From London to the Metaverse! RED-EYE joins Playground, and Dunno Curated in Phygital Reality

We depart on a RED-EYE world where virtual and physical realms co-exist

On the occasion of London’s NFT NYC and Token 2049, the Web3 platform Playground and legendary vintage store Dunno Curated joined forces with Jivomir Domoustchiev and RED-EYE for a multi-community event breaking through the metaverse and London’s vibing atmosphere of Soho’s Martinez.

Bringing together the new and next generation of creators, the event was a collision between IRL & URL communities extending the value of human interaction and cultural exchange in a phygital and decentralised open environment.

From High Fashion avatars posing and dancing to the horizon in Spatial, with IRL & URL live performances, and a phygital NFT hoodie, we collectively showcased the visions of creators by diving into a multiverse of art, fashion, and photography to the metaverse and back to London, by day and night!

RED-EYE met the grandiose array of talents who collaboratively brought the event to life and animated the space throughout an evening of fifth-dimensional fun :)

Have a dip below!

RED-EYE Meets: Jivomir Domoustchiev and Jennital

Hello there! Thank you for joining us IRL tonight in Soho and for contributing with your major digital fashion to bring about this memorable installation in RED-EYE’s metaverse screened here in London! How did you come together to collaborate across a multi-artistic and fashionable NFT collection?

Jivomir: It happened organically, I got approached by Jen’s flatmate and we were introduced. I've been dreaming about doing a digital fashion collection for a while, so when I met Jen, it just happened! Literally, with Jen and our friend Marina, we got together, and we designed a whole collection. I did the design and they brought it to life. Then Jan created an entire universe and the movie for it and it all came together.

Jen: Yes, Jiv brought us some outfits and we deconstructed some of the physical looks to extract the patterns. Our friend Marina digitised them on clo3D. She got the patterns, marked them, and then placed them on the digital avatar. The process was very organic.

Jenn: I did some rigging and skinning, and we put them on avatars, and they were wearable across different avatars. We put them on Meta Humans and ready Player Me Avatars, and potentially more!

**Jivomir Domoustchiev x RED-EYE World**

After years of working and creating with physical and now looking at your fashion designs in the metaverse, do you think physical and digital fashion co-exist?

Absolutely. I think people are open-minded enough to explore new things. And the technology, it also really allows you to dream. It allows me to be even mor ecreative in that when there's no physical restrictions. I'm still learning the process where I haven't fully let go of the physical yet. I'm still trying to see the constraints of it. But it's an incredible expressional thing. You can do pretty much anything, and everyday I'm realizing that more and more.

And for you Jennnital, as a next-gen creative what are your views on bringing the digital essence to Jivomir’s design?

I think what's really important is to still prioritize the physical designs and the vision before simulating in that digital world. For me, even digital creations come with a very materialist affordances, so we're very conscious of rendering times and the time production takes. This is why at times, testing it on digital and bringing that back to the physical world I think is valuable. But working with Jivomir has been so easy. We've been working together a lot in my bedroom, so we're just by my desk working out different variations of the materials and beyond.

AI has the potential to greatly enhance humans in their artistic endeavors. However, Do you think that technology and AI is here to amplify artists, or can replace an artist?

Jenn: I think designers and artists have to know their roles in creation.

For example, in a game, there's a lot of behavioral AI. So you're designing a system for movement to happen in a game, but you might not necessarily key frame every movement now. The role of the artist is kind of quite macro, I think the same as AI, you're controlling what biases get control.You're controlling what biases get inputted into the algorithm, and you can control what you use from the algorithm. You might be more selective and curatorial now with what you want to do. It comes from the people in the community who can educate the others out there as a designer from URL into now digital space, this couldbe perfect for you as well to answer your question.

Jivomir: I don't see it's going to take it over. Even if it gets super easy, I think people will experiment and get bored. It seems to create it's a bit too faraway from reality, and people want the comfort of what they understand where they live every day. So I think, yes, you can experiment with it but I don't think it's going to fully take over. If certain artists go beyond and above with it, it’s fantastic!

