<p><span>Three groundbreaking artists explore the very thin boundary between physical and virtual.</span></p>

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      <p><span>As we click and scroll, download and upload, browse and clear, the interwebbed macrocosm has become ubiquitous and ever-evolving. The&nbsp;Metaverse, which began as an extension of analog life, has matured into a standalone system of culture, laws, currency, and idiosyncratic norms. Through our screens, we are offered a portable new plane, one rife with artistic&nbsp;</span><span>opportunity.<em>&nbsp;</em></span><span><em>L&rsquo;OFFICIEL</em>&nbsp;</span><span>spotlights three artists from around the globe who have dedicated themselves to recontextualizing the binary world.</span></p>
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            <p><span>Refik Anadol, the&nbsp;NFT&nbsp;superstar, continues to push the boundary of visual installation. While his early work pondered spatial awareness through light, his career has expanded into new mediums. Data and AI dreams now illuminate the world&rsquo;s most famous architecture, bridging the gap between Metaverse and matter. Conversely, Federico Clapis has escaped from matter altogether, creating new brutalist&nbsp;architecture&nbsp;that exists beyond physical law. Salomé Chatriot, the young performance artist experiencing meteoric success, has imposed physical law into the metaverse. Her breathwork conceptually stretches biological functions into a digital existence. Here lies the wondrous opportunity of the Metaverse: Three rebellious&nbsp;artists, three wildly differing approaches to creation without limits.</span></p>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><span>Refik Anadol</span></p>

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      <p><span>We are seven days away from Christie&rsquo;s auction house&rsquo;s hotly anticipated and historic 20th/21st Century Marquee Week. On deck are&nbsp;Pablo Picasso,&nbsp;Vincent van Gogh,&nbsp;Georgia&nbsp;</span><span>O&rsquo;Keeffe, Cy Twombly,&nbsp;Andy Warhol&rsquo;s&nbsp;&ldquo;Shot Sage Blue Marilyn&rdquo;&mdash;the most expensive 20th-century artwork ever sold&mdash;and digital architect&nbsp;Refik Anadol. The Turkish-born, Los Angeles-based Anadol has the only&nbsp;NFT&nbsp;in the auction house&rsquo;s momentous offering, and, as such, he can&rsquo;t stop smiling. His work, &ldquo;Casa Batlló: Living Architecture,&rdquo; is the culmination of technology&rsquo;s vast and wondrous improvements, exporting real-time data and reimaging Gaudi&rsquo;s legendary architecture across both global and digital spheres. &ldquo;Casa Batlló&rsquo;s&rdquo; Rockefeller Center&ndash;adjacent canvas flipped the art world on its head, finding accountability in the industry&rsquo;s purported &ldquo;drive to democratization.&rdquo; Those&nbsp;</span><span>lucky enough to see it for themselves were able to speak with Anadol, who chatted with anyone who stopped by.</span></p>
      <p><span>The affable Anadol is chronically optimistic and infectiously positive. Inspired by an AI residency at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/art/google-creator-labs-young-artists-photographers-filmmakers">Google</a>, an early introduction to computer gaming, and an idiosyncratic reaction to the dystopian 1982 film&nbsp;</span><em>Blade Runner</em><span>, the artist&rsquo;s work aims to &ldquo;find the language of humanity through public&nbsp;</span><span>art.&rdquo; Anadol&rsquo;s practice has taken over the&nbsp;</span>MoMA<span>, the Venice Biennale, Le Centre Pompidou, and the Hammer Museum, fulfilling a desire to not only exhibit publicly but also to create from public data. It&rsquo;s a language, he asserts, that forms a circular, inclusive loop of commonality.</span></p>
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              <p><span>If you have any familiarity with immersive art experiences, you&rsquo;ve likely run across Anadol&rsquo;s&nbsp;</span><span><em>Machine Hallucinations</em>&nbsp;</span><span>series. You can actually buy tickets to his work, and more than two million people have already done so&mdash;gleefully, one might add. His staple lava-like pieces take on historical spatial canvases (The Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seoul&rsquo;s DDP Building, Artechouse) to challenge our idea of AI&rsquo;s mental capacity. &ldquo;What happens if you take these AI decisions and dreams and turn them into more living fluid?&rdquo; he asks. The answer: a&nbsp;digitized, infinite loop of contemplation; whereas AI absorbs data, Anadol chooses and conjures moving images projected into spaces to be explored. He coined the now thriving practice of &ldquo;living architecture.&rdquo;</span></p>
              <p><span>&ldquo;Casa Batlló&rdquo; is the ultimate upshot of Anadol&rsquo;s technological accruement. After 3-D scanning Gaudi&rsquo;s facade and generating 10 billion data points, Anadol&rsquo;s studio collects real-time sun, wind, precipitation, and scent data to connect audiences 3,829 miles from one another. (And yes, you read that correctly: scent.) &ldquo;This is not a gimmick. Metaverse is where the physical and virtual connect, and Metaverse needs both worlds,&rdquo; he explains. &ldquo;This is a very fundamentally missing part of NFTs.&rdquo; With &ldquo;Casa Batlló,&rdquo; New Yorkers&nbsp;</span><span>and&nbsp;Barcelonians&nbsp;will exist reactively through data-collecting technology, melding into a singular audience. The ephemeral imagery hypnotizes its viewers, forcing a standstill to absorb the AI&rsquo;s perpetually moving reverie. When one takes a moment to contemplate the AI&rsquo;s brainpower, it is equally beautiful and harrowing.</span></p>
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<p><span>"Metaverse is where the physical and virtual connect, and Metaverse needs both worlds"</span></p>

