There are exciting developments in the NFT Art space and here to tell us all about it is Ed Zipco. Ed is the co-founder of Superchief Gallery NFT, the world’s first physical gallery space dedicated to NFTs. He joins hosts Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger to share the story behind starting and creating this the world’s first IRL NFT gallery. Ed highlights the importance of giving artists space to not only show off their art, but to have it respected and appreciated as it should be. The goal is ultimately to celebrate and elevate the artist community and their art. Plus, learn about David Bianchi’s exciting Senses NFT Project that offers a multi-sensory psychedelic experience. Be among the first to learn about upcoming events in the NFT Art space straight from the source by tuning in!
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Ed Zipco, Co-Founder Of Superchief Gallery NFT, The World’s 1st IRL NFT Gallery, Plus: David Bianchi’s New Senses NFT Project, And More…
Our sponsored spotlight episode features Ed Zipco, the Cofounder of Superchief Gallery. Ed is a photographer, writer, and gallery director. Superchief Gallery is an independent artist-friendly gallery with permanent large-scale warehouse locations in New York and Los Angeles. Encompassing a broad scope of contemporary art, Superchief presents photography, illustration, painting, sculpture, performance, installation, animation, and digital art. Superchief Gallery has a history of supporting artists from disparate scenes and collectives, enabling them to participate in the larger community. Superchief Gallery is the world’s first physical gallery space dedicated to NFTs.
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Ed, Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
It’s good to see you here. It’s been a little bit since we were live and in person at NFT LA. It’s crazy how time flies. Superchief was a central part of that entire experience. It’s great to see you here again.
Thank you. It was an honor to do it. It was exciting to dive in with you guys and try to make the most out of something exciting and turn it into something huge. Everybody killed it. I’m happy to see everybody again.
For a little context there, Superchief was a hop, skip, and a jump from the convention center. We had incredible programming throughout the entire week of NFT LA that we worked blood, sweat, and tears on for several months prior and some after too. There was a lot of clean-up with such a big undertaking. It’ll be good to come to whatever you got cooking in New York and not be on the other side of the planning process and enjoy the spectacle. I’m sure you’re up to something cool, which we’ll talk about on the show.
We’re excited for NFT NYC. We loved NFT LA. We’re excited to do more NFT LA stuff too. We’ll get to all of it. It’s exciting.
Superchief is such an important and influential gallery in LA. It’s been there for a long time doing all kinds of cool things with different people. Talk to us about the origin story. How did this entire project come to be?
I founded this with Bill Dunlevy back in Brooklyn in 2009. We were part of the creative scene in New York. Our friends were throwing events, parties, and art shows. We were supporting those with photography and writing. We had a little magazine that we were starting up. The big deal for us was 2012. At that point, we realized we’ve been throwing large-scale events with them for three years already.
In 2012, we realized if we formalized that a little bit and drilled in on the fact that it’s a gallery, the neighbors will stop calling the cops. We were excited to figure that out and also what it’s like to properly try to support the community instead of gathering us again and again. What did it look like to put a bit of an organization behind it? That was the real birth of Superchief in 2012.
Since then, we’ve had galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. They are these large-scale immersive spaces where we can get the scene together, have the scene exist, champion our best and brightest, and show them what it looks like if there are other people that are trying to support them as well on a professional level.
On that point, let me dig into that a little bit. The origin of this is built around community. We talk about community a lot. I’m curious. How did you make those connections? You guys are part of the art community, but how did you make those connections to specifically work with folks in the gallery and get them on board with everything you were doing?
I have to say it did go back to me going to art school. I went to Pratt Institute back in Brooklyn in 1999. That was a big moment of connecting with everybody and realizing that I was surrounded by geniuses. If we could hang out, sure, but what if we did something? What if you took that adage of togetherness where we’re stronger? I got behind people that we were close to and believed in. That was the introduction to all of it. It was getting obsessed with the people around us and being fortunate by being in the right place and at the right time and not wanting to leave.
Shoutout to Pratt. I did not realize you were there. I wasn’t there at the university, but my apartment was in Willoughby. That’s right next door. I used to go over there all the time and hang out around the grass. Pratt has these cats. They probably still have them. These were cats that prowled around campus and owned the place. There are only 2 to 4 of them because it’s their territory. They get fed and hang out.
