On June 22nd in Brooklyn NY, TingDao, teamed up with ONBD, presented our very first NFT NYC satellite event, “Like Icarus We Fly”. The event was hosted by TingDao and ONBD, co-hosted by Icarus Art.ai and Ting Museum, and featured the latest creation by artist Ting Song, a pioneer of AI-based digital and blockchain related art.
The afterparty was sponsored by multi-chain DeFi protocol iZUMi Finance, Asia-Pacific’s largest crypto custodian Cobo, and Kernel Ventures, dedicated to open finance, NFTs and more. More than 200 guests attended the event, including artists, NFT collectors, and crypto investors.
“Like Icarus We Fly” isan immersive performance incorporating AI and blockchain, created by celebrity NFT artist Ting Song that was performed in collaboration with multi-disciplinary artist Kevin Heisner (aka Shlumper). This show is scene 1.5 of Song Ting’s ongoing play “牡丹亭Rêve,” regarded as an important parallel universe in the theatre series created by Ting. Icarus Art.ai provided the AI algorithm and Ting Museum provided the music and digital infrastructure.
In a spirit of rebellion and innovation, the show saluted the rebellious young hero Icarus from Greek mythology, John Perry Barlow’s “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” and pioneer hacktivist Aaron Swartz. The music in the performance was made by crypto artist Roxie.R, who graduated from UAL’s interaction design program. Roxie.R used symmetric encryption to hide the private key information in the play, and made a decryption manual that refers to the format of China’s college entrance examination papers for every audience member present. In addition to music, every prop in the performance, including images, poems and costumes, were designed in a cooperative manner between humans and computer algorithms.
For this special performance during NFT NYC 2022, Ting Song invited the audience to become active participants in her narrative, as they interacted with the dancer interpreting the AI-generated script. The experience occurred in a physical setting yet was seamlessly integrated onto the blockchain; personal emotion expressed through physical dance and AI poetry.
The interior and exterior of the venue were adorned with AR murals by New York and Chicago-based artist Shlumper. Elements from his ongoing NFT series “Spirit Snacks” were incorporated into the performance in the form of gummy candies, whose NFT counterparts were shown via an installation of digital screens.
In conjunction with the event, Shlumper dropped eight genesis Spirit Snacks NFTs on Opensea that subsequently SOLD OUT before the performance even began, which of course turned the event into a celebration of the extremely successful drop.
As a fine art NFT incubator, ONBD is committed to discovering the work of talented artists who are exploring the blockchain as a new medium, and we are thrilled to see them become recognized and appreciated. The success of the drop and the reaction to the performance has made us even more convinced of a growing appreciation of the quality NFT artworks, among the traditional art audience as well as within the Web3 space. Our experience hosting Like Icarus, We Fly at NFT NYC has strengthened ONBD’s commitment to enabling the vision of artists in Web3 and producing meaningful art projects of the highest caliber to a new global audience.
Finally, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to everyone who contributed to this event:
Artists: Ting Song, Kevin Heisner
Dancer: Jun Zhou (Mr. Dream)
Music Producer: Roxie Ren, Xun Li
Co-host: IcarusArt.Ai, Ting Museum
Sponsors: iZUMi Finance, Cobo, Kernel Ventures
