RAREAF2 was the second annual Rare Art Festival, which in true decentralized fashion, was taken over by James Waugh of CRE8 from Rare Art Labs (who hosted the first event of its kind).
Ultimately, the agenda featured pioneers and innovators in the realm of Crypto and (Rare) Digital Art giving lectures and excitedly discussing ideas on panels for the main stage on the 1st floor.
In addition, there was a Rare Digital Art exhibit which spanned the entire 2nd floor upstairs.
RAREAF2 took place at the Bushwick Generator on Saturday, May 18, 2019.
Who came to RAREAF2?
RAREAF2 included attendance from Artists, Art and Crypto Enthusiasts, Digital Art industry leaders, NYC and Brooklyn locals among other rare art curious folks.
The first set of speakers included:
() Joe Looney, Freeport
() Benny Giang, Axiom Zen
() Beatriz Ramos, Dada
() Cynthia Gayton, Gayton Law
() Simona Pop, Bounties Network
After lunch included a panel with our own pixEOS community manager, Aaron Mangal, amongst other leading platforms in the space.
The panel was Themed “Battle of the Platforms” and included:
() Johnny Dollar, Artist Liberation Front
() Theo Goodman, PoW Media
() Jason Rosenstein, Portion
() Gus Grillasca, Artolin
() Aaron Mangal, pixEOS
() Yaz Koury, ETC
Check it out here: (Note: Due to low audio from the livestream, use headphones for best results)
Next, was John Watkinson and then Matt Hall of Larva Labs (creators of Crypto Punks) and then Matt Condon of XLNT.
After this was our final panel of the day on Building Collaborative Markets with:
() Judy Mam, Dada
() David Moore, KnownOrigin
() John Crain, SuperRare
() Tommy Nicholas, Rare Art Labs
() Corinne Moshy, Codex
() Fanny Lakoubay, Snark.Art
() Moderated by Michael Lee, Creative Crypto
Simon de la Rouviere of Artonymous, the Create-a-thon Presentations (where artists shared their created work of the day) and Jason Bailey of Artnome closed out the day before the final Crypto Art Auction.
For a more in-depth recap of the talks check out SuperRare’s awesome discussion of it here: https://medium.com/pixura/rareaf2-recap-best-cryptoart-gathering-yet-3150a8b5db37
As well as Digitally Rare’s Podcast and Recap discussion: https://digitallyrare.podbean.com/e/tough-love-and-hot-takes-live-in-nyc-rareaf2/
The Crypto Art Auction Finale
And last but not least was the Crypto Art Auction!
One of the things that made RAREAF2 really unique and super cool (in addition to the variety of artists and crypto curious attendees) was the Crypto Art Auction that took place at the end of the event by Black Swan.
Bidders got to bid on paintings done by crypto artists such as Johnny Dollar, Jessica Angel plus Rare Pepe embedded socks, tokenized books and even two RAREAF2 certified one-of-a-kind digital tokens.
This experience allowed art lovers to share their passionate love of the art, Cryptocurrency, and the Blockchain through buying and spectating such an event.
It was a really fun experience to observe! Black Swan used some unique auction approaches and rules, for example, they did a reverse bid for Jessica Angel’s work where they started from a million $ and just kept going down.
This continued until they got to $500 where it easily sold to a lucky bidder.
There was also the normal auction from the bottom up where they start at $5 or $10 and people just keep bidding their way up. It was really cool to see all the interest from all different types of people across the board.
Here’s a video of Johnny Dollar’s Cornan the Barbarian auction which sold for over $200: https://www.instagram.com/p/ByJCEbWgRZk/
Here’s a partial livestream of the Crypto Art Auction (if you’d like to share the excitement and moments):
Takeaways
Ah! Crypto Art is such an awesomely complex yet organic construct that it is hard to nail down specifics, however, we did have some impressions, thoughts and takeaways from RAREAF2.
Here are a few of them:
The NYC (and east coast in general) seems to have a critical mass of OG Rare Digital Art pioneers, creators, startups and artists - Everywhere from Virginia, to DC, Maryland and of course New York city seem to have some very influential doers in the Crypto Art scene.
The community is extremely passionate, organic and collaborative - It was extremely refreshing to be around highly intelligent creatives who see the big picture and are driving productive developments in the digital art space. It was very inspiring to observe and engage with them.
We’re still early in the (Rare) Digital Art Crypto niche - There’s not a lot of things in the world that allow you to be the first in line but Rare Digital Art is one of them. Despite the wonderful work of all the different platforms and Blockchains available today, there is still much more growth to come, particularly on the Crypto Art Collector side of the equation.
Til next year RAREAF2.
Come one, come all, (rare) digital art awaits!
To learn more about pixEOS check out our starter guide: https://steemit.com/pixeos/@pixeos/the-ultimate-pixeos-starter-guide-begin-here