It’s so fun that you were in the neighborhood. Swoon was in our class. Tod Seelie, who is a brilliant photographer, was in our class. Coby Kennedy, who is an artist that we work with who has not only done powerful artwork that was pulled out of not just as Afrofuturism narratives, but also protests, and a lot of cop cars on fire, was also in our class. It was an exceptional scene that we were able to be a part of at the jump, and then a lot of it was supporting them.
Let’s fast forward a little bit. How did NFTs get in the picture? Would you have thought that this type of evolution could occur in such a rapid time span from when you originally were building up this concept?
In all honesty, it was a dream because the whole mechanism of NFT has answered an existential question we were having for our digital artists. In 2016, I started to get angry that digital artists weren’t getting shown or weren’t being treated as artists in general. They were relegated to doing client work. That was the only real road ahead of them.
Digital art is the medium of our generation. Click To Tweet
Especially in 2015 and 2016, so much of the discourse in the community was online. It was all on Instagram. There was a complete separation between all of that on Instagram and all of the actual IRL events, art shows, and exhibitions. All of it was kept separate and then also disregarded. If it was on Instagram, it wasn’t art. I feel like that was something that was brutal because it was cutting our whole community short. It was cutting the whole discourse short.
We started a gallery in Soho. We got lucky. We found one that was turnkey. We had wall-to-wall smart TVs. My goal was once a week, we’ll do a whole new exhibition every Saturday. It was impossible to sell it, so I was like, “Let me show a lot of it. Let me at least create an intersect for our community and then that community.” I jammed my hand behind the TVs and threw in USB drives once a week. It was like this bowl flip. Years ago, graffiti and street art were told by the establishment that they had no value and they couldn’t sell, so they wouldn’t call it art, and I knew that this was going to shift. There was going to be that change because this is the medium of our generation.
You can’t say that you don’t believe in digital art. Every art you see is on your phone. It’s digital. The way that you’re experiencing it is digitally. It was just a matter of time. For us starting in 2016, showing digital, we had four years of physical artwork and those kinds of artists to intersect and throw parties for both groups where they could meet each other and contribute. We also started building relationships with digital artists that were killing it. As soon as NFT started, they were the use cases for everybody. It was incredible to see them do so well so fast.
A painful but fun anecdote is we were the gallery for people’s first-ever solo shows in America. We had them scheduled for New York, Los Angeles, and Miami the year COVID came out. That was a blast, having all of those canceled right after we advertised. It hurt a little bit, but for the most part, it’s about us wanting these artists to get out there and succeed. Whether with us, solo, or somebody else, I want people to dent culture. To see him break through was huge. When he had his $3.5 million weekend, I was watching on Instagram and saw that happen. I was rooting for him and learning. I was rooting for him to win because I wanted him to win.
On Monday, when he did it, I was like, “I’m getting dumped. That’s okay.” On Tuesday, I got a text from him. He was like, “Can you imagine how big it’s going to be when we do it now?” I was like, “That’s solid.” He loved the scene and the community that we were putting together and Superchief’s take on a gallery. He was supportive of it and excited to be a part of it. He did the $69 million and then it’s Gagosian talking to him. I got to acknowledge and respect it. We were aware early of what was going on.
For us, it was important to support NFTs because, more than anything, it creates this system of artist royalties. That’s the most important thing that’s happened in my lifetime. If we can support that, respect that, and establish that where there are artist royalties, that can change the model overall and kill the idea of the starving artist.
It can unify artists and their collectors instead of separating them as soon as the artwork is purchased and then when it’s sold for much more at auction later, the artist gets nothing. Now, everyone’s on the same team, and that’s an incredible moment. Even with the collectors and flippers, it’s still the same team. That’s something that we’re still starting to get our heads around. That’s a huge way for people to build a relationship with their community. I can go on, and I would go on.
It’s fascinating to reflect on the extent to which digital art was embedded in a class system that has put a lot of barriers to entry for mainstream consideration, yet at the same time, graphic artists are going up in value. In the professional and business worlds, everyone needs a graphic artist, yet the art world doesn’t see it that way. It’s quite fascinating to think about how that shift occurred with some of these memorable moments in the last few years like the one you described.
It’s the birth of the art star, which is an incredible moment. We’ve had little pockets of that with Warhol and Basquiat. These are moments where people become larger than life and become true celebrities. We’re finally starting to see the infancy of that rollout. I love to see it. It’s pretty exciting to see creativity get rewarded on that level.