RED-EYE Meets: Coral Garvey

Artist and CCO of Playground

Hi Coral! What a vibe it’s coming from London to the Metaverse. Thank you for this one-of-a-kind collaboration to bring this event to life in virtual and physical dimensions. What's your overall vision of the event?

Coral: Hey. Hey. Thanks for having me. It was amazing event during London NFT NYC 2022 with Playground, Dunno Curated and RED-EYE. We had hundreds of people coming in IRL and in the metaverse and enjoying the music, the performers, the rappers, the fashion, the people. So overall, it was just like it was a vibe, for sure.

Can you give us a dive into your otherworld of artworks and also into Playground?

I've experimented with every sort of multifaceted art, whether it be from advertising to graphic design, typography, oil painting, Dystopian photography, and now I'm hopping into the digital world.

I mean, I've always been like a scifi lover, so any sort of technological advancement, I'm all in it ! Playground. I've been consulting on actually for the past few years from its inception. So seeing it grow to what it is today, it's been amazing. With my really good friend Jia, she's the founder and for the past six, seven months, I've been a chief creative officer, wearing a lot of hats including strategy branding, videography photography, schmoozing with everybody, and partnerships.

Everything I could ask for in a profession and in friendships manifested itself. This is why Playground came about, because the co-founder whose full name is Jia Ling Yang, loves connecting people and exploring and traveling and meeting people in her heart and her soul. So I think we just kind of gravitated towards each other.

As a multi-talented artist did you feel there was a gap in the creative and NFT industry that Playground can now fill and bring a change?

I just got into this really full steam about a year ago. Art Basel Miami actually really kind of opened my eyes to all of these amazing creatives all overthe world, all different backgrounds, kind of jumping intosomething new and being excited about it. I think what's really great about Web3, the metaverse and the NFT landscape is that everyone is on equal ground to some extent, and everyone coming into the space are eager to learn and are eager to share their knowledge, which is incredible, you know?

I think it was a testament to, like, we're on the right track. And I'm really, really excited to see where everything goes. Not only Playground, but also with personal artwork, and the creative communities that joined us at the event.

Thank you Coral, we wish to see your futuristic visions coming to life and we can’t wait to link arms again with Playground and your art!

Thank you, It was fun and a blast!

RED-EYE MEETS: Sara Giusto
Artist & Digital Creator

Hi Sara! Welcome in RED-EYE metaverse and thanks for joining us live from Tokyo. Would you like to give us a blink into your artworks and what is your creative message?

My drawings are mainly bodies and the body is really close to me. As a job, I also make virtual humans. It's like a digital body versus a physical body, which is always very interesting to me.

I love bodies, so I think my submission was about one of the closest bodies to me, which is my mom. She happens to have a lot of surgeries because she's transgender, so she has a lot of scars.

It's a very interesting body to me. So I took nude photos of her, and I made, like, a book about the relationship between a mother and a daughter through the photographs of her body.

How do you meet the intersection between virtual and physical bodies?

In this case, also digital and physical realism in the world always relates. For example, I think our physical bodies are always reacting to our virtual bodies. Like, right now, your body and mind, we have physical ones. But what I'm seeing is a digital body through the screen! This will be amplified with our avatars and in the near future, I see virtual and physical bodies co-existing in the same reality.

RED-EYE MEETS: Jessica & Kane

Founders of Dr Death Cult Club

Thank you Jessica and Kane for joining us tonight IRL in London! Would you like to introduce yourself and your creative vision with DR Death?

Jessica: We graduated from university in 2019. I have a fashion degree, and Kane has an animation and fine Art degree. But we graduated just before COVID and we kind of went straight into Wev3 release.

How did you join forces together?

Kane: We met at Unicorn Film. We started kind of working on each other's projects a lot. We came from different backgrounds. I was doing a lot of animation at Fine Art, but then we were interested in similar sort of art like things that are happening.

