The vision of Idil Dursun’s NFT Art

When you look at the NFT art of Idil Dursun, an architect and CGI artist whose work deals with future dystopia and cyberpunk aesthetics, gives it an eerily familiar feel. Several sci-fi traditions immediately knock you out: a bit off Blade Runner here, a dash off The matrix there. But what’s most disturbing about the vast and seemingly endless cityscapes of Dursun’s art is that they don’t feel like fantastical impossibilities; they feel like a version of something you’ve already seen.

If you’ve ever walked through the center of a dense urban metropolis, you’ve seen bits and pieces of the elements Dursun stitches together seamlessly to build her CGI environments. Spend a few weeks in some of the world’s busiest and most populated places and you might start to question the sustainability of it all. Cities like Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, New York and Istanbul never fail to impress visitors and residents with how many people live there.

The last city on the list is no exception. With an official population of nearly 16 million people (although some put the number closer to 20 million) living on a small strip of land wedged between two seas, Istanbul’s natural surroundings have blessed it with natural beauty and cursed it with limited resources. Experts predict that continued expansion into the city’s northern forests combined with the ongoing development of massive infrastructure projects could lead to ecological collapse. It was this environmental context that inspired Dursun to begin creating futuristic CGI environments, a process she entered after graduating from university with a degree in architecture.

“Istanbul inspires me so much,” Dursun explained while speaking to nft now. “All of Turkey does.” Dursun took a job at an architectural visualization firm straight out of school, spending her days learning technical skills she would then take home and apply to her CGI work at night. “[That job] helped me learn a lot in terms of learning technical things like software, the execution of post-production, everything. I would go home and use those skills and mix them with the skills I found in online tutorials.”

The dystopian cyberpunk elements of Dursun’s CGI work draw from her fascination with themes such as overpopulation and depletion of natural resources, as well as that of her fellow architect Annibale Siconolfi. “I remember seeing Annibale’s artwork in high school and I was just terrified,” Dursun explained. “[The scale] of the scenes were just so massive. And I felt that looking at them was not enough. I had to make my own. I had that urge to create.”

How Dursun got started in NFTs

Dursun entered the NFT space somewhat by accident in early 2021 after she saw a friend on social media selling on Foundation. She didn’t know much about the crypto art world then, only having heard about CryptoPunks.

“I thought they were ugly as f—k,” Dursun said, laughing. “But now I love them. Once you understand the culture, it becomes a completely different thing. My friend sent me a Foundation invitation and I thought, ‘Okay, why not try it? It can’t hurt.'”

Dursun minted his first ever NFT at Foundation in March 2021. The piece, called Thresholddraws the mouse to a particular neighborhood in Istanbul called Mecidiyeköy, one of the city’s most crowded areas. Threshold has dilapidated buildings and a bridge that supports a metro train as it passes through a huge gate to another part of the city.

“Threshold is a piece that means a lot to me. It was the first time I felt like I could become an environmental concept artist, something I’ve wanted to be for a very long time. [That sale] really gave me hope.” She credits the buyer of that piece, the well-known NFT community NorCal Guyhelping to kick-start her and many other artists’ NFT careers by purchasing their original works.

Bringing lore to her NFT work

Dursun explained that she created many of her earlier works with some unspoken lore behind them, with Threshold ignite her desire to tell a story through her work.

“When you look at the artwork, it feels like you’re looking at a graphic novel,” Dursun elaborated. “I started coming up with the idea of ​​this main character, someone who was trying to escape from this dystopian world. In Threshold, for example, the gate divides the city into two parts. On the dark side is the side of the city whose resources have been drained. And the other part is where the high elites live.”

Dursun explained that almost every other piece she makes is part of the same lore-based universe. Another of her works, Invasion of the Lost Cityis in a separate part of the world which Threshold live, for example. Dursun plans to connect the teachings of these individual pieces at some point.

“I wanted these things to feel real,” Dursun emphasized. “They’re not just these beautiful nightscapes or dystopian cyberpunk images. There are stories behind them.”

Collaborates with Operations for TIMEPieces

In January 2022, noted photographer and NFT community Isaac “Drift” Wright invited Dursun to TIMEPieces, TIME’s Web3 community initiative. The two collaborated on the publication’s Slicer of Time NFT collection. DRIFT submitted a photograph of the New York skyline at dawn, while Dursun submitted a work that recreated how New York might look 100 years into the future. In Dursun’s play, entitled Highgardens in NYCthe viewer can find a CGI rendering of Drift sitting on a ledge in the lower left corner of the image, overlooking the entire scene.

“I’m a big fan of Drift,” Dursun exclaimed. “One day he sent me a message saying he was invited to TIMEPieces. I was so impressed. Working with Drift was such a fun experience because he takes these great photos of cities and I try to take things to a completely different perspective. It was just a great collaboration for me.”

Reflecting on the past crypto winter, Dursun said the NFT community in Turkey mirrors what she sees happening globally, mainly because it has thinned out a bit in recent months as fast flippers leave the space.

“People come in and see they can’t make a quick buck and then leave the space,” observed Dursun. “I mean, I’ve seen it happen so many times. The space has had so many bad days and we never stopped chasing our dreams and appreciating the NFT culture. It is so important to me to be part of the community.”

Dursun’s next project involves an animation she has been working on non-stop for several weeks. She wants to show the work in a physical exhibition sometime in the near future, but is keeping the details of the project close to her chest for now.

The piece represents Dursun’s long-standing desire to expand her artistic repertoire from CGI stills to the animation space. And, after recently watching Netflix’s hit series Excitinga production whose animation style garnered critical acclaim for its unique blend of 2D and 3D imagery, she feels even more motivated.

“I hope I can make it,” Dursun said. “I feel like I’ve reached my limits [with CGI stills], and I want to grow more. I also paint the artwork. It’s so much fun to work in both 2D and 3D.”

You can find İdil Dursun’s work at Foundation, MakersPlace, SuperRare and Nifty Gateway.