We’ve seen so many evolutions of how people can get compensated, and a lot of it has to do with logistics. We saw some very interesting things happen with the evolution of digital music and the whole record industry shifting, exploding, and changing models. It’s making me aware that this is an inverse of that. We reached a place where you could share anything, and then that made people go, “Concert revenue is the only place we can go.”
All of a sudden, we’re having a different angle where you can have value from the digital things even if they’re all over the place. It’s a general human and even biological problem. We’re like, “Where are the shortcuts? How can you close the gaps?” It doesn’t make anything less valuable with the fact that you can’t add value to it or place value on it. It’s fascinating to hear you explain it that way.
I want to ask you about everything that’s going on here. You’re working on the first IRL NFT events with folks like Christie’s Auction house, OpenSea, MakersPlace, United Nations, and the Ukrainian government. Talk to us about these events, how they’re evolving, and what you’re excited about there.
It has been incredible. We got the opportunity to steal the story by opening up the first IRL NFT gallery in the world. Beating Shanghai by one day changed all of our lives. It changed our lives and the lives of our artists. It put us in 200 plus newspapers and magazines inside a month. It created a huge wave for our artists and for the opportunities that were showing up.
A lot of the institutions that wanted to support NFTs didn’t have a reputable source to team up with. There wasn’t someone out there who was showing NFT artwork and digital artwork with respect to the work. It’s a very easy mistake to turn a place or an installation into a best buy and have the feeling of being in a big box store rather than an exhibition about the artwork. Being able to be a gallery that was centering that as the argument and the opportunity allowed us to be the go-to.
For Christie’s Auction House, when they did their first CryptoPunks auction, that was brought together by our relationship with Justin Aversano. Justin brought that to us because he was working with all the CryptoPunks and putting them on billboards in Miami through SaveArtSpace, a wonderful organization he runs. We had been Justin’s gallery for years. We premiered Twin Flames at Superchief before NFTs. It was a physical art show with hundreds of his photographs everywhere. Thirty sets of twins came out for the opening night. It was fun. He brought CryptoPunks and Christie’s Auction House to Superchief.
We created and art-directed an installation that respected the scene, brought the community through, kept it at a high level, and then created an environment that kept the audience giddy. It was fun to see all of these people get to connect. I don’t even remember what month that was. It must’ve been May 2021. It was still early for people to take their masks off to see somebody. It was a special moment.
NFT Gallery: I started to get really angry that digital artists weren’t getting shown or treated as artists in general.
From there, we did the first-ever IRL NFT events for OpenSea. Their first one was at Superchief MakersPlace Foundation through The Digital Diaspora with Diana Sinclair. That was an incredible project. It was about giving the industry that we respected a home and creating an opportunity for people not just to get to know their cofounders. If they worked on this digitally, a lot of them hadn’t ever been in person before and that was very surreal for everybody, but also the community and the inner circles of this.
It was special to create a space where not only do they feel comfortable, but we could elevate the work and show the work either how it’d be at a real gallery or ideally also what it would look like to hang this stuff in the home. We sell these digital canvases that we are happy to have access to through our partnership with WHIM. I’ll say it out loud. WHIM is the leader in digital canvas tech. It’s incredible working with them. We’re proud to be bringing that out.
We also love working with Infinite Objects for the small collectibles. Being an actual location you can visit if you visit New York or Los Angeles to experience what NFTs are off your cell phone and off your laptop and see them treated with respect has been a wonderful niche to find ourselves with. We’ve always been about community and artwork. We only show work that we believe in and that we’re truly into.
Having seen it firsthand, I can also say what a difference it is between seeing it on your phone or on your computer screen and seeing it in the context you provided and crafted. There’s something special there. You have to get to it in real life to appreciate that. It is an order of magnitude difference. There’s no question about it. It’s such a cool experience. I wanted to highlight that you’ve got this NFT multipass for IRL events. Tell us about that because that’s part of this. It’s getting people out to see this stuff live and in person.
It’s been incredible watching how fast it’s all grown. I know everybody’s seen the boom and then another boom. As this has been getting bigger, we’ve been seeing the parties get bigger and the events get larger. For us, we want to be able to do parallel roads. We’re always going to be doing free-to-enter giant events because we love it.
