therefore, creators are not only creators, but also users, investors, asset owners, project operators, and businessmen. So there are many opportunities for creators.

For example, as far as I know, many designers earn income by selling their designs in the metaverse, even more than their real work. At the same time, as a contributor in the early stage of the project, people will also receive airdrops and incentives from officials. This income is also very considerable after the project grows. There are also some people who have become famous because of crypto art, such as beeple, who is currently the most famous crypto artist in the world, but before he only regarded painting as a hobby.

Daisy：

Our last topic focuses on the creators. Web3 is a whole new world for everyone. In Web3 there are fewer design constraints than in the physical world partly because of the absence of gravity and less demand for utilities. But at the same time, Web3 has higher technical boundaries since artworks can only be created using certain digital tools. Under such circumstances, what do you think are the abilities that creators need to possess to enter this new world?

Reva

OK. Thank you. I think we should have some basic skills. I heard that there are many new learners in this field.so so the basics are the about the Wallet, or how to create your account. The more basic is that pay attention to not to be Cheated. For there are many scams in the tools, like our discord or Twitter messages. There are many scams already . We should all pay attention not to click on insecure links and not open any files from the strangers. But other than that, it’s pretty easy to get into this world.

Allen

I think entering this world is very easy, you just need to find the project you like, read the official guides and rules, and then master the basic crafting tools. Of course, having cryptocurrencies and being able to use wallets is necessary.

Q&A

Now let’s enter the final part of our AMA, as name suggests, ask me(us) anything. Feel free to raise your hand and request to speak through the mic icon on your screen.

How should the finalists in the professional division prepare for Pitch Day? Do we need to prepare the roadmap and post-planning of the project?

Allen:

Thanks for your question. First of all, let me introduce my fund. We are a research-driven early-stage angel fund, focusing on investment in the two tracks of defi and metaverse. In our investment philosophy, people and teams are the most important elements of a startup to succeed. We think, whether the founding team’s capabilities match what they wanna do is really important. For example, if the startup is technology-oriented, then we wanna see the strong technology background of the founder and other team memebers. if it is resource-oriented, then we will evaluate more whether the team has enough resources to make it.

On Pitch day, we hope to see the detailed information of the project. Deck is necessary. It needs to include team introduction, project introduction, Roadmap, and preferably has a demo. If the product has been developed, it will be a great. Because we will think The team is very practical and diligent, also it’s easy for us to give our suggestions for help.

We know that Web3 and metaverse are trending issues in North America and Asia, so how’s the situation in Europe?

John Stevens：

Okay, I can only really I can’t speak as a specialist in this area. In terms of the technology and the emergence of the platform, I think as in terms of public awareness. It’s very low, I think there’s there’s an interest in, as you would expect, younger people who are already very familiar with the blending of the real world and the virtual world. I don’t know. Europe is behind the curve, I think yeah, and I wouldn’t want to comment early on that. metaverse we are still in this Just before mainstream. It seems to me that until there’s a real kind of accessible and understandable application where ordinary people on the street can go Oh I get it. It’s. This and then they can do it, whether they’re gamers or something else, from the perspective of someone that you know, I saw. We watched how that went from something that was almost universal and. I feel like we’re at that time where. We’re even before that we were before that level of technology readiness for a lot of the promise. So yeah, I can’t give a categorical. Whether it’s different in Europe, the rest of the world, we’re kind of in. This is early stages before any kind of mainstream understanding of what we can really expect from the metaverse. thank you

Ending

Daisy:

Special thanks to Dr. Stevens, Reva, and Allen. And thanks everyone for participating our AMA. We create a feedback form in our discord and wechat groups. Please fill in it and we appreciate a lot your suggestions, ideas, and future engagement in our community.