Culture / 400 posts found
How BrainDrops Is Curating AI Art’s Future
To say most of the discussion surrounding artificial intelligence in the last six months has centered around AI art tools is no injustice to the technology’s broader context. While programs like ChatGPT have done much to showcase AI’s disruptive capabilities in the public’s eye, its advancements in AI art tools that have stirred up the most uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and conversations about what it means to be human in an age where human exceptionalism finds increasingly fewer places to hide. It’s not that artists using machine intelligence is anything new — creatives have been exploring the potential of AI to […]
Jenkins the Valet: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Azurian PFP
Web3 has seen many instances of Bored Ape holders monetizing their NFTs, taking full advantage of their IP rights through ape-branded clothing brands, food retailers, or other ventures. While there are 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs, some have gained more popularity than others due to these creative business endeavors. A prime example is Jenkins the Valet, a fictional character created by Tally Labs and dramatized around Bored Ape #1798, who acts as the Head Valet of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. But Jenkins’ story isn’t that straightforward. To help tell it, along with the story of Tally Labs’ subsequent controversial Azurbala […]
Runway: Reporting From The Inaugural AI Fashion Week
You’ve heard of Metaverse Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week, and more. Now, we’re excited to report that there’s a new fashion week to keep an eye on. Brought to you by AI creative studio Maison Meta, AI Fashion Week — backed by e-commerce platform Revolve Group — debuted on April 20 in New York City. Maison Meta is responsible for the first AI-generated collection and ad campaign for Moncler Genius as well as the generated AI campaigns for Pangaia, and other global brands. Spanning two days and clocking over 1,000 visitors, the event held at Spring […]
Marvel Studios Founder on Comics, Stan Lee, and NFTs
Everyone knows Marvel Studios. The production juggernaut fundamentally changed the entertainment landscape when it began the Marvel Cinematic Universe in earnest with the release of Iron Man in 2008. Fifteen years and over $25 billion in revenue later, the company continues to put out movies and streaming shows that expand on the characters under its banner. What people may not know is the person behind it all: David Maisel, the man who spearheaded that cinematic universe and was named chairman of Marvel Studios in March 2007. Maisel is responsible for getting the company to produce films of the characters it […]
Runway Exclusive: An Inside Look at Digital Fashion Platform DRAUP
Welcome back to Runway where we report to you from the front lines of the digital fashion revolution. Today, we bring you exclusive visuals from DRAUP, a digital fashion platform by Dani Loftus (creator of This Outfit Does Not Exist) launching April 25. Backed by Variant Fund, Flamingo DAO, Ian Rogers, GMoney, Cozomo de’ Medici, Trevor McFedries, and others, DRAUP proposes a mission of “expanding the creative and technological bounds of digital fashion.” Each collection created under DRAUP’s in-house brand is done so in collaboration with a pioneering artist. The inaugural collection, #00: Seen On Screen, features Nicolas Sassoon who […]
OpenSea Pro: The NFT Giant’s Answer to Blur?
OpenSea has been stuck between a rock and a hard place for the last six months. In that time, its first real competitor — Blur, the NFT marketplace and aggregator — broke onto the scene, siphoning off the majority of trading volume from the once untouchable ruler of the NFT seas. The development caused a stir in the NFT community in more ways than one; renewed discussion on creator fees (royalties) have come to the fore, complaints of market manipulation at the hands of power traders abound, and questions of just how web2 the NFT community wants Web3 to be […]
Runway: Future+ Gives Glimpse into the Future of Digital Fashion
The Alpha Future+ is a new IRL/URL platform designed to connect fashion, beauty, luxury, and retail executives with Web3 creators, blockchains, and digitally native brands. Ashumi Sanghvi, the CEO and founder of MAD Global, launched Future+ in partnership with Samsung. The company held its much-anticipated launch event on April 12, 2023, at Samsung’s New York Flagship during NFT.NYC. The program featured panels with top executives, industry insiders, and influential brand representatives across fashion, luxury, retail, and gaming. Dive deeper Welcome back to Runway, where we report to you from the frontlines of the digital fashion revolution. In the last few […]
Is Blur Backing Itself into a Corner?
The NFT ecosystem is bracing for impact. In a few short weeks, the wildly successful and controversial NFT marketplace and aggregator Blur will end its Season 2 points earning season, with big payouts of its native token, $BLUR, expected to land in the hands of its most loyal and active users. Rewarding users for participation is a good thing in theory, a concept that certainly aligns with Web3 principles of all boats rising in the tide. But Blur’s strategy of leaning into the NFT pro-trader demographic by alluring them with staggered token rewards could backfire spectacularly for the platform — […]
20 Caribbean Creators Sharing Their Cultural Traditions on the Blockchain
Web3 has a navel-gazing problem. While it’s hard to pass a day on Twitter without coming across rhetoric of the space’s accessibility and egalitarianism, it remains stubbornly Western-centric. Big international happenings like NFT Paris and NFT Korea Festival absolutely deserve credit for helping to broaden its scope, but even these events can feel like rehashes of the same figures, topics, and artwork that the North American and European crypto art market seem to dictate. Fortunately, there are increasingly common efforts to make Web3 more representative of the global audience of which it’s composed. One group making sure its cultural voice […]
How the Expressions NFT Marketplace Aims to Uplift Global Communities
Next week, the NFT platform Expressions — a marketplace dedicated to supporting underrepresented global art communities in Web3, will launch its genesis art project — Origins & Ancestries. The drop is the first of ten that will take place over the next year and will showcase 1,000 artworks from 12 artists in the Caribbean, including Sofía Maldonado-Suárez (Puerto Rico), Edward Bowen (Trinidad), Carlos Davila Rinaldi (Puerto Rico), Isabel Berenos (Curaçao), and more. Expressions was created with an expansive goal in mind; Web3, for all its open-access rhetoric, remains frustratingly Western-focused, with North American and European artists dominating trends and headlines. […]