“Aesthetically Sound,” a curated exhibition for 1stDibs’ recently launched NFT marketplace, contemplates the junction of music and art on the internet. Currently, NFT enthusiasts have fostered a community within a relatively niche but growing online crowd. Because of its presence there, it has attracted those who already inhabit internet spaces, such as tech developers, crypto-investors, coding engineers, etc.
As a result, the community begets a culture that values efficiency, logic and patterns. Further, these values drive creative production found in the community as well, revealing a overwhelming preference for intelligent design and elegant 3D models.
The works in this exhibition range visually from 4D cinematic animations to moving photographic images. The music also ranges in genre from lo-fi to hard synth tunes. At their core, all of the works embrace the close relationship between technology and creative activity, like art and music, as tools to tell a story, convey an idea or characterize an ethos. “Aesthetically Sound” conjoins NFT creators whose work intertwines polished, sophisticated visuals with high production sounds to create compositions that reflect the culture around it.
The exhibition includes works by creators Hidden Forces, Jonathan Winbush, Levit∆te and Studio Nouveau. Together, they represent the influence that music originating in popular corners of the internet has had on digital and NFT art.
Studio Nouveau
The NFT artist Studio Nouveau debuts a recent series titled “Portals,” which combines 3D models and AI-generated visual clips into video format. The music in the video carries the plot, enhancing the video transitions and geometric gestures. In the work Portal: III.
Singularity, the up-tempo beat creates intrigue and energy behind the suspenseful journey of the work’s central icon. Like all of the works in the series, Studio Nouveau understands the importance of using crisp, controlled visuals in harmony with a score to fabricate an idyllic imagined environment unique to the virtual world. (See if you can catch the sample of the theme song from television’s Rick and Morty in one of the works!)
Levit∆te
Levit∆te, also known as Connor Campbell, constructs cinematic 4D animations that amplify the artist’s dramatic musical score. In his latest sequential project “Schematic,” Campbell renders a machine in the shape of a human body. Connecting red and black wires, like those of a stereo system, run like veins through the body.
The gears and knobs join the limbs resembling a production system for a DJ. The hyperreal imagery pairs well with the synth, bass heavy sounds, and, through this combination, the artist suggests that a half-human, half-machine Frankenstein may already exist.
Jonathan Winbush
Jonathan Winbush, a seasoned animator and creator based in Los Angeles, designs sleek 3D motion graphics for television and films. For the exhibition, he created three NFT works that illustrate the delicate elements of time, vibration and rhythm in music.
Milky Way, the second work of the set, depicts a round container holding a white liquid that splashes as the music’s vibrations rattle the sides. As the sleepy, downbeat music plays, faint rings of sound ripple around the container like waves of water. With these works, Winbush illustrates the dependency music and art have on high production and innovative technology.
Hidden Forces
The New York–based artist Hidden Forces makes moving photographic images of collage pieces and watercolors. The artist expands on a series for “Aesthetically Sound” that depicts a container, akin to a petri dish, filled with an amalgam of rich colors, textured substances and organic forms.
Using a mirror effect, the filigree that the watercolors create inside the petri dish signals various known references, most clearly the Rorschach test, that invite the viewer to interpret the imagery in their own way. The dissonant music in the videos sounds like a mixture of white noise, ambient sounds and percussion, matching the muddled visual imagery. Subtly, the artist captures the insular, controlled bustle that characterizes the organic and diverse formation of online creations.
