Europe’s first Crypto Art Festival, Rare Effect, returns bigger and better this month to Lisbon, Portugal. From Oct. 27 to Nov. 6, Arroz Estudios, an acclaimed work and event space for emerging artists to showcase their work, will host the exciting event that promises to bring together art lovers, musicians and creative communities from around the world. The project is being supported by DGArtes and Near Foundation — the nonprofit that champions Web3 social impact development projects built on the world’s fastest-growing climate-neutral blockchain, Near.
Now in its second year, Rare Effect will explore the relationship between the physical and the digital world, creating a bridge between the traditional art world and the Metaverse. Rare Effect 2022 will have more than 90 exhibiting national and international artists, a 10-day program of music with renowned musicians, panel discussions and workshops about crypto art, Web3 and cryptocurrency, as well as interactive installations and performances including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and light installations and sculptures.
During the day, the event space will showcase six different exhibition spaces full of digital artwork and installations. At night, the venue will play host to parties with world-class electronic music artists both local and international. The list of musicians can be found here.
Idealized, conceived and built from a community of creators and enthusiasts, this project is built to showcase both local and international artists and to educate them about future technologies. The theme for this year’s Rare Effect is to build awareness on the issues surrounding migration. The Rare Effect Open Call goes on to say, “Migration is happening all around us. It’s a part of many animals’ yearly cycle and it’s necessary for our acceleration in the technological world. As humans, we have developed the ability to migrate, but it’s not always a privilege afforded to us all.”
Through the concept of migration, artists will submit and present many different types and mediums of digital art, for example, screen-based crypto art, VR, AR, projections, performances, music and cultural panels to discuss what is happening and changing in the cultural and technological worlds.
The theme of migration has been broken down into five categories:
- Climate migration — the forced migration of humans and species due to climate change.
- Transhumanism — the migration of the human consciousness into computer systems.
- Freedom of movement and forced human displacement due to conflict or persecution (refugeeism).
- Seasonal migration systems such as swarms, flocks and pods.
- Gentrification vs. regeneration — the process of city development and how we can nurture our communities as they grow.
As with past editions, Rare Effect Vol. 3 will show and share the possibilities that technology brings to the art world. From innovative media exhibitions to the use of tokenization/NFTs and crypto wallets, visitors can interact with the art installations as well as to break with some of the barriers existing between what is physical and what is real.
Idealized, conceived and built from a community of artists, creators and enthusiasts all over the world — Rare Effect is an event not to be missed. “We are more than a festival and we’ve kept the same mission since Rare Effect Vol. 1 in February 2021. We are the materialization of the digital, a sandbox for ideas and creation, an event to stimulate experimentation,” said Steven MacKay, co-founder and president of Arroz Studios.
For more information about the event and for tickets, visit the website.