CryptoArt and Its Artist Friend, Interview Series №3 — George and his psychedelic art experience

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Can you introduce yourself?

My name is George and I was born in 1976 on the countryside in Belgum.
I started following art classes in Herentals from the age of 9, commuting to Antwerp where I studied Fine Arts from the age of 14 for 3 years. 4 years in Graphic Design and then Spatial Arts afterwards.
During my studies and for a very long time after that I always found myself in a mix of creating art either in my atelier or behind my desktop PC.

In my workshop, I mostly painted with oils and acrylic on canvas, I had a dark room where I developed my own black and white photography, did some airbrush, enjoyed sculpting a lot, loved welding and constructing installations, and prepared a whole lot of psychedelic decoration for festivals and parties each year.

On my PC I created digital paintings & edited my photography, made use of many 3D software and explored audio and video editing.

As for in jobs I always freelanced so I could paint and sculpt decor for theater, television shows, movie and festivals. I did some technical work with light and video for theater shows & live broadcast tv for some years as well. I even build a set of escape rooms once.

Only in the past 5 years I started focusing for 100% on my digital art, started printing and promoting my work, added 360° — AR and VR while developing this as a new work-flow transforming myself into Natural Warp.

What do you think is the greatest benefit of crypto-art to artists?

Well the fact that digital items can be “shipped” worldwide instantly (even beyond our planet if you think about it) but also the limitlessness of the medium and the ever growing opportunities the worldwide web brings us. Especially now with AR VR XR and the extremely fast growing technologies. Also collaborations between artists are so much more likely to happen in the digital space nowadays due to the ease of access.

This will bring them closer together.

When did you encounter cryptoart? How do you think of cryptoart becoming more popular than ever?

Early spring 2020 when covid hit Europe I saw all events I was working towards crumble into the abyss. Festivals, exhibitions, anything that could provide me either directly with work, or a way to get out there with my art and expose myself just dissappeared in a matter of weeks.

Ok I did hear the term ‘crypto currency’ and ‘blockchain’ but my knowledge about this was very very limited.

I was already into VR for a couple of years since I have been developing my 360° art workflow on a daily basis so I looked around very often to see what’s happening in the virtual space and I believe this way I stumbled into the virtual world ‘SomniumSpace’, a digital world build on the blockchain. While walking around in there with my goggles on my head, seeing a ton of opportunity I got sparked and immediately started my learning curve into virtual estate, NFTs and crypto currency to get something off the ground as soon as possible.

Now 6 months later after having organized a couple virtual events, creating cryptoart on a daily basis and supporting the community where I can, I can say I’m most stoked to see what the arrival of the cryptoart community in China will bring.

What I assume-or at least hope for-is the connection it will bring forth.

The connection we all seek, especially now in these very strange and uncertain times.

What is the philosophy and genre of your art?

Well both my style and philosophy obviously are influenced by the psychedelic experience, I assume that’s quite clear for all who ogled any of my work. And hereby I’m not only referring to experiences induced by entheogens or sacred medicine — since these only trigger what’s already within us-it started with my early childhood dreams and visions that made me wonder about the origin in existence of anything for that matter.

I can simply state any creation I bring to life is an attempt to translate the constant awe for the unseen, the unknown, that of which we know is there but cannot touch, feel, hear or see.

It’s a visual speculation based on a string of experiences of how the universe might be entangled with itself, resulting in some kind of base structure in space and time that leads to itself creating itself into ‘being’ — constantly in this very ongoing moment.

You mentioned that it’d be better if the Cryptoart platform support VR technology. I think your idea is good. Can you give some details?

Well since my work is often derived from-or a combination of-both my 360° art and my sculpting in VR, I do hope to see the integration of a panorama viewer in all of the very best crypto platforms as soon as possible. (as you find on the web in many places to display 360° photography) It’s simply a viewer which renders an image (jpg / ratio 2:1) with the ‘equirectangular’ metadata into a navigatable spheric environment. And how I see this perfectly suited for translating the psychedelic experience.

What do you want to say to collectors and artists from China?

I’d say it’s a wonderfull thing to see that such a huge bridge can be build where we will be able to cross pollinate our philosophy and art & styles on. I’m looking forward to collaborate, buy, sell and grow on this huge market expansion opportunity. And thus Hi !! and Welcome !!

George’s psychedelic world: https://www.naturalwarp.com/cryptoart.html

Isabelle

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Come and use our blockchain-powered platform CryptoArt to show and sell your work to collectors who care about authenticity.

For more of CryptoArt at:
cryptoart.ai

Originally published at https://linkart-lar.medium.com on November 20, 2020.