Interview: ETHDenver 2020 Art Steward – Jessica Angel

Transcript

my name is Jessica Engel and I'm a visual artist I entered the crypto space through this installation that I was commissioned to do that represented the doge assyrian bridge i learned all about this stuff which was kind of hard at the beginning my role in the art and crypto scene has to do with making blockchain perhaps more accessible more enjoyable allowing people who don't know about blockchain to enter the space from an experiential perspective an aesthetic perspective to then learn more about the technology that sometimes from the get-go just starting talking about blockchain maybe a little bit of a wall so i want to bring art to sort of plate play the role of an introduction to the

space I joined the makerspace or created the concept of the makerspace on the first year of ethan ver taking over this top floor inviting artists inviting programmers to hack art and just like try and merge those things and we have created countless collaborations up here we started in 2018-2019 we did a second version and that's for this version we're doing makerspace again but we're also incorporating the whole building as a sort of creative space taking over the floors and doing this rainbow road that leads all the way up to here if we compare from the past experiences I see that on my end I come from the art side

and I'm bringing the art it's evolving we're taking over the building but I also see the sort of evolution from the other sides I see how the whole event is grown and become more solid and all the parts are integrating we created an open call for artists to bring their crypto art pieces to the event so on the first floor we have an art gallery it's an auction taking place on open sea we have 35 artists who were sort of gathered through Twitter social media and it's amazing the quality of the art is amazing I curated that with an Annie Phillips we have hacking the tower it was also an

open call to bring the artists to Denver in collaboration with David Milk who is projecting some of these pieces in the Denver's clock tower we selected about ten artists loop of art projected video mapped on the tower we have Hardware workshops here we have two people from last year's makerspace who are taking over the role of facilitators for hackers to use hardware and to create interactions between data and art we have the Virgin of crypto which is a collection of crypto art that is all inspired in Virgin Mary from Latin America so it's the sort of crypto art Chapel we have super rare we have the arcade it's fascinating the amount of

different things that we have going on so art decentralized is this community of artists and programmers we basically live on telegram and have all sorts of discussions around blockchain and if keys how art can be integrated with blockchain hacking with hardware and just gathering and feeling feeling these spaces taking over walls and floors and we want to create an opportunity for others to collaborate it's almost like unexpected collaborations that's what we want to do here have people that come from different places meet here and end up working together we have artists who've never done anything in blockchains as their first approach to it we have people from the few good men

for example from the rare pepe foundation other block teams what I try to do this year was to invite artists and programmers who are not necessarily if hiriam kind of thinking about opening the space more and the concept of interoperating maybe through NFTE it's incredible to see the work that the team eighth member team does I don't understand how many layers can be put together it's it's really worth looking into what each number is and all the different things that are happening it's it's quite amusing [Music]