From artnet.com: "‘This Is a New Renaissance:’ Why the Pseudonymous Digital Art Collector Cozomo de’ Medici Just Gave a Major NFT Collection to LACMA...The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has just announced a major donation, courtesy of one Cozomo de’ Medici, an anonymous NFT collector. The museum touts the gift of 22 digital artworks by 13 international artists, almost half of whom are women, as the first donation of a collection of NFTs to a U.S. museum." 

One challenge the museum now faces is properly displaying these works of art, "LACMA has yet to announce plans to display its new NFT holdings, which will require specialized screens (one barrier to entry for first-time collectors).“There are some great companies that are that are building some cool frames, but they’re very expensive right now—running from $10,000 at the smallest, to $40,000 for slightly larger displays, which is just too much for mainstream adoption,” de’ Medici said." 

This will most likely be the first of many major institutions recognizing digital art as worthy of their collections, if they haven't already. One major advantage to accepting art recorded on the blockchain is the ease and accebility of the works provenance (it's record of ownership). "“The beauty of this digital world is everything is on chain and online. You can go and see the mint dates, and the provenance is all recorded. You can see other works from the artists you are interested in, who owns them, where they’ve been, and the prices—versus the contemporary art world, where it’s really tough to get access to that data as an outsider,” he said." 

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By @freelancefounders on instagram 

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From Realtor Magazine: "Nowadays, it seems as if there’s virtual everything. Virtual artwork, virtual events, virtual marketing. But what about virtual real estate? Is that a thing, and if so, can you invest in it? Enter metaverse real estate, an online platform where people can connect to play games, release products, offer services, and host events. Businesses often own these virtual properties. And, just like any other type of real estate, they can be bought, sold, purchased, and leased. The metaverse is still new and still evolving, which leaves many wondering if investing in virtual real estate is worth the cost. ... Metaverse real estate can be purchased similarly to how you would purchase an NFT. A quick recap: An NFT, or nonfungible token, is a unique or collectible virtual item that can be purchased and is housed completely in the virtual world, such as digital artwork. Just as NFTs are, real estate in the metaverse is bought with cryptocurrency. After the transaction is complete, you receive a unique piece of blockchain code, which serves as a deed of ownership." 

There are many options but a few of the most popular are Decentraland, Somnium Space, and Voxels. Somnium space is the only one that currently supports VR. Land can be purchased on opensea. Prices vary from a few hundred to many thousands. Almost $2 billion of virtual land has been bought, with the most expensive lot selling for $5 million (Ruby Home). 

Other companies are trying to provide a platform for people to rent out their land, for example rentparcel.io. 

Some companies are devoting entire arms of their business to land purchase and development, like The Metaverse Group. 

Similar to the .com bubble, it's possible and even likely that most of these companies do not exist in 5-10 years. That being said, it is projected to grow from roughly $80 billion in 2022, to $426 billion in 2027​ (www.marketsandmarkets.com). 

The reality of the present moment is that these platforms lack the users, functionality, and interactivity to be worthy of some of these investments.  But like any new tech, the possibilities are endless and the tech is developing at insane speeds. It's possible that the future of the internet exists in these 3D spaces, as opposed to 2D web pages and that these worlds are our early look into the evolution of web2 into web3. Or not. 

From their website: "Mona spaces are beautiful social worlds for you to collect, show your art, and gather with others. ""What Is A Space?""A ‘Space’ is a 3D virtual social environment that can be viewed in a web browser.
Builders are able to create spaces using free tools like Unity and Blender, or other applications like Maya, Gravity sketch and many other tools that create digital content.
Each Space is minted as an NFT, and can be bought and sold much like any other NFT. If you are the owner of a space you can use Token Gated access to only allow users you want to enter the space.
A Space does not"

From their website: "Dia is a constellation of eleven locations and sites...​Dia Art Foundation is committed to advancing, realizing, and preserving the vision of artists. Dia fulfills its mission by commissioning single artist projects, organizing exhibitions, realizing site-specific installations, and collecting in-depth the work of a focused group of artists of the 1960s and 1970s."