We love the community and we want more people to see this stuff and meet each other. It’s always going to have that within it, but beyond the free stuff, we want to do something that allows that community that’s been with us from the start and the artists that we show to be formally appreciated and formally given access.
I don’t want somebody who was with us at the start having to wait in line. I don’t ever want somebody who believed in us and bought NFT artwork from us and supported these artists to be told they can’t get in. For us, it was like, “How do we offer that IRL multipass where you can go to any Superchief, whether it be in New York, Los Angeles, or the new exhibition that we’re doing in Venice, Italy, that we have a full NFT exhibition with us, Bright Moments, Obscura DAO, and Art Blocks?” When we do special events in Venice, Italy, for the Venice Biennale, we want the home team to have access. That’s the big purpose for it.
We all here realize going to be more, without a doubt. You’re going to kill it.
The other part of this is the unknown. Similar to our project we did with Spirits Seeds, you never know what’s to come. This is a gallery that worked with people. What’s the next exciting collab or mint that you’re going to get a chance to be part of that maybe there’s a line of 10,000 people that don’t get in there for that mint, which you do as being one of these OG holders? With that in mind, my question is about the collaborations and partnerships in the pipeline. It’s probably a difficult question for you to answer and unpack because there’s so much that you guys are always doing, but let’s talk about it anyway.
There is a lot. Between Los Angeles and doing some fun stuff with you guys with NFT LA, there’s New York. We have a couple of exciting things going on there. There is stuff that I can talk about that I’m not under NDA. This is a special sliver. We’re doing a two-month activation that we’re going to be kicking off in Chelsea, New York. That’s going to be incredible. It’s in the heart of Chelsea. I believe it’s the first time that NFTs are getting pushed to that level. We’re excited to be doing that. We’re talking about doing some private events there.
We’re also having a strong relationship cook up with VR World. I believe VR World is the largest VR space in the country. It’s incredible working with them. It is three floors in the middle of Manhattan. That’s getting exciting. I’m probably going to miss it, but we’re going to throw a 1,000-person party in Tokyo on June 25th, 2022.
We’re doing NFT LA, so I have to stay there, but we have strong relationships in Tokyo. We’re curating a large installation. It’s a 50-foot wide screen. It’s 20-feet tall and 50-feet wide. A concert series is going to happen in front of it with this party we’re throwing. I might bring CYBERPUNK out there and then make it that if there is anybody out in Tokyo who comes out, we can give them VIP access and trick it out for them. We’re cooking all the time. Miami Art Basel’s coming up, and then also Halloween, where we’re going to be going crazy in New York, LA, and then Italy as well.
It’s the number of different angles that we tend to hit all of this at and the fact that we like to stay active with not just the artists that we show and the communities we want to support but also the cities that we actively take over. It’s been exciting meeting all of these other NFT galleries that have been popping up in 2021. It has been wonderful making relationships with them. I want to create sister galleries in the cities that we can’t be active in and share information and opportunity because that’s been the best thing.
Our favorite magic trick of 2022 is taking anyone who might be a competitor and turning them into friends. We’re all on that wavelength. It’s such a beautiful thing to push, so we’re leaning into that. We’re going to be doing exhibitions with Bright Moments, whom we love. It’s crazy the number of different ways that we’re able to participate and then add access to our community and artists.
We have two different conversations with museums in China for 2023. I’ll quickly name-drop the artists that I love that we’ve shown. We did the first-ever edition NFT drop for DrifterShoots, which was incredible. He released an edition of 200 at 0.25 Ethereum. It sold out in 45 minutes. It was as fast as we could handle. That has continued to trade like crazy. We’ve done Diana Sinclair, Justin Aversoano, Swoon and Lushsux. We like to approach this from a cross-disciplinary frame of mind.
What we want to do, though, for the moment, is to take you through Edge Quick Hitters. This is a fun, quick way for us to get to know you a little bit better. We got ten questions. We’re looking for short, single-word, or fewer responses, but we’ll dive in a little deeper here and there. Are you ready to do this?
It’s pretty exciting to see creativity get rewarded. Click To Tweet
Yeah. Let’s do it.
Question number one, what is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
It’s probably a Marvel card or a Transformer robot.
Do you have a box of that stuff at the crib or at your fam’s house?
I have the pages. Those are preserved.
Question number two, what is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
I ran my dad’s garage sale for five minutes and felt great. I was six.
