Olafur Eliasson launches a virtual reality work and NFT commissioned by MetaKovan – the man who paid $69.3 million for “the” Beeple

The artist Olafur Eliasson has been working with virtual and augmented reality for six years, but his latest work, Your opinion matters, is far more ambitious artistically and technically than any VR work he has shown before. It also exists as an NFT, commissioned by one of the pioneers of crypto art, MetaKovan (aka Vignesh Sundaresan), who caused a global stir in April 2021 when he paid $69.3 million (with taxes) at a Christie’s auction for Beeple’s NFT Every day: The first 5000 days (2021).

NFT off Your opinion matters is a one-time, unissued, token created for MetaKovan – its ownership and provenance captured on a permanent ledger on the blockchain – and has been minted on Polkadot, a platform considered to have the lowest total power consumption and total carbon emissions – per year of all crypto platforms.

Being aware of the environmental costs of minting NFTs is, says Eliasson, of enormous importance, and something he discussed with MetaKovan. “It is a relatively new field, [and] there has been quite a sharp rise in that awareness… The truth is that the whole blockchain universe is actually quite progressive. It is remarkably similar to the rest of our world. Lots of talk and not much to do. But a group of doers too.”

AR and VR versions of the piece will be available to view for free on the Acute Art app and via a link for viewing on a computer or in a VR headset. The assignment came to Eliasson through Acute Art, one of the pioneering players in presenting art in all forms for augmented reality. Both AR and VR versions “are really designed to work with the largest possible audience,” Eliasson said. “Akut is very aware of that. It was also a goal both for the client and for myself.”

For Eliasson, the NFT commission functioned much as it would have with a more traditional format: “It was very centered [on] to create a great work of art.” And on the contract implicit in the NFT format, he says: “Usually when you buy a work of art from me, you get a document that this work of art is authentic work of art from me. There is a picture of the artwork, and some technical information. Now it’s an NFT.”

For Acute Art, the piece is part of a move into the NFT space. Their artists had “perhaps been a bit hesitant” to date, according to Acute’s artistic director, Daniel Birnbaum. but working with Your opinion matters with Eliasson represented a chance to take NFT into a rich, more technically ambitious area. The company’s chief technical officer, Rodrigo Marques, has created some new VR features specifically for the piece, according to Jacob de Geer, CEO of Acute Art.

Your opinion matters is scheduled to be shown to the public for the first time in the exhibition Olafur Eliasson: Nel tuo tempo (In your time)at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, opening on September 22, and at several locations, including India.

Eliasson was shown at Acute Art early in the Covid-19 pandemic, with Chamber of Wondersa charming collection of AR pieces, including a puffin, a rain cloud and a halo sun, well calibrated to delight the spirits of stuck users. Your opinion matters exists on a higher, more primal plane, a plane along the lines of Eliasson’s experimental work, much of it done in his Berlin studio, on movement and human connectedness.

IN Your opinion matters, the user moves between coupled geometric spaces based on the Platonic solids, the tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron, and cube, before concluding in a sphere. The Platonic solids—each consisting of regular, identical shapes, joined in the same way at each vertex—are, says Eliasson, “mathematical little miracles. They are pre-Renaissance. They [do not subscribe] to the sense of perspective as modern architecture. They suggest ‘let’s see what the dimensions are’.”

Eliasson was inspired to go into VR, he says, “from my interest in dance and movement,” and in cognition and motor skills. He has no patience with VR which suffers from what they call the “dolphin effect”, characterized by a user in VR passively enjoying observing a dolphin swimming around them in a “blue lagoon”. The format only comes alive for Eliasson when it is triggered by the user’s movement and visual connection with the artwork. IN Your opinion matters, that “disruption,” the distortion of the moiré effect, is animated as the user moves his head and eyes, superimposing the hatched patterns in his surfaces—some in brilliant color, some in black and white—over the pixels of a computer or phone screen, creating a sparkling, ambiguous, random effect. The user is “you” who “counts” in the piece.

Because Eliasson works with Your opinion matters has reinforced the “drivers” behind their work in VR. “I always start with what is the human potential … We need to cultivate the consciousness of people in VR that says I actually exist, I’m here, I’m important, and I’m good enough.” He is not inspired by commercial VR, but by what is done in the laboratory. One of his mentors in the format has been the anthropologist Joe Dumit, professor of anthropology and science and technology studies at the University of California, Davis, and a leading figure in the world of science and technology studies (STS). Dumit has been a frequent visitor to Eliasson’s studio. “He’s also kind of an alpha electronics tester person from the perspective of the body… the first person I’ve met who is incredibly knowledgeable about VR.”

Another of Eliasson’s inspirations is Natasha Myers, an associate professor of anthropology at York University, and a radical thinker on the interaction between humans and plants. For Eliasson, she is “one of the most interesting interdisciplinary minds in STS”.

For Eliasson, radical thinkers such as Dumit and Myers, concerned with how people move and feel in space, are among “the people out there who make me look forward to the future [of the planet]. That we’re not going to be okay. But if there were more people like this generation, maybe we would just make it.”