Event: Auras w/ OpenSea
Auras, is a first-of-its-kind, live NFT performance event, that redefines the construct of digital art. Award-winning photographer Jeremy Cowart created 10,000 completely unique NFT's in a span of 20 minutes. For the first time, he revealed his creative process that’s been over 10 years in the making.
Responsibilities: develop creative approach for event, develop content strategy for campaign, develop run of show, artist relations, approve visual designs including Virtual Art design, secure sponsorship, develop and manage content for media.
The Web3 industry is full of bots and scams dominating news headlines and eroding trust in NFT's daily. The community is hungry for authenticity. This event and performance brought total transparency, proof and trust to the project by showing it start to finish, in front of a live audience.
Turning the camera on himself as a blank canvas, Cowart used a mix of analogue techniques including multiple colored lighting set-ups, robotics, three layers of projection and a 130-foot LED volume wall to create a historic collection of NFT's without relying on AI or generative code.
Each of the 10,000 NFT's created have individual unique "Rarity Traits" built in. Cowart built these rarity traits into the creative process, as the event unfolded. This was a historic moment for the Web3 space, as no artist has ever done this in real-time before.
With a background in abstract painting, graphic design and photography, Jeremy Cowart has become a renowned creator in the NFT space, known for his innovative and interactive content. In February 2022, his first NFT series "Block Queens" combined paintings, portraits, and drawings into fully interactive NFTs and sold out in 2 seconds.
Cowart's work has been featured in prestigious publications and galleries, including Vanity Fair, Apple.com, TIME, Rolling Stone, CNN, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. His work was also featured at Phillips auction in London in the fall of 2022 alongside works from Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon and more.
“This is definitely an AI project…. not artificial intelligence, but actual intelligence”
“It’s remarkable to consider that, as individuals, we likely hold disagreements on over 100 different topics with any given person. Yet, it’s often just one single topic that leads us to build divides, end friendships, cancel, mute, or unfollow each other. In today’s world, where we are more connected than ever before, we paradoxically find ourselves increasingly lonely. We doom scroll endlessly and are plagued by historic rates of depression and suicide.
Moving forward, empathy is the way. We must strive to understand the unique journey that each person has taken and the context that informs their beliefs and values. Eagerly learning each other’s story is everything.
AURAS is my creative attempt to express this love and to honor the diversity and complexity of the human experience.”
This experiential event was designed to be an interactive look at live art. Following Jeremy’s Performance, he invited the crowd to participate in his process and have their photos made by him, using the same technique. For the complete story of Auras, Click HERE.
Event Content: Profoto Artist Video
Photographer, artist and creative explorer Jeremy Cowart paints every scene using light. Reinventing and embodying the impossible, discovering something new with each blank canvas at every shoot and using light as his brush to paint his subjects – turning people into a work of art. Created as branded content for Profoto, this short film played as one of the “commercial breaks” during the event.
Responsibilities: direct and story produce.
Event Content: Social Campaign
Designed around five influential pillars of Cowart’s work, this social campaign ran for two weeks leading up to the Auras event.
Responsibilities: direct and story produce.