In March 2020, five artists active in the cryptoart world – Sparrow Read, Stina Jones, Karen Frances Eng (oculardelusion), Ben Harriott (Urben), and Gareth Davies (UnrealCity) – convened virtually from various locations across England, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began shutting the UK down. 

It was an intense time: the world was facing catastrophe. Meanwhile, artists were just beginning to discover the possibilities and promise of blockchain technology. 

Although most of the five of us had never met in person, we began collaborating, taking refuge in making art together and sharing it using emerging shared-reality platforms.

In late 2020, we unveiled our inaugural project More Than Glass on Cryptovoxels, a virtual-reality gallery hosted on the Ethereum blockchain. Looking back, the project clearly embodies the ways in which creative, social, and professional interaction inevitably evolved during this tumultuous period.

Our collaborative piece within this exhibition, the eponymous More Than Glass, adorns the outside of the gallery building. Tokenized on the programmable art platform Async and its master token collected by Metapurse, MTG’s component layers may be changed at will by their various collectors Basileus, Roham, AfroViking, and Audsssy, resulting in the possibility of an ever-shifting artwork.

STILL HERE!

Since then, we’ve gone a little quiet in the public eye, but we’re still very much here and active. In the years after More Than Glass, the collective has functioned as a safe haven, a lab for playful experimentation with new technologies, an incubator for collaborative projects, a mutual support group championing our individual art practices, a place to get a reality check, a knowledge exchange, and source of inspiration. We take great comfort in having this small, calm group in a volatile space. The camaraderie and trust we’ve built over the years has proven indispensable in the eyes of multiple storms. 

Having said that, we do look forward to involving guest artists in upcoming projects as well as inviting possible new members in future, particularly UK-based artists who enjoy working in a spirit of cooperation and mutual support.