Question number three, what is the most recent thing you purchased?
Headphones, so I can stop screaming at my phone like a lunatic when I walk around.
That’s a good purchase. Question number four, what is the most recent thing you sold?
NFTs. Every day.
Is there anything you want to reveal to our audience?
We’re still proud of our first show, the Season 1 Starter Pack. It was our giant group show with 130 artists. It was a way for people who are looking to shop for NFTs but don’t know too much to have some context and clarity on what’s worth picking up.
Question number five, what is your most prized possession?
We have a block of wood that the Superchief skull logo was carved into. It’s all a wood print. We have the original piece of wood.
Who carved it? Tell me more.
NFT Gallery: It was really important to support NFTs because more than anything, it creates the system of artist royalties.
Tamara Santibañez is a brilliant artist out of Brooklyn, New York. We hired her to create our logo. I wanted a skull with knives for teeth. She carved it in wood. I had no idea she was going to do that. It came out textured and beautiful. I would say that’s a prized possession.
I will say your sticker was the first sticker I put on my brand new Onewheel GT. Question number six, if you could buy anything in the world, digital, physical, service, or experience, that’s for sale, what would that be?
It’s the Oculus downtown at World Trade Center. We’ve been invited to create a giant Web 3.0 experience zone there, so I want to own that.
We’re looking forward to it. Question number seven, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
More than anything, it is to try and enjoy it. I want them to know that they can enjoy it if they turn that on rather than suffer through all of it. You can enjoy everything. You just have to remember that you want to remember you’re doing something because you want to. It gets easier.
We were talking a little bit earlier. We were doing some Twitter spaces and we were reflecting on how we all looked at each other and said, “We could pretty much do this. We enjoy this. Whether we’re able to ever make money out of it or not, this is fun. We want to keep doing this for a very long time.”
Maintaining that energy is number one because otherwise, it turns into a job, and then you’re trapped again.
There is an interesting book I found several years ago. It’s called How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. It dives deep into that concept of whatever you do, you chose to do it, so if you’re not having fun, choose not to do it. Do something else.
Find the thing that pushes the button in your head and get good at pushing that button.
Question number eight, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits from the next generation, what would that be?
I’d say I hold on to things too long without passing them on to the next player. I’m running next to them with the Baton instead of handing the Baton off. I feel like if I could hand the Baton off a little bit more cleanly, everyone would be happier.
You care, and that’s where it comes from. It comes from a good place. Question number nine, what did you do before joining us on the show?
I smoked weed and wrapped up another meeting.
Last one, question number ten, what are you going to do next after the show?
I’ll smoke weed and then have another meeting.
You got something happening over there. That’s Edge Quick Hitters. We appreciate you participating and sharing with us.
The IRL NFT Gallery was about giving the industry that we respected a home. Click To Tweet
It’s great to be here. I appreciate that. It has been awesome.
It was a great talk. We appreciate it. We want to make sure that all of our audience know where to follow you and all the amazing things you’re doing.
For Twitter, it’s @SuperchiefNFT. For Instagram, it’s @SuperchiefGallery, @SuperchiefGalleryNFT, @SuperchiefGalleryLA, and @SuperchiefGalleryMiami. In any of those, there is a probably good little thread you can pull and find us. Our website is SuperchiefGallery.com and SuperchiefGalleryNFT.com. You can also find us on OpenSea and everywhere else.
Keep an eye out. Those are very distinctive stuff. It’d be hard to miss once you go down the Superchief rabbit hole. Word on the street is that we are doing a little giveaway. We want to elevate that here for our audience. Do you want to give a little background there?
Absolutely. We want to make sure that the community that’s part of this community gets access to what we’re up to. We’re doing that multipass. We’re going to give away a couple of those multipasses.
Keep an eye out on our socials. We’ll give you the details on that giveaway and how to participate. We’re very grateful for that. It is much appreciated.
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This episode’s sponsored feature hot topic is all about the senses. Senses is a healing audio-visual poetic journey that explores the modalities of human perception. It is based on 100 original poems written and performed by David Bianchi based on the five human senses. It is then co-mingled with generative psychedelic code art by Dogan Demir, coded from data from David’s voice recordings, and intersected with healing Solfeggio frequency music by PLS&TY. We are fortunate to have David Bianchi with us to talk about this amazing project.
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David, tell us what’s up. You’re always cooking up something unique.