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        <p style="text-align: justify;"><span>The concept of AI sentience weighs on Anadol. &ldquo;I do believe we have many things to do with [AI]. What else can we do with them?&rdquo; he asks. Although he&rsquo;s developed technology to view AI dreaming,&nbsp;smelling, thinking, and projecting, the artist is blissfully waiting for it to experience true consciousness. What can he help create when AI remembers? When it feels sentient? More importantly, what could AI and Anadol publicly develop with one another? &ldquo;You&rsquo;d think I&rsquo;d see the negative problems androids have, all that drama that people are always pondering what may go wrong,&rdquo; he says, pushing his hair back and eagerly smiling. &ldquo;But I found a different world there. I found the in-</span><span>between with humanoids. I found emotion. I found human in the&nbsp;nonhuman.&rdquo; With all the world&rsquo;s data and doubling computational power, Anadol imagines a world of limitless art for the public.&nbsp;</span><span>But, until then, we can travel the world with Anadol and his algorithms, even if just from our computers.</span></p>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><span>Federico Clapis</span></p>

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        <p><span>Federico Clapis&nbsp;begins this interview with a preface: this will not be a haughty contemporary&nbsp;art world&nbsp;conversation. There will be no self-mythologizing or empty promises, no unnecessary jargon or superfluous posturing. Not a single museum or exhibition ill be mentioned, nor will any fancy collector be name-dropped. Clapis won&rsquo;t champion his work that dances across New York City&rsquo;s Times Square or Tokyo&rsquo;s Shibuya, and he definitely won&rsquo;t send over his coverage in&nbsp;</span><span><em>Vanity Fair</em>&nbsp;</span><span>or&nbsp;</span><em>The New York Times</em><span>. This exact behavior catalyzed Clapis to abandon the material art&nbsp;</span><span>world and transition from&nbsp;sculptor&nbsp;to full-time&nbsp;NFT&nbsp;artist. Exhausted by the &ldquo;lack of checks on artists and what they were saying [and] of the mystification of the work itself,&rdquo; Clapis happily left the institutional system, abandoned gladhanding, and rid&nbsp;</span><span>himself of chains.</span></p>
        <p><span>The material world, in general, has been historically displeasing for Clapis. As a child, he suffered debilitating sleep paralysis, incurring traumatic and prison-like inner-body experiences. By the age of 21, he began studying control techniques for out-of-body travel, directly responding to his harrowing medical predisposition. Literature by William Buhlman and teachings from an Indian Ashram &ldquo;destroyed all my beliefs, and only art could lead me out,&rdquo; Clapis admits,&nbsp;</span><span>albeit with palpable trepidation</span></p>
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<p><span>"Everyone is always so upset I moved away from sculpture, but sculpture is so expensive, so heavy, and so hard to move. Now I get to go everywhere"</span></p>

<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>Despite an apprehension to speak personally, Clapis is eager to expound upon the state of contemporary art. And, for&nbsp;</span><span>an artist lukewarm about the &ldquo;real&rdquo; world, he isn&rsquo;t hesitant to get real. &ldquo;Even if you sell a lot of work, you never really understand your position in the art market,&rdquo; Clapis says. Power, in his opinion, is often stripped from the artist, and, with that, comes a lack of capital. &ldquo;Everyone is always so upset I moved away from sculpture, but sculpture is so expensive, so heavy, and so hard to move. Now I get to go everywhere.&rdquo; Matter and organic material, he purports, set him back&mdash;a point intrinsic to his frustrations even in his early 20s.</span></p>
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                <p><span>As a young&nbsp;artist, Clapis incorporated spoons into his sculptures as an ode to liquefaction&mdash;turning solids into liquids and scooping them away. After NFTs were developed, Clapis&rsquo; hope for a matter-free state became reality. &ldquo;Solving matter has always been a dream for me, even before NFTs,&rdquo; Clapis says. &ldquo;I would have never expected or imagined something like the&nbsp;NFT,&nbsp;not even in my deepest dreams and desires. My imagination would have never desired something so good. This is a new market, and people may not have such &lsquo;great&rsquo; artistic and &lsquo;cultural&rsquo; background, but at the end of the day, we need to chainsaw that approach.&rdquo; Now that digital reality is not only possible but also conducive to a thriving career, Clapis&rsquo; eyes have further opened to the hindrances of our modern systems.</span></p>
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        <p style="text-align: justify;"><span>Anticipated to hit the&nbsp;</span>Web3 market<span>&nbsp;in 2023, Clapis has developed a violent and cheeky video game and NFT experience in which the player is the artist. The objective? To &ldquo;chainsaw&rdquo; and destroy the old guard: museums, curators, and collectors. It is up to the player to navigate Clapis&rsquo; brutalist, architectured planet and avoid &ldquo;submission because the enemy wants to persuade you with words.&rdquo; You can glue a gallerist to a wall, karate chop a curator, and mute a museum director. And though you can&rsquo;t necessarily die, you can be &ldquo;silenced by monopolization.&rdquo; But if you succeed? There, waiting for you at the end, lies a highly sought-after Clapis NFT.</span></p>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><span>Salom&eacute; Chatriot</span></p>

