Architecture for Crypto Art - Designing a New Home for M○C△
Seeking New Context
The Crypto Art boom has left many collectors (and creators) wondering; where do I put my art? Where can it go? While most lean towards the familiarity of digital frames mounted to walls, others are exploring deeper into a more comprehensive experience with an added dimension. Virtual world applications are becoming more commonplace as a venue to see and collectively experience tokenized art. These “Metaverse” apps have been around and growing on the Ethereum blockchain for years, but it wasn’t until this past year that there was such an active drive to build inside of them. Walls and mounting hooks just don’t speak the same language as Crypto Art. With new rules come new kinds of walls... or, no walls at all.
One such wall challenger - or all-around paradigm shifter - is The Museum of Crypto Art.
The Museum of Crypto Art (M○C△) represents a new kind of public forum to experience art and culture in the digital realm. The Museum itself is a global foundation and a blockchain-powered governance experiment that gives people (artists, curators, on-chain explorers) agency to shape the collection of the Museum as it evolves with time and new technology.
I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Colborn Bell and Shivani Mitra of M○C△ to design a virtual museum for the Genesis Collection; a series of 160 artworks made by some of the earliest and influential Crypto Art pioneers. This blog post will dive into a bit of the thought process behind the museum’s architecture and the ever-changing metaverse that surrounds it.
🕳️ 🐇 🖼️
I first tumbled down the M○C△ rabbit hole in the Fall of 2020 when I applied for their incubator; a program that provided artists with virtual land to build, explore blockchain technology, and showcase their art. As part of the program, M○C△ sent land plots to artists of completely different backgrounds and aesthetics. Artists were tasked with learning how to build a 3D gallery environment that could house their artwork. Over time (and a few tutorials) a vibrant virtual district began to emerge. This creative hub of the metaverse was developed inside of a world called Somnium Space, a VR application built on the Ethereum blockchain. Somnium itself has an incredibly unique and beautiful virtual environment that can be experienced by anyone around the globe, simultaneously.
That’s the virtual “me” leaping across the I○C△ (Incubator of Crypto Art) district.
Inside Somnium, there’s a powerful emphasis on the natural world. Monumental buildings rise out of grassy hills, mountains and waterfronts. Virtual sunlight carries across the landscape, giving warmth to the architecture it passes over. At night, buildings glow. Giant artworks and neon shapes flicker in the distance like bug zappers, attracting meta-wanderers who teleport from all directions through moon-lit fields.
Every building is like a discovery. When you arrive at a parcel in the Virtual Reality app, the building loads itself piece by piece right in front of you. All of this together makes for a kind of otherworldly performance that challenges the notion of what a virtual “building” can be.
This museum was designed by embracing the mission of M○C△ and the many magical tools of Somnium. The M○C△ team constantly strives to question every facet of what a museum can represent. This ethos passes through and into the virtual architecture they create:
The M○C△ Genesis Collection is a time capsule for the Metaverse and its travelers. The artworks which comprise the Genesis Collection represent the earliest etchings on the blockchain, and will come to be regarded as the digital cave paintings of our transhumanist narrative. There is a uniquely human, ineffable “why?” which future algorithms will attempt to interpret when they analyze these initial blockchain transactions. We anticipate the collection will be critical in answering this question. (Source)
Virtual Vernacular
The museum design began with a 3D formwork meant to resemble a QR Code. QR’s have a longstanding history in the crypto world. Since the beginnings of Bitcoin these black and white squares have acted as a kind of billboard between users and as a beacon to the outside world. In some ways, these patterns represent the first visual language to be associated with cryptocurrency. We wanted the bones of the museum to carry through that legacy and visual DNA.
The QR pattern was divided into a super grid of solids and voids. The voids themselves host clusters of artwork while the solids are extruded in an effort to create a distinction between “rooms” and to connect with different levels. Those extrusions were warped into a kind of helix pattern that reacted to the artwork on display and the natural environment of Somnium Space. As the helix bends the visitor is drawn deeper into the depths of the building - and - through crypto art history.
Art is intimate, but also open. There are no walls or ceilings in this museum. Those structural responsibilities are replaced with surreal and sometimes disorienting artworks that exist in front, above and below you.
In this metaverse, natural light is a critical (and first) participant of a building. The day-to-night cycles in Somnium create opportunities for complex silhouettes, where the rigid grid would cast itself onto the cave-like helix. These are moments of conflict, set alongside artworks that also provoke their own form of friction.
Agora, A Gathering Ground
The museum itself is a time capsule, but it’s also a public space designed to pull together virtual minds from around the globe. We decided to title the building “AGORA” inspired by the ancient Greek term used to define a public assembly space. M○C△’s AGORA is one of many public places that the museum will create to experience and learn from this emerging creative movement.
Below, there are images from the museum’s opening which took place in full Virtual Reality gear and also within a web app where visitors are invited to explore the museum using just a website link. Thank you to everyone who took selfies and photos of their experiences visiting the museum and their artwork!
Image credits: Artur Sychov, Atlaude, Pindar Van Arman, eceertrey, SnowCrash, Marterium, Martin Lukas Ostachowski, Curator of Earth, and Museum of Crypto Art.
Meta Architecture
We’re at the starting line for a new era of art and architecture. Metaverses are crafting new rules for spatial experiences that can be “built” without the traditional constraints of materiality, gravity, or weather. Virtual worlds will begin to unlock new ways of thinking that will flip our long-held logic of construction, of buildings, public spaces, neighborhoods and cities.
Experimental communities like M○C△ are at the forefront of this paradigm shift. I hope that this museum encourages you to explore (and create) a bit further down the rabbit hole alongside us…
