Art is undoubtedly the focal point of the NFT ecosystem. From 3D renders and hand-drawn avatars to photographs, songs, movies, and beyond, — with NFTs, nearly any type of intellectual property can be immortalized on the blockchain. Because of this, over the past two years, we’ve witnessed the NFT space grow and evolve to encompass a large assortment of artistic endeavors from a truly wide variety of artists from all disciplines.
One such artist pushing the boundaries at the intersection of art and blockchain tech is David Bianchi. A man who has been overtly working towards elevating socially conscious issues through NFTs, Bianchi is now utilizing his background as a multi-hyphenate artist, actor, filmmaker, and spoken word poet to further diversify the fine art sector of the NFT space.
With an innovative new project called Senses set to drop on June 9 via Async Blueprints, Bianchi will release the first-ever audiovisual, poetic, generative NFT collection. Created in collaboration with coder/generative artist Dogan Demir and multi-faceted artist/producer PLS&TY, Senses brings together spoken word poetry, therapeutic music, and psychedelic art. Each NFT within the 1,000-piece collection reflects themes that touch on the five human senses.
What are Senses NFTs?
Senses is a project that features poetry, music, and generative art. For the project, Bianchi wrote and performed 100 spoken word poems that provide the basis of the collection. He says that recording these poems was anything but easy, but also necessary, as they fit with his desire to tell uplifting and introspective stories about what it means to be human.
“The glory of these poems is that they focus on who we are, not what we own, our social or financial status, or who we know. It is only touching on who we are,” Bianchi said in an interview with nft now. “This is the first time that poetry has been used in this manner within generative music and art in NFTS. The transfer of the commercial exploitation of the poetry to the owner is a very powerful utility as well as the sound bath metaverse experience we will create for the token holders in spatial.”
From these poems, Demir created a set of visual layers, each of which was generated from code that was informed by data taken from recordings of Bianchi’s vocal performances. PLS&TY was then tasked with strategically producing the music that fit with the meditative and introspective themes of the collection.
“The music is dedicated, nuanced, and fits within certain frequency zones of Solfeggio frequencies. The Solfeggio frequencies are part of an olden six-tone scale believed to have power in spirituality. These frequencies are proven to heal, activate the chakras, and touch us in different ways depending on level of the frequency chart,” PLS&TY explains.
“Senses goes deeper than picking biological systems and deriving an NFT art collection from them. It is a call to lean into oneself, discover beauty in the simplicity of human senses, and find a safe haven and place for healing utilizing poetry, art, and music,” says PLS&TY.
Why the focus on the five senses?
Senses sets itself apart from many other contemporary NFT endeavors in that it is both experiential and experimental. Rather than users simply showing up and minting a static NFT, each token within the collection encompasses an audio-visual experience crafted to be therapeutic and relating to one of the five human senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste.
As a definite outlier in the current PFP-dominated NFT market, Bianchi’s Senses seems to walk the road less traveled — focusing on fine art and offering collectors an introspective journey in place of complex roadmaps. As “utility” remains a contentious topic within the NFT space, Bianchi says he hopes that his latest collection can inspire others, poets, and crypto-artists alike, to collaborate in more bold and fearless ways.
“I hope that it [Senses] inspires artists to create more spirit-conscious art while using technology to help make the world a better place,” Bianchi tells nft now. “Meditation may not be for everyone, sound baths may not be for everyone, but everyone in our community at some point needs to pause and think about how they fit in this complicated world. I do believe that the audiovisual experience through senses will help our community do exactly that.”
