APENFT Foundation Announced The Second Call of its $100 Million Art Dream Fund.

APENFT Foundation announces that the second call of its $100 million Art Dream Fund will launch on August 1st, and registration will close on October 30th. The theme for this year’s call is "Post-Human Era." This theme seeks to explore whether the future of humanity can transcend traditional self-centered humanism and how people should position themselves in a complex ecosystem consisting of non-human animals, plants, and cyborgs. Winners will be eligible to win from a prize pool of over $100,000. In addition to prizes, creators will also enjoy the opportunity to build their art studios in The Sandbox, a metaverse set to launch by APENFT and TRON. Creators will also be able to get involved in annual online and offline exhibitions curated by APENFT, workshops, artist residencies, and other educational events. 

TRON x APENFT exhibition hall in The Sandbox

This call is open to creators of any age, nationality (not eligible for residents of UN- and OFAC-sanctioned countries or regions), and profession. It welcomes digital artworks submitted by individuals and teams in various mediums, including video, animation, virtual reality, augmented reality, sound art, and data-driven art, among others. 

"The most essential quality that distinguishes us from other calls is our core values—great inclusiveness and openness—which are also the values that govern the world of NFTs; here, every good work has a chance to be seen," emphasized Sydney Xiong, Director of the APENFT Foundation. "We've always been committed to nurturing and supporting young artists and creators who are open-minded, daring, imaginative, and able to inject fresh vitality into the art sphere."  

The same openness and inclusiveness permeate the review process of the Art Dream Fund. This year's review panel comprises more than ten artists, curators, auction experts, art professionals, and financial practitioners. We can expect this diversity in panel selections to introduce opinions from diverse areas such as art, finance, technology, and design, allowing for a more comprehensive assessment of submissions. Expert juries include Philip Tinari (Director of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art), Jonathan Crockett (Chairman of Asia at Phillips),

Josh Baer (Art advisor), Sylvain Levy (Renowned collector), and Conlan Rios (Founder of Async Art); the Nomination and Selection Panel includes Cheng Ran (Contemporary Artist), Laura Shao from Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Kenny Schachter (art writer), Ciara Sun (Co-founder of C² Ventures), Claire Huang (Async Art Advisor & Columnist), Mimi Nguyen (Lecturer at the University of the Arts London). Together with community members, the Nomination and Selection Panel will designate 50 contestants for the final based on their votes.

Themed on "Second Life," last year’s open call received over 500 artworks, among which Infinite Falling by WMD Studio won the first prize, and submissions of Verdi Jackson, Kong, Allyn Belfred, and Chengcheng Shi won the innovation prizes. In January 2022, all winning artworks were sold at an auction event at the online exhibition co-hosted by APENFT and LiveArtX in Cryptovoxels. This year, on top of the three existing awards, APENFT teamed up with Async Art to set up the “Async Visual-Audio Award” for programmable art to encourage experimentation and innovation in interactive art forms. As Conlan Rios, Founder of Async Art, expressed, 

“Async Art provides tools for everyone to create visual-audio interactive NFTs, without the necessity of mastering coding and programming knowledge. Through Async Visual-Audio Award, we invite artists to join us to turn the existing concept of art on its head and pave the way for a whole new category of programmable media. This is just the start, but we believe these simple building blocks will open up a world of possibilities for the creators out there, and we are really excited to see the genius ways people might use it.” 

Participants will have the opportunity to attend the workshops co-organized by APENFT and Async Art and potentially receive Blueprints-based NFT airdrops. 

WMD Studio, Infinite Falling (2021), digital animation, source: WMD Studio

Another highlight of this year's Art Dream Fund is that during the call and the selection, APENFT will co-host three online forums with ArtReview to discuss NFT discourse in the art world, the influence of the metaverse on art creation, and NFT collection and sponsorship. The dates and guests of the forums will be announced soon. Please stay tuned.

The open call of the 2022 Art Dream Fund has started, application will  close  on October 30th. For more registration details, please visit: artdreamfund.apenft.io. 

About Art Dream Fund

The Art Dream Fund was co-sponsored by H. E. Justin Sun, founder of TRON, and Sydney Xiong, Director of APENFT Foundation, in 2021. It aims to identify, nurture, and support quality NFT artists through the ＄100 million fund. Apart from the funding support for art creation, the Foundation will also advise award winners on marketing, publicity, copyright protection, and legal affairs. The winning artworks will be deployed permanently  onto the TRON blockchain as a TRC-721 token  as well as on the decentralized storage system BFTS. With the help of TRON and the APENFT Foundation, talented artists will stand a chance to take part in online and offline exhibitions, art fairs, auctions at home and abroad, collaborations with renowned international brands, and benefit from crossover marketing.

About APENFT

Officially registered in Singapore on March 29, 2021, APENFT is backed by the underlying technology of the TRON blockchain, with additional support from the world's largest distributed storage system BitTorrent File System (BTFS). At the core of our mission, APENFT aims to facilitate the creator economy while catalyzing both financial and cultural inclusion in the metaverse. Our vision is to integrate both the virtual and the real worlds seamlessly. APENFT Foundation is the world's first NFT art foundation that realizes crossover purchases. We aim to bridge conversations between stakeholders in the traditional art world and the digital art community emerging around NFTs, promote inclusiveness and diversity, broaden our multimedia audience, and increase all members’ engagement. In the future, our collection will be made available to the entire community through a series of curated online exhibitions in the metaverse.

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About Async Art

Async Art is the premiere platform where users can create, collect, and sell generative art & music NFTs. Async breaks down the technology barrier many creators face and allows artists of all backgrounds to participate in the Web3 space. 

With our Async Canvas tool, users can create interactive, future-facing art and music without any coding knowledge. The platform provides streamlined solutions for audio and visual creators to make innovative NFTs, including 1/1s and an entire collection.. The platform encourages artists to experiment and push boundaries in the NFT space. 

About ArtReview

Founded in 1949, ArtReview is one of the world’s leading international contemporary art platforms. Aimed at both a specialist and a general audience, it is dedicated to expanding contemporary art’s reach, and tracing the ways it interacts with culture in general. It also provides the most intimate reading for contemporary art.

Contacts

• Miles Wang
• contact@apenft.io