Serpentine is delighted to have selected Tezos, the energy-efficient blockchain for Artist Worlds 2023, an experimental commission series that utilises virtual world-building to provide insight into an artist’s practice and expanded worldview.
Following the inaugural Artist Worlds commission, Primal Tourism, produced in 2021 by Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Serpentine will unveil a multilevel downloadable game and a complementary blockchain-based project developed with Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan and a team of collaborators. Third World, is described by Massan as a ‘consciousness-raising game that explores Black-Indigenous Brazilian experiences.’ Itwill launch in February 2023 online via Steam and onsite at Serpentine and amplify Serpentine’s commitment to gaming projects.
Third World invites players to activate a fantastical and disorienting world populated with Massan’s digital sculptures, bespoke animation, films, camerawork, and sound developed by his collaborators. The game utilises world-building and collaborative storytelling to challenge colonialist concepts of ‘exploration’, ‘nature’ and ‘knowledge’ and encourage a different kind of wayfinding.
Powered by Tezos, Third World’s Web3 strategy will expand the game’s reach into online player communities by building an active and ongoing archive of gameplay.
Developed in dialogue with the artist’s interests in decentralised knowledge exchange, fictional archaeology, ecology, and the critical role that collective memory plays in constructing futures, Third World is a platform for Massan’s collaborations with artists, technologists and thinkers including Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Novíssimo Edgar, LYZZA, Carlos Minozzi, Masako Hirano, Marcio Manga, Ralph Morais and Alexandre Pina.
LINK: FA3
LINK: Gabriel Massan
