Invisible cities

Studio of a digital artist Ezequil Pini - Six N. Five produces highly refined, hyper realistic landscapes, often inhabited by solitary buildings blooming in isolation, unruly objects, and awry thinking furniture. In Quarantine, for example, the atmosphere seems to be serene, almost sleepy, yet tension is created by the mere placement of a boudoir interior in the middle of the water, an elegant narrow glass cylinder with no other elements of comfort than the promise of sleep with no one around to disturb – a sense of claustrophobia and eerie anxiety can be sensed by the title chosen for this NFT.

Based in Barcelona Six N. Five specializes in still life visuals and videos that they either use in their projects or create for other designers and architects.

Mars House is a surreal creation – it is a modernist 3D render of a glass house on a hilly part of the red planet. Here we can refer to architects such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson to Sarah Waller, but also Philip K. Dick with Martian Time-Slipin terms of storytelling where imperialism is applied to Martian colonization. The moving image NFT brings its audience from the outside pool lounging chairs to the inside of the house. There’s an uncanny feeling of being in post-earth life, somewhere between the movies Oblivion to Total Recall.

Krista Kim is a contemporary artist and founder of the Techism movement (2014), whose work explores the concept of digital consciousness. Her interest in digital technology and its revolutionary effects on human perception, media, social structures, and communication led her to work in both digital and physical realms. Having developed her signature language of shifting gradients using digital software since 2012, her works on glass and plexi hypnotize its viewers into a trance of tranquility while her video works provide meditative experiences of color and light.

“Mirror City is a visual story of Nairobi City The theme of creation was a piece that highlights how Africans have decided to focus on Health and Education, creating such a powerful economy that other nations would want to emulate and/or migrate into our home. The idea of Mirrors came to mind.” The kaleidoscope effects is used here to give a sense of eeriness and otherness; a portal has open to a new world, or another way of looking at our world is maybe possible. Trevor Maingi, is a Visual orator & shares his stories through Photographer & Film – based in Nairobi.

Persian Compound is a reflection of an eclectic use of materials and textures. The idea of a compound as a union of elements or of parts to create one form, object, or unit is an interesting reflection on how the future of architecture could be – in terms of recycling, recomposing, and adding onto. Here the building reminds us of the hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders, which the location for has never been established.

Rachel Yee Laam Lai is an amateur photographer specializing in macro and plant photography. She is a self-taught artist and plant breeder from Hong Kong.

In the work "Again" a photograph of simple outdoor architecture gives the viewer access to a portal. The central deformation is a threshold to another dimension as if stepping through this anything and anywhere can take place.

phuturemusic is an independent electronic, house and techno artist. His works are considered a new view of EDM production.

Pilar Zeta’s installations in physical space have a dazzling effect of a wondrous simulacra. This is especially effective if we compare an installation shot with her NFT work – it becomes hard to tell which one of the depicted vivid constructions is an architectural rendering. In this respect, The House of Theorem seems to hint at a fourth dimension (which, in mathematical terms, can be approached as a theorem) that opens up in the process of mental trespassing between physical and virtual, between symbols and interpretation, between memory and communication, using the minimalist metaphor of a (ancient) building.

An established US-based Argentinian multimedia artist and creative director, Zeta works across various mediums, from album collaborations with musicians, to directing videos and live performances.

Layers continues digital artist Maxim Zhestkov’s examination into the complexity of what space means and how it is defined using primary shapes such as a sphere or a rectangle. Here too, his voluminous structures, impressively situated in a museum or gallery space, fail to conform to the norms of “behavior” such institutions impose: instead, the artefacts in their holdings morph, disappear and reappear, turn inside-out and gradually diminish only to grow full again, revealing radiant layers underneath the dark surface of their building material.

It often seems that coding in computer programming is very close to searching for the meaning of life, for God, or something that would explain its miracles. According to numerologists, the number 7722, part of the title in Guido Corallo’s work, is an angel’s number and refers to a need for guidance. Suspended over a dark abyss, the detailed yet awkwardly-looking dwelling depicted, translates an ambivalent feeling– is it a refuge, a prison, or a futuristic ruin from another time?

Guido Corallo is an artist and programmer from Argentina. Apart from specializing in computer graphics and generative systems, he also majored in biology. He develops interactive applications for advertising agencies and museums with free software tools. His work focuses on topics such as generativity, complexity, the analog/digital mix, and neural networks. He currently gives courses and training in programming applied to artistic practice, design, and the creation of images in general.

Exudater is a NFT-based work that represents one part of the 24m wraparound mural presented at an exhibition of Samuel Capps (artist and director of Gossamer Fog Gallery in London). This is a large piece of another world, a world made of highways of slimy botanical roots.

This NFT shows a short video of traffic passing onto a zebra crossing changing shape every time a car is about to cross in the Swiss village Allschwil near Basel. Zebra is a surrealist piece, it looks at what is familiar and hijacks it, transforming it into an absurd and also comic-moving image of what reality could be like.

The work is related to the series called «Shape Studies» in which photographs and video recordings of places, objects, and living beings are digitally modified. It is about exploring a shape and working out different ways it can be represented and perceived. The work researches the intersection and the dialogue of real and digital environments.

Edge City follows a tradition of retrofuturism and Sci-Fi aesthetics from Star Wars to Super Studios. The layout and perspective give a vertiginous scale of a populated space station or earth 0.3. Idil Dursun (a.k.a. Jarvinart) describes her work as a glimpse of a dystopian future, exaggerating existing issues such as overpopulation and scarcity of resources and giving them a “cyberpunk” vibe.

Idil Dursun (a.k.a. Jarvinart) is an architect who graduated from Bilkent University Department of Architecture in 2020. She worked as the Art Director of the university radio “Radio Bilkent”. In 2020, she worked with Dr. Pinar Yoldas and contributed to the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2021. In September 2020, she began her professional career as a CGI Artist in the architectural visualization company “ivaBOX”. Since then, she has also been working on personal projects, creating mostly cyberpunk/dystopian environment concepts and building her universe as a vision of the future world. In March 2021, she jumped into the NFT scene and since then has been an active member of the community. She is the curator of the ” Architecture World” in one of the most recognized NFT platforms "Foundation". Her works are featured in the science fiction magazine “Dark Matter Magazine”, displayed in “The Crypt Gallery” (USA), “Dart Museum – Permanente di Milano” (Italy) and exhibited on “FUTR World Abu Dhabi 2021″. She also works as a freelance artist for video games.

Thinking of the opposite aspect of what Invisible cities brough throughout the stories and poetry, the ephemeral and long lasting together. This NFT, The Sounds of the Shadows illustrate that idea.