NFT Heroes #8: Jæn

Jæn, Crypto Artist and Art Director

Besancia: Hello Jæn and thank you for your time! As part of our series on the key players in the ecosystem, I wanted to ask you a few questions, firstly let me ask you to introduce yourself.

Jæn: I started my artistic career in traditional, physical art, 3D printed street art and augmented reality. I also made a lot of commercial illustrations with clients like Disney, Diesel and PayPal. I had been playing with digital for a while, and I felt that you shouldn’t necessarily wait until you have a physical justification to create a digital work.

In 2020, when I discovered NFTs it answered all the questions I was asking myself. No need to have a physical medium to enhance digital art. It already works, there is a lively culture.. I switched to full-time at the end of 2020 without hesitation.

Do you have a project right now?

Jæn: Yes! It’s called The Big Dream, with a collective named Dreame. We managed to form a team of more than 60 artists from all over the planet and above all, with more than 50% women! Parity is something that is very important for this project. 

We collect dreams from all over the world. The concept is very simple: just go to big.drea.me and give your vision of the world in 2030. How would you dream of the world in 2030?

We collected thousands of dreams from all over the world and then the artists drew from this database and illustrated it. It’s really quite a moving and special experience, it feels like you’re digging into the subconscious of humanity.

Among these artworks, we made 500 that we then merged to make a single large one. This set has already been exhibited all around the world: Time Square, Shibuya, Spain, London… And we want to continue to go around the world to continue to bring people and their dreams closer together through this artistic project!

This big patchwork new work was sold as an open edition on Nifty Gateway. And this collage was also sent to the International Space Station to be exhibited inside, the first crypto art to do so!

There will also be an auction of a unique edition that will allow the collector to choose from the 500 works in order to make it a “curated collection”. A third of the profits generated by the sales of this new collection would be donated to the artist selected by the collector, a third to whole collection, and therefore a third to the Collector-Curator. That’s the current plan.

15% of the sales will be donated to charities in total, 10% of which will be managed by the collectors of the 2 NFTs, with a distribution inspired by the dreams collected. For example, if there are 15% who dream of stopping the war in the world, 15% of the funds will be used for this cause.

How do you see the NFT ecosystem in 5 years?

Jæn: It’s complicated, there are a lot of predictions. Everyone gets excited about blockchain gaming but it’s when everyone is excited about something that you need to take a step back right? I’ve noticed that the game design, scenario, or gameplay parts are often overlooked in the ‘Play to Earn‘ (P2E) games I’ve seen. Players are happy to make money but don’t say “I’m happy playing the game”.

Some say that art or visual creation will fade with NFTs. I disagree with that, every artist manages to use NFTs in a way so specific to them that it will necessarily give way to something very interesting. I don’t see a logical explanation why crypto-art would go away.

I also think that NFTs will develop into everyday applications, with NFT concert tickets or membership passes for example. By a big adoption, rather a generalization. To return to art, generative art is finding its place but it is especially programmable art that I find incredible. On Async Art, in particular, there is no need to know how to code to make programmable art! For a code newbie like me, it’s just perfect. If this could be the direction that NFTs are taking in the future, tout would be the dream!

In your opinion, what is the barrier to NFT “mass adoption” by the general public?

Jæn: I would say learning how to manage a wallet. Even if today there are custodial solutions that allow you to have a wallet just thanks to a login and a password, this brings some complications. For example, with our drop on Nifty Gateway, we realized that as long as the NFT was held on the platform, it did not really exist. You can’t interact with it (except with an API but it’s extremely complicated). It’s good for a bigger adoption but it has limits.

I don’t really see how to simplify it, maybe it just takes time for people to learn how to set up a crypto wallet?

Conclusion

As we progress through our series of interviews with ecosystem players, it becomes so apparent that the future will be rich with innovative ideas and projects. 

These will no doubt form the basis for a new digital reality likely to span over the next few decades shaping the world to come across multiple industries.