Black Ether

The Collective Core Organizers

• Yara Dulac Gisler
• Jahsiri Asabi-Shakir
• Warren Jones
• Eden Airlines

*Participating artists will be released a week prior to the compilation they will appear

As an NFT Label and Vendor, Black Ether functions as curator and incubator of the black creativity and expression. Our profit Sharing Model allows for recurring and residual payments that can last throughout each contributor's lifetime. We plan to release collections of audio based NFTs of varying formats from our growing database of creators.

In the coming months we will raise funds and build our network through a series of NFT releases that will culminate into the launch of the Black Ether Coin. Black Ether will be a token built on top of the sybil-resistant mechanics of Proof of Humanity, that will allow our artists to be identified on chain, sustained via a Basic Income Drip, and a form of partial reparations from the parasitic industry’s of fine art & music.

We will introduce the artists within the Black Ether Universe with a series of NFT audio compilations, art, and writing created by the Black Ether network.

Black Ether Book Series

Black Ether Book Series is a teaching tool for the end of the world from the end of the world, a guide built from archived memories of black bodies throughout the black diaspora.

The idea started as a way to navigate Warren Jones’ thoughts and try to regain control of their autonomy. The daily diary entries became a way to write theory. The sharing of these ideas with others showed him they weren’t alone. Black Ether is a book of transcribed conversations and interviews involving 13 Black people from around the world, spanning from the latter part of 2019 and through 2021. The book is cut into three sections: the foreword by Cierra Artis, the intro and new history by Warren Jones and finally the transcribed conversations. The progress of the first book has led to the idea of creating a series of books collecting and archiving the experiences and ideas of black people from around the world.

Black Ether Vol 2: Black Experimental Music Anthology

The basis of the second book is an anthology of experimental black musicians. This book would incorporate interviews, essays, text conversation, transcribed phone calls, pictures, drawings and notes from black musicians who are pushing the medium of sound, music, and performance forward. This book would serve as a timestamp for these black musicians marking their place in this timeline. It would also serve as a reference point and learning tool for others hoping to walk the same path.

Black Ether VR Experience

During the book creation process Warren Jones began to think about other ways of capturing the voices transcribed in the book. Guided by essays/audio lectures from thinkers Sun Ra and Saidiya Hartman they began looking into more ways to create a world for the book to live in. With the help of programmer Campbell Argenzio, using unity and VR it was possible to create three diverse worlds. The reader can choose to move linearly through each level or allow the audio and scenery to immerse them. The goal is that with each book in the series more and more “worlds” are added and with the growing access to better technology the visual component is improved on with each release as well.

NFT Compilation Series 1

The NFT Compilation Series will include 6 compilations with ten artists per compilation. Each artist will be given a unique symbol representing their song accompanied with a physical NFT housing the contract. Collection of all ten artists from a compilation will create a section of a larger image. Collecting all 6 compilations show the bigger picture; a re-imagination of the historical slave quilts that where used to lead runaway slaves in the United states to freedom.

Rather than the traditional approach of each sale being split between the label and the contributor, Black Ethers profit Sharing Model gives all contributors equal stake in the entire collection. This means that if 50 artists contribute 50 sound pieces resulting in a collection of 50 NFTS, each minted at our starting price of $45,000, each artist could potentially receive 50 payments of $900 rather than one lump sum payment. What this does is allows the budding artists with less recognition but equal potential to have equal access, as well as giving investors opportunity for high returns. Furthermore, this allows for sustained passive income and in turn financial freedom for all active creators participating in the black ether project.

Eden Airlines Richmond Satellite Show

The end of the world and destruction of man means the first truly free Black body. Slavery, systematic oppression, violence, genocide, memory and assimilation at the hands of these systems inhabitants have stripped Black people of our autonomy and generational wealth. If progress in a white context is linked to capitalism and capitalism is the cause of racism, and racism determines the enslaved, we can say that striving for this white idea of prosperity reinstates us into the enslavement we were supposedly “freed” from. True freedom for the Black body comes from access to our past such as language, tradition, stories and history. As well as re-instilling the importance of shared emotional memory. The goal is to override common narratives to transmit the information that has survived colonial assault, reinforced by the new restorative magic that comes from the diaspora.

Since the system has prevailed through the splitting of Black families and communities, combining people from all parts of the diaspora is integral to showing the many facets of Black identity lost. The collaborations displayed at the show are the foundational work we have done as steps to create a new referential system that automatically undermines the dominant knowledge production through the presentation of new archives, memories and stories.

This will act as the hard launch of the physical book, capsule sounds, Vr/ desktop experience and compilation 1 and 2 pressing.

Eden gallery will transform; relics of the past, symbols, and drawings carved into Vantablack monolith pillars built into the space. There will be videos projected onto the walls and sound reverberating through the space. At the start of the show Black bodies will be invited to participate in the installation by bringing a memento from their own past to be added to the space as an affirmation of their own visibility. The space might seem disruptive, but is in itself an inherently new order, which means to merge with the audience. At the end of the project, items left in the space will be gathered and compiled into an altar which will become the centerpiece for a performance closing out the space and ending the show's term. All these elements combined become an interpretation of a timeline discontinued.

Black Ether Coin

The fund raising, publicity, and network building of all of Black Ether projects listed above will culminate into the launch of the Black Ether Coin, which will act as a social safety net for the entire network. Black Ether Coin (BEC) is a new crypto-economic primitive that will be built on top of the Proof of Humanity and Kleros protocols. We will use the funds raised from the NFT sales listed above to onboard everyone in the Black Ether network onto Proof of Humanity, funding both their gas costs and providing the 0.125 ETH for the deposit needed to submit their verification to the Kleros Court. The funding raised from the sale of the initial backer token and from all the subsequent NFT drops will be used to pay for the smart contract and dApp development of the full protocol. The hope for this coin is to become a form systematic reparations starting through its dispersion among the Black creative community, their families, and friends.

After their addresses are verified on Proof Of Humanity, a second verification will take place where the artists within the network will verify new applications as black, using the credentials and socials uploaded in their initial verification on proof of humanity. Once they are verified by Proof of Humanity, they need to get an existing Black Ether member to vouch for their inclusion in the network, which will require a signature from the existing members wallet.  This signature can then be used to register a new member on the BEC smart contract, and they will begin receiving a BEC drip into their account every block, along with the UBI drip they are already receiving. This process will create a sybil resistant pseudo-anonymous network of black artists. The next phase of this project is a custom two-sided liquidity pool, where BEC holders can sell their BEC and receive ETH in return, and anyone who wants to pay reparations can submit ETH to burn BEC directly from the pool. This will allow any crypto protocol that generates yield, trading fees, or any other form of profit to allocate a portion of their revenue to paying reparations to black people and black artists. This will drive up the price of BEC in the liquidity pool, allowing those accruing BEC from the drip to sell without driving the token price down to zero.

Another angle we want to approach self-generating economics is through our Black Ether Contract Model. We will draft and distribute customizable Black Ether Artist contracts which would require the business partners (ie. venues, curators) of our artist community to donate or invest an additional 10%-20% of the artist’s fee into the Black Ether Coin. As our community grows and demand increases in the local and digital communities, each artist's individual fees increase, the frequency of bookings increase, and in turn, the value of the token will rise. Each Business Partner of every Black Ether Artist would be incentivized to take accountability for the futures of the artists they commission.

BE is not here to replicate a movement that we've seen already. This is not a one off, this is the future: reclaim space, create security, maintain stability, and invoke change, More to come….