‘Muses 2 // Metaverse Performance’ is likely to have been the world’s first performance art piece in the metaverse. Created and performed in the Decentraland metaverse by Bay Backner, in collaboration with Vueltta.
The original performance was filmed in November 2022, and was repeated on 4th December 2022 for The Royal House of Medici auction and Miami Art Week. The installation space can be visited until 31st December 2022.
↳ Explore the MUSES 2 Decentraland installation (120, 130)
↳ See the work in The Royal House of Medici auction (ends 8/12/22)
Explore the MUSES 2 installation space at (120, 130) to be part of this living, collaborative artwork. Discover hidden colliders as you encounter oil paintings as both installation and avatars. The work itself explores digital identity in both physical and digital worlds.
Share your selfie within the installation to be sent one of the limited edition wearables specially created for the performance. The wearable uses an IRL oil painting by Bay Backner, transformed into 3D by KJ Walker of Low Poly Models World.
↳ Submit your selfie and wallet for the limited edition wearable
Bay Backner is an artist working at the intersection of fine art, web3-metaverse and social technologies. The theme of digital identity vs sociocultural identity is central to Bay’s work. She uses oil paint, AI and metaverse installations in order to pull cultural archetypes into an ‘exploratory space’ between physical and digital worlds.
This performance piece is part of Bay’s ongoing body of work on ‘the muse’. She generates her own women using AI technology, then paints their real-life portraits in oil on canvas – before disrupting their images with digital-physical interventions.
To create Muses 2, Bay painted four AI-generated ‘muses’ using Renaissance techniques, then converted the paintings into digital textures. She then collaborated with artists in Vueltta, the collective she co-founded, to transform the textures into metaverse forms.
Designer Adrián Martínez created the installation architecture featuring all four muses, and 3D creative KJ Walker transformed one muse into the wearable face and headdress.
Everything within Muses 2 is an NFT asset, from the installation walls to the clothing (‘wearables’) and the poses (‘emotes’) of Bay’s avatar. The work itself is available as an NFT in the inaugural Royal House of Medici auction. Should the collector of the NFT so wish, they will receive all the 3D files as additional NFTs. These can be installed and used within Decentraland.
Other Decentraland assets in the Muses 2 performance:
– Sleeping Emote by Canessa
– Sitting Emote by Doki
– Armour by James Guard
Additional:
– Music by Palle Knudsen
– Decentraland Land, coordinates 120, 130
↳ Jump to the Decentraland installation here
↳ View the orginal Decentraland event for the live performance for Miami Art Week
↳ Bid for the piece in The Royal House of Medici auction
Submit your selfie for the MUSES 2 Limited Edition wearable
How to submit:
1. Take screenshots of your avatar inside MUSES 2. Can you climb your favourite painting?
2. Share the screenshots in one post on your preferred social media, with words like ‘Exploring MUSES 2, the metaverse installation by @baybackner x @vueltta #decentraland (120, 130)” or a comment about what you thought about the installation.
3. Copy the URL of your post into the submission form below ↓
The deadline for submissions is 31st December at 11.59pm PST. Eight (80) wearables are available and will be sent in order of submission.
One wearable per wallet address and email. Thank you for being a part of this installation!
Questions? Tweet @vueltta
Find out about our other current installation, The Labyrinth Effect, here.