Yahoo’s Future Art Is Vivid: A Night Where “Culture & Code” Collided

Last Friday 27th May, Home The Venue at Darling harbour became the showcase for Yahoo’s one-night-only immersive NFT Crypto-Art spectacle.

Part of Sydney’s annual Vivid Festival that has made its long-awaited return this year, the ‘Future Art’ showcased original artworks from 24 of the world’s leading crypto-artists. 

The works explored the theme ‘Future Shock’ – a state of disorientation in times of rapid social or technological change.

Zoe Cocker,  Head of Innovation and Creative Studio at Yahoo, said: “I like bridging the gap between the consumer side and the tech side. So we would like to think about the culture and code colliding.”

When it comes to inspiring brand loyalty and feeling, Cocker comments “to me, it’s all about activating that but utilising technology.

“We’re not just doing pieces of art, we’re doing something that like, interacts with you as a human being or, takes the digital and physical and links them together.”

And exhibition-goers spent the psychedelic, spectacle of night doing just that – interacting with the works and the stories behind them, alongside AR/VR lounges and cocktail bars, large scale HD projections, and of course DJs and live music (it was at Home Bar, after all).

Guests got to discover (either directly or through their phones) the talent of renowned artists including The Sarah Show (USA), Giant Swan (Australia), Marc-O-Matic (Australia), and Sydney’s own Robson along with collectible NFT art from Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks.

Yahoo collaborated with crypto artists for the event Em! (Japan), Serwah Attafuah (Australia), and Coldie (USA) to create and promote original NFT artworks for the titular series called ‘Future Shock’ which were on display on the night.

“Western Sydney artist Serwah Attafuah’s work, ‘RAINROOM’, evoked the potential for virtual worlds, screens and digital identities to both divide and connect.”  

Image source: Twitter/@serwah_attafuah

“Japanese/Australian artist, EM! celebrates the evolution of mass media and pop culture across eras and places in her artwork ‘A long awaited holiday’. She describes the work as a digital playground that evolves surrealists traditions in a more utopian and joyful worldview, encoding our cultural histories into blockchain as a proof of our lives.”

Image source: Twitter/@crypto__fantasy

“Coldie, a true OG of the crypto art medium, shared a story of lineage and ancestry from the Amazon rainforest in the work ‘UBARAJA’. The AR work is locked to a tree deep in the Amazon jungle,the AR is geo-locked to a tree deep in the Amazon jungle, and is being promoted by Yahoo through WebAR in a launch collaboration.”

Coldie, UBARAJA

Yahoo Creative Studios built custom WebAR extensions of these NFTs which has brought the artworks to life in 3D through their Immersive Platform. By simply scanning a QR code, users can interact and explore the works in augmented reality wherever they are.  

Yahoo Finance is also running a Web3 explainer series featuring exclusive interviews with creatives who are driving this new space. The campaign will be promoted via Yahoo AdTech through Yahoo’s DSP across channels including out-of-home, display, social, video and native.

Another standout piece of the night was the award-winning Tree VR Experience. As the official website explains:

“This virtual-reality project transforms you into a rainforest tree. With your arms as branches and your body as the trunk, you’ll experience the tree’s growth from a seedling into its fullest form and witness its fate firsthand.”

Underpinned by a message of reverence for our rainforests and the importance of conservation, the all-sensory experience was as awesomely immersive as it was beautiful.

But why, you may ask, is Yahoo so involved in all the NFT-Cyrpto ruckus in the first place? 

As Yahoo states “Innovation and creativity is in our DNA at Yahoo. They’re what our business was founded upon back at the beginning of the internet or what we now call Web1. We, like most people and particularly those within our industry, are curious about the next stage of the internet that is emerging.”

Yahoo started “The Future Shock” project as a way to celebrate the next generation of culture and tech while bridging the gap between our physical and virtual worlds.

The project celebrates creators as a driving force of immersive and web.3 mediums. Just as Em!, Serwah Attafuah, and Coldie created original NFT artworks, Yahoo is bringing them to life, and showing how you can build for Web3 and scale it across Web2 platforms today. 

Check out the past work by Yahoo Creative Studios:

• NFT scavenger hunt across Australian cities in Web AR for Doritos  
• Avatars for the Metaverse for Optus 5g stadium, elevating the live sports experience in a way that anybody can play  
• Immersive fashion retail for Charli Cohen and New York Fashion week 
• ‘Make Space for Black Voices’ project elevating black voices by bringing traditional fine artists into Web3 mediums in collaboration with a London gallery and NFT marketplace