I appreciate that. Hearing someone else say it outside of myself is a lot to digest.
That’s a special project.
I’m excited about it. The underlying theme is that the blockchain makes us self-sustaining artists, so when that happens, it opens up space to be expansive. If it weren’t for this great technology, this kind of art wouldn’t even be possible. The spirit of it is to hopefully bring an essence to the space to give people an opportunity to pause.
I was inspired to write 100 poems that are all uplifting and philosophical. I recorded those poems. We then took mathematical data from the waveform to form the art. It’s a 1,000-piece collection. That’s part of Async’s new technology rollout called Async’s Music Blueprints, which is the evolution of what they did with Coldie, XCOPY, and rest in peace, Alotta Money. I’m so excited about this to be able to bring something new to the blockchain.
I’m curious. This may or may not be embedded in there somewhere, so forgive me if it’s a little bit redundant, but one of the things I love about the senses is some people don’t realize it is a way to easily get into a meditative state is to listen to your senses in the present moment. You’re like, “What do I see? What do I hear? What kind of flavors is going on? What kind of smells do I smell? What kind of things do I feel and touch?” It’s amazing how it immediately brings you to the present. You forget about the past and the future. You get access to this present moment state. I love that that’s part of this. I’m curious. You’re probably intuitively doing that. Is there any explicit mention of that in the work?
Yeah. When you think about what each NFT is, there’s the audio poetry layer, then there’s the Solfeggio frequency layer, which is binaural music that connects to the chakras, and it’s proven. Music therapy has been proven that it does heal the mind, body, and spirit. The tone of the delivery of these poems causes you to pause. Some people get to meditate with music. Some people can meditate in silence. There’s an incredible poet. You made me think of Rumi. He is a legendary poet. He said, “The voice of God is silence. Everything else is a cheap impostor.”
NFT Gallery: There wasn’t someone out there who was really showing NFT artwork and digital artwork with respect.
When we can pause long enough to hear those things inside of ourselves, that’s when we can get introspective and start to discover what’s going on in the inner workings of the mind. I’m blessed to be also partnering with Spatial. Spatial and I will be building a dedicated metaverse experience, so token holders will also have access to a guided meditative audio-visual immersive sound bath in the metaverse.
We’ll also be doing some IRL activations, including one that popped up at this beautiful clandestine mansion in Consensus in Austin coming up. It is a great opportunity to not only expand the perception of what NFT and crypto art can and is but giving people an opportunity to investigate themselves a little bit. Also, whoever collects any of these NFTs, I transferred the commercial exploitation and publishing rights in my poetry to the individual as well. You can republish and resell as you choose. You’ll own every single one of the PNG layers as well. Async has done some interesting stuff and I’m happy to be connected to them.
I did a little googling about what psychedelic means. You’re talking about psychedelic sound and I know psychedelic is used in different cases. In Davos, there is a medical psychedelic house, and that was a pretty eye-opening experience. At the end of the day, psychedelic refers to mind revealing. It sounds like that’s the journey that you’re trying to take people on.
They don’t need to have a psychedelic experience with an outside substance. They can be part of this experience with your NFT and open new neurotransmitters to fire in different directions and think about life, consciousness, and their hopes, dreams, and aspirations differently. It sounds like that’s a real self-empowerment crusade that you’re on to right here.
Thank you for saying that because some of our greatest prophets and teachers are psychedelic shamans, teachers, and healers without the use of outside influences. They tap into their own mind, body, and spirit connections to whatever their higher power, their third eye, or their internal eye is. I hope that people can journey inside of these words. Of the 100 poems, I pulled one on sound. Here’s an example of the tone of it. Sounds can be familiar, comforting at ease. Sounds can remind us of trauma very deep within our psyche. Sounds can produce joy, sadness, and grief. Even the sound of silence can be loud if you listen deeply.
I know what we’re doing in NFT LA in 2023. That’s amazing. We talked about the sound bath experience. Are you going to be there live doing some reads, or is that a part of the actual NFTs?
Anything that happens in the metaverse or anything that happens around these activations, I’ll be there live. I would also like to incorporate other healers, guided meditative healers, meditative bowls, and didgeridoos. I’m simply being a container. I’m creating a container. I’m not your guru, to quote Tony Robbins. I’m just the guy with some cool ideas. When it comes to healing and what these poems and this music will do to people, that’s based on your experience. It’s based on how you perceive the language and how you relate to yourself in this complicated world.
