How to Tell Stories Using Cryptoart?

As you know, I try to bring visual storytellers with fresh perspectives on our Visual Storytelling Today podcast. I’m sure you’ve all heard a lot about Blockchain. The topic is loaded with a lot of misinformation. So in this episode, I figured to tackle Blockchain from a visual storytelling perspective.

In this episode, I speak with FractalEncrypt, a crypto artist that uses Blockchain to create amazing artwork. I saw some of his work in a recent conference and he’s quite fascinating the way he’s developing encrypted visual stories using amathematical formulas, and algorithms. Forget about classic artists who use a paintbrush and a canvas. This conversation, will introduce you to a new “encrypted paintbrush” where you’ll learn about both Blockchain and specifically and cryptoart as an emerging visual storytelling category.

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The following details a few excerpts from our chat:

Shlomi Ron (SR): So, what I was thinking we could do to level the playing field for a lot of folks here that are entrepreneurs, marketers, that most likely heard the term Blockchain, maybe if you can give us a little bit of your definition of what Blockchain is?

FractalEncrypt (FE): In a broad sense, Blockchain is like an openly shared database that you and I and anybody else in the community can connect to. It’s almost like accounting software, in a sense. And so we can verify whether things are correct or not. And that’s very important because it’s a system that doesn’t use any trusted third party. So you don’t have to trust me to be fair or third party like a bank. You can just look in your wallet, and your software will verify whether I sent you money or not.

SR: Very interesting! I know that a lot of people think about Blockchain in the context of Bitcoin, and there’s a bunch of other currencies that people use for financial transactions. How cryotoart fits into Blockchain?

FE: Indeed, Blockchain began as financial technology. And now it’s blossomed into more than that. So one of the things what I was showing you was art that we were putting on the Ethereum Blockchain would (Ethereum is another Blockchain currency that is similar to Bitcoin).  I’ve been using this platform to issue art assets. So instead of making a print run on canvases the old way, one of 15 prints, with cryptoart I now can encrypt digital artwork as if it was a verified editioned physical painting. So instead of signing with a pen, I’m signing with a cryptographic PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) public key. So I’m saying this is my public key, and anybody can verify this and say, you know, whether this is my art or not. So, it’s really a revolutionary technology. Because in the past, as an artist, I could never monetize my digital work. You know, you just put your art on the Internet, and anybody can copy-paste it and, you know, replicate it a million times. So, from a verified distribution of my artwork, this is huge!

SR: Now that we know more about Blockchain and cryptoart, can you tell us how can you create visual stories using cryptoart?

FE: There’s actually so many ways that you can do this because cryptoart gives you a lot of different avenues that you can explore. Also, there’s a lot of different kinds of crypto art.

So I guess, let me just step back for a second. There are two types of cryptoart:

1. Graphically-Signed Pieces: It could just be pictures of bitcoins and pictures of the theory and symbol or other crypto objects you’re putting on the blockchain. You file these cryptoart objects to IFS (Interplanetary File System). It’s another decentralized Web system. And once your files are there, then you can also tokenize=encrypt them.
2. Crypto Designs: Where you use algorithms and mathematics to create encrypted art, which is what I do.

So either one of those I would consider crypto art. Either one of them lends themselves to visual storytelling in the sense that no one really understands these technologies. So anything is an opportunity to teach So realistically, any piece of art I feel like it should always contain some kind of information you should always be telling the viewer something. And I like to also have it be encoded to some degree. Some savvy people may recognize the Blockchain elements in my art and some new to Blockchain, would think it’s just pretty bizarre. I think both perspectives are very important.

Unlike the typical storytelling, saying hey, you know jack and Jill went up the hill and here’s what’s going on, my stuff is a little more subtle. It requires the audience to probe deeper in order to figure out the message that is baked into my visual stories. Learn more about FractalEncrypt’s artwork.

Ready to emotionally move your audience into action?
Call 305-985-3450 or email shlomi_at_visualstorytell_dot_com to learn more about how VSI’s Production Studio could help elevate your visual storytelling game.