Featured art by TwistedVacancy

Last weekend, Sydney hosted a novel crypto art festival in its heritage-listed Paddington Town Hall. The event, called Future Art, was a three-day immersive celebration aiming to “showcase the best of the rising local and global crypto-art scene.”

Innovative Digital Art Event

Future Art, described as a “multisensory walk through art experience”, was the idea of crypto art collector Sats Moon. The innovative event celebrated the rising phenomenon of crypto art. This has seen digital artworks sell for increasingly large sums on online marketplaces thanks to the use of NFTS (non-fungible tokens) making the works unique. 

The crypto art festival, which took place from January 15-17, featured artworks by leading crypto artists. Fewocious, X-Copy and Miss AL Simpson, for example, were some of the “break out stars from the digital art scene” who participated. The event also hosted keynote presentations from renowned VR and AR artists Giant Swan and Marco O Matic. They performed and interacted with the audience while painting and creating live “sculptures”.

With music, HD projections, digital display frames and interactive VR, the event became a spectacular rave-like party. It also signaled the growing enthusiasm for the burgeoning crypto art movement. As the event’s description reads, “Future Art will highlight the exploding rare digital art space which is redefining art ownership with the use of blockchain technology, bitcoin and ethereum.” 

From Ashes to Crypto Art 

Organizer of the crypto art festival, Sats Moon, has a very personal reason why crypto art holds such importance for him. When living in London in the 1990s, Moon invested in the emerging street art scene. He bought several signed Banksy prints while prices were still low. 

Speaking to Australian city guide Broadsheet, he says, “[The prints] would just sit up there for months for between $50 to $200. So I started buying a few of these Banksys to collect because I thought they were really cool. The last ones I bought cost me between $300 and $400. These prints now sell in Sotheby’s for around $60,000 to $100,000. They are hugely collectable.”

Over the next 20 years, Moon continued to collect works by leading contemporary artists. These included Antony Micallef, Damien Hirst and street artist Obey. However, in 2019, Moon received some devastating news. A massive fire had engulfed the entire building that housed his collection, reducing his priceless artworks to ashes. 

When Moon then discovered crypto art, he saw this as a way to restart his passion for collecting art without the risks that come with physical collections. “Here was a form of art that I could own and buy and sell and keep and show to other people,” Moon told Broadsheet, “And it could never be taken away. It would never be burnt or destroyed. I was instantly super excited by that.”

So, in collaboration with colleague, Potbelleez DJ Dave Goode, Moon decided to create the pioneering crypto art festival of last weekend. “It’s definitely about more than just the technology,” he said. “It’s a worldwide movement of artists who are embracing the scene.”