We’re always on the go. People are really nasty and discoursed. I felt damaged a little bit. Much of my poetry is socially conscious and very polarizing. I was like, “Let me make a little bit of a departure.” I’m already planning the Sixth Sense, which will be very psychedelic. I’m thinking Horsehead Nebula-style art that will be interactive and completely think of Refik Anadol in terms of the inspirations.
To clarify, you get it as part of utility, right? You get free mentoring access to the Sixth Sense. Is that correct?
That’s correct. Thinking about utility, even in fine art, all the things that I mentioned and giving whoever holds one of these 1,000 will have first-line access to mint the Sixth Sense, which will be a much larger collection.
I know you have a hard stop, but from working with Ed and collaborating for three months, I know how much healing is part of his name, how he treats his staff and thinks about the sprints and the marathon. Ed, do you have any thoughts on this amazing project?
I love that he’s bringing the IRL sound bath to these environments. It is such a fast-paced pulse that is for each one of these conferences and reasons why the whole community gathers. David and I spoke about this when we were talking about what might be possible for an NFT NYC. I find it inspiring what they did for ETHDenver where they had that puppy room. They had that thing where it’s like, “Let me slow my human brain down a little bit. Let me heal. This morning was a lot.”
Everybody’s doing the most they can humanly deal with because that’s the game. Having a space and reminding ourselves to create space for that kind of health concern is amazing. To share, what Josh is talking about is the fact that I made sure all of my team had IV bags before the week. I was like, “Let’s go into this strong.”
Web 3.0 burnout is a real thing. We took a good amount of our team over to Davos. It was going to be an intense week, so a lot of us went to this cool spa. It was an onsen-type of environment in this whole town of all thermal waters called Baden. Not to be confused with Batten in Germany, this one is Baden in Switzerland. It was amazing. It set the tone for the week. I’m excited about everything you’re doing. To wrap because I know you have to jet, where can folks follow you in this project? Can you also tell folks about the giveaway that we have in store for them? That’d be great.
I’m excited. First off, to be in this conversation with you, legends Ed, Eathan, Jeff, and Josh, thank you so much for all the love and support. We’re doing a giveaway. I wanted to honor this community with some allow-less spots to be able to mint. The mint price will be 0.15. It’s pretty reasonable as far as the market is concerned. I’ll leave it up to you, absolute wizards, on how you guys decide to make those mechanics work.
You follow me @DavidBianchi. Please follow @PlsAndTyBased and Dogan Demir. @Senses_NFT is the dedicated Twitter handle that we’re building. I’m excited to see how people respond to this because normally, we collect fine art from a visual perspective, but now that there’s an audio perspective but also a language perspective, it’s like, “I like that art, but this poem makes me feel this way or that poem makes me feel this way.” It’s going to be unique to see how collectors interact with this collection.
Thank you so much for joining us. We’ll see you soon.
It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much.
It was great to see you.
It was great to see you too.
Let’s talk soon.
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We’ve reached the outer limit of the show. Thanks for exploring with us. We’ve got space for more adventures on this starship. Invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to Spotify or iTunes, rate us, and say something awesome. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. Lastly, be sure to tune in next time for more great NFT content. Thanks again for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- Superchief Gallery
- How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World
- @SuperchiefGallery – Instagram
- @SuperchiefGalleryNFT – Instagram
- @SuperchiefGalleryLA – Instagram
- @SuperchiefGalleryMiami – Instagram
- SuperchiefGalleryNFT.com
- Senses
- David Bianchi
- @DavidBianchi – Twitter
- @PlsAndTyBased – Twitter
- Dogan Demir – Twitter
- @Senses_NFT – Twitter
- Spotify – Edge of NFT
- iTunes – Edge of NFT
About Ed Zipco
Photographer, writer, and gallery director Edward Zipco is the co-founder and director of Superchief Gallery, an independent artist-run gallery with permanent large scale warehouse locations in New York and Los Angeles. Encompassing a broad scope of contemporary art, Superchief presents photography, illustration, painting, sculpture, performance, installation, animation, and digital art. Superchief Gallery has a history of supporting artists from disparate scenes and collectives, enabling them to participate in the larger community. Superchief Gallery is the world’s first physical gallery space dedicated to NFTs.
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