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Crypto Art Fair in Times Square

Crypto Art Fair

New York, USA

The Crypto Art Fair was the first event organised by NFT Magazine, the publication founded by brothers Rodni and Xhois Baja. Instead of a booth or a hall, the fair took place on a giant high-definition LED billboard wrapping the corner of the building at 20 Times Square in New York, which showed the work of more than seventy digital artists throughout the day. The programme also included an augmented reality layer made with SuperWorld and Pollinate, which anchored artworks to locations around Times Square for viewing through a phone app, and an evening panel and afterparty in Manhattan.

Federico Clapis was among the artists in the line-up, alongside names such as Alexa Meade, Android Jones, Antoni Tudisco, Annibale Siconolfi and Kidmograph. The footage of the billboard shows one of his animations filling the curved screen above the street: a white baby held by a drone, the image of his sculpture Babydrone, floats in orbit over the Earth among a fridge, a fire hydrant and other everyday objects, next to the fair's branding and his name in large letters, while traffic and pedestrians pass below.

For Clapis the Times Square showing marked the arrival of his crypto art in one of New York's busiest public spaces. The setting fits the subject of much of his work, the relationship between people and screens: a piece about technology and childhood appears on a commercial screen built for advertising, in front of passers-by in the street.

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