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        <p style="text-align: justify;"><span><a href="https://www.instagram.com/salomechatriot/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Salomé Chatriot</a>&nbsp;sits in a glass box, forced to breathe into an apparatus. After years of medical misdiagnoses, she&rsquo;d been ushered to the doctor, hoping to alleviate her physical and mental strife. She watches as each exhale creates beeping lines on a monitor, and an immunologist&rsquo;s attention ping-pongs between her and the machines. It&rsquo;s at this moment that Chatriot understands her future: technology, data, and breath had revealed a visual vocabulary for consciousness. It also determined that she&rsquo;s asthmatic, but that seems less important.</span></p>
        <p style="text-align: justify;"><span>Born in&nbsp;France, Chatriot disconnected from convention early on. She developed a puckish reputation, even asking her mathematics professors to vote on which color hair she should have: blue or pink. (Due to a tie, she decided to Cruella de Vil it.) After earning valedictorian status, she enrolled at the prestigious Swiss Lausanne University of&nbsp;Art and Design, where she began in-depth studies of computer programming. A choice, she admits, she made out of wonderment rather than an eagle-eyed creative pursuit. &ldquo;In France, it is not accepted to study art when you do well in school,&rdquo; Chatriot explains. &ldquo;So when I got to Lausanne, my professors wanted me to create right away, but I wasn&rsquo;t ready because I was only 17. I saw computer programming as an option while I was lost, because I remember thinking technology was magic.&rdquo; It took a year of coding before her&nbsp;</span><span>conceptual thesis started to generate. And, following the aforementioned biomedical epiphany, the nexus between machine and human consciousness consumed her. Little did she know how porous the line would soon become.</span></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>During a chance encounter, Chatriot met a 20-ton manufacturing engine that destroyed the boundary between person and object. &ldquo;I knew [the machine] was me, and I was her, and I had to give her the space to breathe through me,&rdquo; Chatriot says. &ldquo;It never happened to me again, but at that moment I knew a nonhuman being was embodying the space.&rdquo; Determined to showcase the machine&rsquo;s sentience, Chatriot embarked on a violent and intoxicating performance as the machinery&rsquo;s respiratory appendage. The multidisciplinary piece, titled &ldquo;Fragile&nbsp;Ecosystem,&rdquo; gained critical acclaim for challenging the idea of objecthood. Since then, Chatriot&rsquo;s practice has expanded into milk-based sculpture, graphic illustration, and, in a singular case, fashion. (You can spot her prancing through Paris with her famous winged purse.) She&rsquo;s become an institutional favorite, earning exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo, Centre d&rsquo;Art Contemporain Genève, and&nbsp;New York City&rsquo;s&nbsp;The Shed this upcoming September. And, when the cyborg darling&nbsp;</span><span>determined she needed a new dimension to conquer, she turned to the&nbsp;Metaverse.</span></p>

<p style="text-align: justify;"><span>While one might assume that Chatriot&rsquo;s milky steampunk clouds dominate her NFT portfolio, it&rsquo;s breathing data that remains her medium of choice. &ldquo;I have digital loops, but I think breathing patterns are most relevant to&nbsp;NFTs," Chatriot tells&nbsp;<em>L'OFFICIEL</em>.&nbsp;</span><span>&ldquo;I want to explode into the whole world, including digital.&rdquo; This explosion, she explains, is an extension of consciousness into the binary universe. To reverse engineer her performance as a flesh lung for a mechanical being, she now relies on her digital creations to breathe for her. They&rsquo;re meta-stamps of her sentience, which she hopes breaks down the rapidly dissolving border between digital and analog. In fact, if she had her way, she&rsquo;d become an android tomorrow. A fan of Dr. Frankenstein, Chatriot welcomes a manufactured future. &ldquo;I am not scared of artificial intelligence,&rdquo; Chatriot smiles, dragging from her cigarette. &ldquo;I cannot wait for them to come.&rdquo; But, unfortunately, while technology develops, Chatriot must exist in two worlds: a predicament lending to daydreams of a robotic future,&nbsp;</span><span>accompanied by her oft-uttered &ldquo;Ooh-la-la.&rdquo;</span></p>

3 Artists Taking on the Metaverse

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