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Digital Art: The Latest Architecture and News

Digital Art and Architecture: Beyond Billboards and Spheres

In July, Las Vegas unveiled an extravagant spectacle - a colossal LED-wrapped spherical structure, standing 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide. This entertainment event venue instantly captured the public's gaze, becoming a local landmark and attracting global attention through extensive news coverage. Similar spherical concepts have been proposed in London and at a smaller scale in Los Angeles. These massive display structures open up questions about facades as digital canvases. What role can architecture take as an urban canvas other than as a billboard? And what are different ways for architecture to engage the public through digital art besides gigantic LED spheres?

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MetaMundo’s 3D NFT Villa Opens Questions about the Function of Architecture in the Metaverse

MetaMundo has launched its second three-dimensional NFT, an ocean-adjacent villa, complete with an NFT gallery, meditation pavilions, and entertaining areas. The structure was designed by American architect and hybrid-creative Luis Fernandez to become an immersive space for meeting, playing, and relaxing. Through this project, the architect aims to explore the changing paradigm of building in the metaverse. As laws of physics become irrelevant and materials are reduced to surface images, he asks the question what will architecture mean for the metaverse, how will we experience it and how will we use it?

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Daniel Arsham and Andrés Reisinger Among Acclaimed Designers of Newly-Launched Metaverse Real Estate Development

The Alexander Team and metaverse real estate development firm Everyrealm, have announced the launch of "The Row", a private, members-only metaverse real estate community featuring architecture designed by world-renowned artists. The Row will be launched on the metaverse world-building platform Mona, and will feature limited-edition series of 30 3D architectural landmarks, each sold as a 1-of-1 non-fungible token (NFT) designed by artists including Daniel Arsham, Misha Kahn, Andrés Reisinger, Alexis Christodoulou, Six N. Five, and Hard.

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Mars House, First Digital Home to be Sold on the NFT Marketplace

Mars House designed in May 2020 by Artist Krista Kim, has become the first sold digital NFT home in the world. The 3D digital file that can be experienced in virtual reality, was just acquired. Rendered using Unreal Engine, a software used to create video games, the house can be experienced in VR, but could also be experienced through augmented reality (AR) environment in apps. A structure comprised of light, Mars House generates a healing atmosphere, with a musical accompaniment by Jeff Schroeder of The Smashing Pumpkins.

Cybertopia: The Digital Future of Analog Architectural Space

"Cyberspace, filled with bugs and glitches – the components of its natural habitat – will form a completely new and previously unknown location when released into a real city – Cybertopia," says Egor Orlov, a current student at the Strelka Institute in Moscow. According to Orlov, the physical world is on the brink of a major technological breakthrough that will revolutionize the way architects conceive of space – closing the gap between analog and digital.

Cybertopia - completed while he was a student at the Kazan State University of Architecture and Engineering under tutors Akhtiamov I.I. and Akhtiamova R.H. and nominated for the Archiprix Madrid 2015 - exists as another dimension for Orlov, where fairy tales come to life and science harmonizes with engineering and architectural design. "Future of an Architecture Space. Cybertopia. Death of Analogous Cities," delves into a fantasy world where the "possibility to fly or walk from one planet to another" becomes an illustrated reality using a combination of drafting-based techniques and a wild imagination.

Enter the hybrid technological-analog world of Cybertopia after the break

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Will The Traditional Museum Survive?

The question of whether the traditional museum survive in the digital age has been bounced around since the dawn of digital art and archiving. In an article for The Independent, Christopher Beanland examines the issue of a global "museum boom" (especially in China where a new one opens every day), and how this is having an undoubtedly positive impact on people's quality of life. For Beanland, it's curious that "we don't splash out on council houses or universities or hospitals any more – but we do build museums and galleries." Perhaps it's because they are "a reliquary for our collective memories" and "a triumph of our collective will" or, in most cases, because they employ excellent PR and branding strategies. He notes that "despite being swamped by possessions, we've changed our views towards those things. In the second half of the 20th century, people defined themselves by what they had. But today people increasingly define themselves by what they do."

Enter the Mesmerizing World of Rainbow Coloured Maps with "Crayon the Grids"

A new series of maps by California-based artist-scientist Stephen Von Worley give colour coding an entirely new meaning. With his latest algorithm-generated project, "Crayon the Grids," Von Worley has taken maps of ten major metropolitan areas and coloured them based on geographical orientation of the urban grid. Each street is assigned a colour specific to its orientation, varying in hue and weight depending on its cardinal direction and length. The result is a dizzying technicolor of urban planning, creating completely new demarcations for some of the world's most recognizable cities.

Enter the chromatic world of coloured city grids after the break

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ANTIVJ Transforms Shigeru Ban's Centre Pompidou Metz with Digital Spectacular

Intrigued by the hexagonal plan and complex structure of Shigeru Ban’s Centre Pompidou Metz in France, ANTIVJ visual artists Simon Geilfus and Yannick Jacquet, and composer Thomas Vaquié transformed the building’s undulating facade into a digital spectacular with a light show that “abolishes notions of scale by contrasting micro-architecture with human construction”. The piece was loosely inspired by the research of deep-sea expert Peter A. Rona, whose work explores the fascinating marks left by unknown, hexagonal-shaped sea creature called Paleodictyon Nodosum, which Rona believes is designed to cultivate bacteria.

Learn more and watch the making of after the break...