In a desperate attempt to stay relevant with a crypto-savvy audience, marketers around the world are betting on the metaverse trend, experimenting with everything from branded NFT collectibles to virtual stores and offices to issuing their own cryptocurrencies. However, users are often baffled, feeling that these retail plans are more about increasing sales than fostering community, connection, collaboration and co-creation in the new era of Web 3.
This article is part of CoinDesk's Metaverse Week. Krista Kim is a speaker at Consensus 2022, CoinDesk's festival of the year, June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. Learn more.
According to contemporary artist Krista Kim, there are too many corporate executives designing these new virtual worlds, and not enough artists. As founder of the Techism movement in 2014, Kim called for a reconciliation between technological innovation and the creation of art. In 2021, with the advent of Web 3, she updated her original thesis, acknowledging the potential of blockchain to realize her vision of an open, decentralized future. With artists and creatives at the helm, it is possible to engage communities through meaningful experiences that have a lasting impact and add real value to people's lives.
In 2020, feeling personally affected by the isolation and emotional trauma of corona virus, Kim created a therapeutic outlet in the form of a virtual home. Based on her digital Zen philosophy, she built the house entirely with lights to create a calming, healing atmosphere, with musical accompaniment by Jeff Schroeder of the Smashing Pumpkins. Called the "Mars House," it sold for 288 ETH ($512,712) in 2021 as the world's first NFT home on SuperRare.
Kim has worked with major luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Lanvin to help them understand the metaverse and find relevance for their communities. She is also the creator of the Continuum Tour, a sound and light installation in a public space at Aranya Beach in China, and Contributing Metaverse Editor at Vogue Singapore.
In this interview, I spoke with Kim about the transition from Web 2 to Web 3 and how she sees blockchain technologies empowering sovereign individuals to thrive in a world built on immersive, inspiring, and artistic experiences.
She also explains why today's pixelated versions of the metaverse are NGMI [Not Gonna Make It], why screens are not our enemy, and how DAOs [Decentralized Autonomous Organizations] can facilitate ownership and agency in a radically inclusive, optimistic, and resilient future society.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
As a pioneer of the open metaverse, what do you think people still get wrong about virtual worlds today?
They don't understand the long-term vision of the metaverse. Right now, there's a misconception that gaming platforms are the metaverse - like The Sandbox, Decentraland, and Cryptovoxels - ones with low-fidelity graphics where the look of the place is severely compromised. But if you think voxelized graphics will last beyond the next year or two for Gen Alpha, you're wrong.
The future of the Metaverse, in terms of graphics quality, will be photorealistic. With the introduction of more advanced hardware, such as glasses with AR capabilities, the metaverse will be so powerful that the digital plane will be almost indistinguishable from the real one, with smooth interaction between the two worlds.
What do you think of skeuomorphism? Why do artists and architects still design digital objects that resemble things in the real world, when they can create almost anything in virtual environments?
Many people in business today need to realize that you can't just repeat what you've done in the past and think you'll win. The metaverse is the greatest art project in the world, and it requires imagination and creativity. It means stepping out of your comfort zone, but most companies don't want to do that. Most professionals who work in companies are trained to follow the status quo or follow workflows that have worked in the past to play it safe.
The metaverse is not about playing it safe. The metaverse is about inspiring people, and the only way to do that is through art. There need to be more artists at the helm, and companies don't know how to negotiate that kind of relationship where artists and creatives take the lead. That's why Web 3 is a whole new phenomenon and a whole new corporate structure.
What are the obstacles preventing Web 2 creators from moving to Web 3?
Right now, crypto is a high-risk, volatile space. But if you look at it from a long-term perspective, the crypto revolution is already underway. We're just in the genesis phase, and that's why people are risk averse.
Basically, a whole paradigm is shifting from an industrial enterprise model where people were taught to obey and do a nine-to-five job for a company without having any entrepreneurial skills. Web 3 is about the sovereign individual empowered by blockchain to shape their own destiny through their own creations and intellectual property, while collaborating with others and succeeding.
And when you think about DAOs, they will change the way the world works. They will move away from a corporate model, where the corporation dominates the system, to communities that come together to solve the world's problems collaboratively - where people actually participate and co-invest in projects. This is a completely different model for how the world will work and how things will get done. In Web 3, everything is achieved through passion and purpose.
So it's not just about teaching people how to use cryptocurrencies, it's about learning how to be a whole new kind of person in a new world. Of course, there will be friction - it's a completely different mindset.
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This is a broader discussion about our relationship with technology and innovation. By and large, art has not contributed much to the development, aesthetics, and use of technology.
That's why I wrote Techism Manifesto in 2014, because I felt that the content we were consuming on screens was so commercial that there was no balance. There was no real aesthetically soothing or humane use of technology because art was not at the forefront. Art was not considered an important factor in the development of these technologies.
Techism is a call to action - not just in the world of technology, but in the world of creatives - to collaborate and create together. Creatives need to start looking at technology as a medium, engage with it, take it seriously, and find ways to create a human touch.
So it's not just about screens, it's about content. Because the screen is a tool. Just as a surgical knife can be used to heal, it can also be used to kill. The tool itself cannot be blamed. It is the intent and creative process that reveals the impact on our society at large.
What has changed since you wrote your original manifesto in 2014?
Since 2014, we have seen the emergence of Web 3 through blockchain technology. Web 2 was a dark time, especially in terms of data sovereignty. I believe that surveillance capitalism is a very unethical business practice of Web 2 that has dominated our lives and has had a really negative impact on us.
Data is power, data ownership is a human right, and people need to be educated about how important that is. If we were able to capture our data - that is, the loss of personal data that Web 2 companies exploit for monetary gain - and manage our own data ourselves, we could decide whether to sell or license that information and receive compensation for it. I think that would be a fair situation, because our data is a record of who we are.
Why do you think there are so few women founders in this space? How can we get more women to participate in Web 3?
It's just because we're so early. Web 3 is an area where women can naturally flourish because it's about collaboration, co-creation and community. Women will flourish in Web 3 like no other era in human history because it's accessible to us. There are no barriers to entry. It's simply a matter of reaching out, initiating and creating communities or core groups and teams with other people who can contribute to a project.
In about two generations, we will be much more unified as a transcendent culture in the metaverse. It is actually an extremely spiritual experience to meet people in the metaverse, to talk to them, and to be interested only in the person, in what they say, in what they do. We don't judge them by other factors, except maybe that they have some cool wings.
When people have the opportunity to express themselves as avatars, no matter what their background, real human relationships emerge that transcend race, religion, gender and other real-world differences. All of these problems will cease to be problems in 50 years. People will instead be activated by common interests. It will be a whole new world.