Jessica: We just started working together and I think since then we kind of elevated each other's work. So kind of, like, connected quite well. It seemed really natural.

Kane: We opened the doors to our mystery School of Philosophy and Critical Art Theory School.The Order of the Redeemed enrollment is in a form of a 10K collection of NFTs. We had It featured in London and a metaverse week fashion show and New York digital fashion week.

So what are the main touch points or messaging of your NFTs?

Kane: Through NFTs, we explore world culture from all ages, specifically ancient cultures is what we are mostly interested in. Essentially, our character, Dr.Deaths, who we work out together, is a 320-year-old shaman, and the idea is: when he was in his life 320 years ago, he broke free from Samsara and has traveled around watching mankind develop, and he learned from the Golden Age heights of philosophy and cultures and religious philosophies and mysticism. Today he's formed that school of philosophy to work on how can we come together and form a Golden. Age world where we bring all these ideas from all over cultures together to work out how can society function on this multi-level that we have now.

Jessica: We summoned up to death between the two of us. And yeah, we just see that as we were coming together as one world. It's brilliant. So we don't want this to be this really restricted monoculture. We want to celebrate all the cultures across the world and resurface maybe tour stories that haven't been told or that we're unaware of and we think the best way to do that is through art, storytelling, narratives, NFTs and we can teach about these cultures across society.

RED-EYE MEETS: MINJU
Artist

Hello Minju! Nice to meet you tonight at Martinez in London.

Thank you! This is Minju Kim. I'm from South Korean and I am an artist based in London. Drawing on personal experience and inspired by the human anatomy and psychoanalytic theory, I explore desire as my main subject matter, alongside the concept of life and death.

How would you describe your art in three words?

Three words? Desire, Death, and life.

What are your views on the links between digital and physical art?

I think it's a bit of both because I create my own reality through my artwork. So I guess it's reflective. Human life is added to that kind of virtual reality then the loved ones could visit. The benefit of digital art, is it can live forever more than actual terms of artwo

Find out more about Minju's artistic pathway below

Minju Kim is an emerging South Korean artist based in London, who has exhibited her work internationally. She received an MA in Visual Arts: Illustration (Distinction) at Camberwell College

of Arts, University of the Arts London (2015-17), studied BA Creative Direction for Fashion at London College of Fashion (2013-15) and graduated with a BFA in Printmaking at Hongik University in Seoul (2007-13).

Her work was exhibited at Adidas London in collaboration with Creative Debuts to celebrate International Women’s Month in March, 2022. She also participated in the charity art auction held in Sotheby’s London in 2021 and raised a significant amount of funding.

RED-EYE MEETS: Tuf Luckk
Photographer

Hi Everyone! We're back here at the event IRL in London and we are here with t Mr.Tufa Kabiri, who is a photographer! Hello Tuf, Can you describe your photography and give us a glimpse of its essence and vision?

As a photographer, I like to explore a lot of different styles but really and truly there are a few that stick out to me and mainly it's when I travel and I live in a concrete jungle and it's hard to get out there and shoot what I really want to shoot.

So when I'm in London I tend to shoot a lot of fashion, eccentric stuff, adverts and more things for consumers. But in reality, when I want to shine is trouble. I want to show a different life of people, different aspects, different windows to someone else's life, and different emotions.

Do you think artificial intelligence can substitute or co-create with a photographer like you?

I believe in half and half but more helping an artist because I've used softwares like midjourney and I've created my own art so easily. But I can see where an artist could take inspiration to take ideas and obviously expand upon what is already given by the algorithm.

What is the future vision for you and your work? Are you going to look towards more of a digital type of photography?

if I don't do it now, I'm going to be left behind! The new world is Web3 now. For the next generation, we've got to lead the way and show people how it's really done because that's the way the world is moving and technology is amazing. There are so many different avenues of getting through to the artist who works hard to make what they do, and I believe that this window and opportunity should be encouraged. It should be the way forward and push humanity forward!

RED•EYE WORLD