APENFT Foundation Launches $100million ‘Art Dream Fund’
This is an open invitation for artists to portray their dream lives and futures through digital media.
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APENFT, the premier NFT foundation and fund, and TRON have announced the formal establishment of the $100million ‘Art Dream Fund’ to explore, cultivate, and support talented NFT and digital artists. APENFT aims to collect meaningful stories and promote the fusion of finance, culture, and art in the metaverse and will do so by building three main pillars: acquisition of culturally significant NFT artworks, investment and incubation of NFT projects, and the creation of an NFT marketplace.
The first open call of the ‘Art Dream Fund’ invites artists and creators to explore the theme of “Second Life” in the metaverse.
“Second Life” is a concept closely related to the metaverse, and NFT is seen as the “ticket to the metaverse.” Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, utopian and dystopian visions of Web3.0 the Internet has been put forth, capturing the emergence of increasing complexities and variability of human life and hybrid experiences.
This is an open invitation for artists to portray their dream lives and futures through digital media. ‘Art Dream Fund’ hopes to unleash and resource bold and unbridled creativity by inspiring artists to present their Second Life – a story that has yet to unfold.
The open call aims to explore the questions that arise when our lives and social relationships become more closely intertwined with technology as social mediation. Such as; what kind of religious worship, new artistic origins, literary inspirations, and subversive scientific discoveries will be brought by humanity’s vision of the Metaverse? What does this for human consciousness, including all experiences, feelings, and emotions? What is the nature of reality?
In the future, APENFT will launch support regularly through open calls, art grants, and artist in Residence programs. In addition to financing artistic creations, the ‘Art Dream Fund’ will also provide support and professional guidance to selected artists and artworks in various aspects such as marketing, PR, community building, and copyright protection in the NFT space.
Sydney Xiong, APENFT Art director and curator, said:
“Our goal is to introduce a group of incredible creators to the world of NFTs, empower them to explore new methods of creation, and share that opportunity with their communities.”
There are three awards in this open call, including the grand prize award of $20,000, best creativity awards of $10,000, and best category awards of $5,000. They will also have the opportunity to be featured in the APENFT’s marketplace launch event and participate in the APENFT virtual exhibition.
This themed call encourages the exploration and interpretation of any art form on the theme “Second Life,” and any digital art media and styles are accepted. How has digital art and crypto art become a new, independent, and self-consistent art form? How do they facilitate creative thinking and challenge uncharted territories? Those are the further questions APENFT hopes creators will answer through their works. Entries can be submitted individually or as a group or community. Group work is highly encouraged in the NFT space, where people value community spirit.
Artists must submit their artworks before November 27th. The award announcement will be made on December 10th. Justin Sun, founder of TRON, Sydney Xiong, APENFT Art Director and Curator, and three anonymous NFT art experts will select winning pieces based on five key criteria: aesthetics & creativity, ideas & concepts, technical skills, relevance, and the artist’s statement.
Justin Sun, Founder of TRON, said:
“I hope that the establishment of the ‘Art Dream Fund’ can bring about a paradigm shift in the creator economy by giving all-around support to creators who wish to contribute to the NFT art ecosystem with creative thinking.”
Formally registered and established on March 29, 2021, APENFT is backed by the underlying technology of top-notch blockchains Ethereum and TRON with support from the world’s largest distributed storage system Bittorrent File System (BTFS), to deliver the mission of registering world-class artworks as NFTs on the blockchain. The collection of the APENFT Foundation includes artworks by Picasso, Andy Warhol, and crypto artists Beeple, Pak, etc., as well as other high-end NFT collectibles of various categories such as Punks avatars and EtherRock, with a total value of more than $46 million.
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