NFT Festival Gets Sensory With Rave App That ‘May Induce Hallucinations’
Image via Dreamverse
Just because NFTs are largely virtual experiences doesn’t mean they have to stop there. Dreamverse, the “world’s first” NFT art and music festival, not only brought the party offline—it hit the senses.
Hosted by NFT fund Metapurse, which claims to be “the largest NFT fund”, the event took place in New York on Thursday at nightclub Terminal 5, promising a revolutionary experience merging art, music, and NFTs. There were two parts to this: a Dreamverse Gallery in the daytime, presented in partnership with TIME, and an evening Dreamverse Party, headlined by DJ and producer Alesso.
One of the experiences up on offer was by artist Carsten Höller, who is well-known for producing sensory environments as part of his art. (Previous works include a sensory deprivation tank.) His contribution was the headline act at Dreamverse, and comes in the form of a potential hallucination.
7.8 (Reduced Reality App), Höller’s creation in collaboration with Acute Art, was presented at the climax of the evening Party. This takes the form of an app participants downloaded, which made their smartphones “flicker, vibrate and sound at 7.8 Hz, a frequency that stimulates brain waves and, after a while, may induce hallucinations.”
With everyone in the event using it, the artwork was said to “become a collective immersive experience that creates a bridge between art and music” while also doubling as somewhat of a social experiment.
“What this frequency does to you is that it interferes with your brainwaves,” Höller explains to Artnet over a video chat. He elaborates that different frequencies can cause new feelings, including hallucinations. The human brain has a frequency of between four and 12 hertz.
“It makes you high in a certain sense, and it even makes you see things that are not really there,” Höller details. “Typically, if you close your eyes and go close to the torch, you start to see color fields—red, blue, green—and everything becomes a kind of light LSD experience.”
Other inclusions in Dreamverse included a premiere of Metapurse’s Crypto Souk virtual museum, Beeple’s debut of an immersive work titled B5K, and VR booths. There’s also live drawing which, at this point, sounds strangely traditional. Oh, and an immersive display of the world’s most expensive NFT, the US$69 million piece Everydays — The First 5000 Days by Beeple. No big deal.
DREAMVERSE pic.twitter.com/P9JO6jnKrW
— beeple (@beeple) November 4, 2021
In a statement, Metakovan, the founder and financier of Metapurse, shares the reason behind producing Dreamverse. “NFTs are still thought of as abstract or virtual. Dreamverse is what happens when NFTs make landfall ... A merging of the physical and digital realms, Dreamverse is an expression of the renaissance we have been experiencing the last few years.”
Tickets were sold in tiers, with one of them featuring artwork by “OG cryptoartist Alotta Money” in the form of—you guessed it—NFTs. At first, the artworks are sepia-hued, but the NFT ticket would evolve into a colored version after physically scanning into the event.
Image via Dreamverse
The Dreamverse Party is LIVE 🚀
— Dreamverse (@Dreamverse_life) November 5, 2021
LFG 😤✨🥳 pic.twitter.com/Z8XiYgP0qm
[via Artnet, all images via Dreamverse]
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