For release on November 30, 2021
Miami Beach - On Sunday night at the 1 Hotel South Beach, digital art curators Art Republic teamed up with the NFT marketplace, SuperRare, to unveil an NFT auction called LIGHT. The auction included 22 artists, from Zach Lieberman to Maxim (from the British band The Prodigy), many of which were launching the genesis/first NFTs with a portion of each sale going to Teen Cancer America.
BREAKFAST, the kinetic art studio out of Brooklyn, unveiled their first NFT, "Longyearbyen Warming – COP26," which shot out of the gate with a bid for 9.5 Etherium (about $45 USD at the time of this writing), triggering a 24-hour auction. The auction ended Monday night where the piece received a final bid of 18 Etherium—about $85k at the time of this writing.
The NFT was created by capturing a video of a physical kinetic artwork, "Longyearbyen Warming," which visualizes the real-time temperature rise occurring in the fastest-warming city in the world, Longyearbyen, Norway. The more gold in the artwork, the warmer the current temperatures compared to historical values. The NFT was captured on Nov 3, 2021, when world leaders met for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) and failed to come to an agreement to secure global net-zero by the mid-century and keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
"What makes this NFT artwork unique is that, while it looks like it was digitally rendered, it is actually a video that was shot of a kinetic artwork at a very important moment in history—the COP26 climate change summit. The physical artwork (which is paired with the NFT sale) visualizes the real-time state of the fastest-warming city on the planet, Longyearbyen in Norway. While world leaders failed to agree on a plan to properly slow the warming of our planet, we shot this video of the piece." —Zolty, Artists and Co-Director of BREAKFAST
The piece is made from BREAKFAST's medium called Flip-Discs—a matrix of small physical discs that flip via electromagnets.
The physical artwork, which is paired with the NFT sale, is interactive. The warmer the temperatures in Lonyearbyen, Norway, the more gold appears in your image.
The kinetic artwork will be on view for the remainder of Miami Art Week in Agora Gallery's booth at Red Dot Miami in Wynwood.
Founded in 2009, BREAKFAST is a new media art studio focused on creating software-and-hardware-driven artworks that transform the online world into tactile experiences, while also connecting viewers to distant and disparate geographies, realities, and data-streams. The studio's practice employs a unique blend of computer science, mechanical engineering, and playful, emotionally-striking aesthetics to invite audiences to reflect on the relationship between the physical, the digital, the global, and the intimate in the Information Age, as well as the changing relationships between human bodies and technological innovation.
Zolty
BREAKFAST
Director / Co-Founder
zolty@breakfastny.com
917-544-9479
Jessica Santiago
Art Republic
Founder
Jessica@artrepublicglobal.com
904-874-4633