Do artists create for themselves or an audience? It’s a debate as old as paint itself.
If you ignore your audience, you run the risk of becoming out of touch with supporters. On the flip side, doesn’t successful art demand a sense of individuality?
For FVCKRENDER, it’s all about striking a perfect balance between himself and his community.
“I dealt with a lot of anxiety when I was younger,” he told Highsnobiety. “I wanted to make this relaxing environment people can get lost in and see art in a different way that hasn’t been done before.
“As long as you innovate and do these things that haven’t been done before, that’s where you’re going to keep your integrity.”
LVCIDIA is FVCKRENDER’s flagship project, a virtual world he describes as a “collective-based generative art, where people own planets others can visit.” As an immersive experience, LVCIDIA’s world is packed with meticulously detailed artworks crafted by its inhabitants.
The project is free to visit and explore, marked by rich visuals that you gently float through as you travel LVCIDIA — trust me, it’s worth the visit.
Though anyone can experience these virtual sections at no cost, many of the objects inside LVCIDIA are actually NFTs that owners can utilize for their own benefit.
For instance, users can "stake" their art, wherein the digital asset's owner places a stake in a wallet or platform that then allows the network to verify transactions. In LVICIDA, staking enables token holders to gather resources and rewards.
“I want to see how crazy we can go with the staking mechanism, which is completely different than any other staking system out,” FVCKRENDER continued. “We took a defi [decentralized finance] tool and made it art-centric.”
The amount of dedication that FVCKRENDER puts into LVCIDIA is inspiring. Often, creators with visions at this scale haphazardly put together objects, hoping that gamification overshadows flaws. Instead, anyone can enjoy LVCIDIA’s digital art, whether they own NFTs or not.
And people clearly want to experience FVCKRENDER’s “anxiety-reducing environments”: his NFT NYC exhibit was a mesmerizing experience that drew “5,000 people waiting to get in over three days.” Attendees included both NFT owners and the web3-curious.
“I was talking with someone who got really drunk and bought five avatars on their phone right in front of me,” recalled FVCKRENDER.” “They’d never bought FVCKRENDER before, so that response was a good feeling.”
Though he’s still invested in digital works, the recent success of his NFTs provided FVCKRENDER the opportunity to approach physical sculpture, a longtime personal interest. He’s since sold works directly to collectors, even distributing some through Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
Though FVCKRENDER has enjoyed phenomenal success, he hasn’t forgotten his roots.
In October 2022, OpenSea made the controversial announcement that it was exploring zero-percent royalties, a policy wherein NFT marketplaces don’t honor an artist's original royalty fee for resold assets.
OpenSea has since abandoned the idea but, at the time, FVCKRENDER's responded by rallying his community of artists and collectors around an investigation into creating their own marketplace, not just for themselves but for the emerging artists in web3 as well.
“If OpenSea had gone to zero, they’d have lost a lot of credibility and creators would’ve been forced to release more and more NFTs. They’d flood the market and there would be little incentive to buy anything because the artists were just going to constantly release [works],” FVCKRENDER explained.
“LVCIDIA can afford not to release any NFTs and survive on secondary sales, which allows us to experiment and create cool shit for our collectors.”
FVCKRENDER’s understanding of the industry has positioned him as a web3 thought leader and industry advocate.
He was recently tapped for a recent security & NFTs panel at Ledger Op3n, for instance, where FVCKRENDER discussed the experience of educating his own family on crypto security, a conversation that he considers a key factor in onboarding more web3-curious people.
LVCIDIA's constant push for more NFT artists and collectors helps create a stronger overall ecosystem for web3, and it's driven by FVCKRENDER's desire to create for himself.
"I've always wanted to create my own universe and environment where people can explore my art. NFTs unlocked that for me,” FVCKRENDER said. “People trusted my vision and really supported it. Now I can take that support and build what I want for all."