"Spiral Jetty is an earthwork sculpture constructed in April 1970 that is considered to be the most important work of American sculptor Rober Smithson." (Wikipedia)

In 3D design a normal map is a texture to make an object look more realistic. These videos demonstrate the concept and how to apply normal maps in blender. From the video description, learn about Normal Maps and "...its use in faking lighting calculations of a surface." These are commonly used to create a higher detail object with a smaller file size by "baking" the textures into the object.

SketchUp and Cinema4D are 3d design softwares used to build and render environments. From the article, "​When assessing the two solutions, reviewers found SketchUp easier to use and set up. However, reviewers felt that administration of both products was equally easy, and preferred doing business with Cinema 4D overall."

From Polygon Blog- "Spatial LABS (sLABS), founded by Iddris Sandu, is a California-based VC studio developing wearable hardware products that can serve as physical entry points into the Metaverse. They chose Polygon’s low-fee, high-speed network to build on.
LNQ, the first project by sLABS, promises to reimagine the way products and fashion interact in both digital and physical worlds to offer users a fully immersive experience. Apparel, wearable items and other physical objects can serve as Points of Experience in the LNQ ecosystem. LNQ is currently under agile development and is set to launch later this year."

From cryptocoven.mirror.xyz on smart contracts - "What is a smart contract? It’s a misnomer, really. A smart contract is a program that lives and stores its data on the blockchain, typically with APIs to interact with its contents. Poking around contracts on Etherscan makes that much clearer; you can see the entirety of the code for a verified contract, as well as call read and write functions on them."
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From gemini.com on digital assets - "The two most common blockchain-based digital assets are cryptocurrencies and tokens. The biggest differentiation between the two is that cryptocurrencies have their own blockchains, whereas crypto tokens are built on an existing blockchain."

From Coopahtroopa.mirror.xyz - "Music has a new canvas.
NFTs directly value creative work, without input from an intermediary.
We’re witnessing the early stages of an audio movement - driven by scarcity, fandom and access.
This article highlights the Music NFT landscape - providing insights for musicians, managers, labels, agents, fans and collectors alike."
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From Grammy.com - "With bungled music NFT startups and sketchy virtual concerts, music and the metaverse may have gotten on the wrong foot. But the metaverse may be destined to envelop everything — and it's important for musicians to envision themselves there.

For years the green (or blue) screen has been a staple of production, especially content reliant on special effects.  While the end product looks great, it's not without hours of (sometimes exxtreemmeellyyy) tedious work making sure the composited image makes sense. Enter virtual production.  For the last few years, with the help of high quality LED screens and graphics cards, the use of virtual production sets have become more popular.  The reasons are many: workflow improvements, lighting and set design possibilities, and real time environments that the actors can see, are a few examples. The main difference, time and moneeeyyy.  These videos explains the process, differences, and benefits. 

While the big studios are using giant LED screens, it is possible to use this technology in a more DIY-independent way using the traditional greenscreen.  In this video from Unreal fest 2020, you can learn the basics to setting up a home virtual production studio.  The video is two years old and the technology moves quickly, but the basics are the same. 

"Invest in artists, own your favorite music" - Royal is a marketplace that allows artists to sell a % of their royalties to fans as NFT's. Their first two drops by Nas and Verite sold out.  How it works is fans purchase an NFT from the artist, and depending on the artists offering and which tier the fan purchase, are entitled to a % of the streaming royalties of that song.  Royal is still in beta but the idea of investing artists and seeing a return, however small, is an idea that could become more popular in the future as a way of funding and engagement. Find out more at Royal's website: 

Some links on mixing audio on a budget and/or from your home studio. 

Online forum and publication for digital art.

From their website:  " A virtual gallery and exhibition tool kit for digital art" 

• Each exhibition is a 3D multiplayer website built using our online editor toolkit.
• Artists & exhibition designers upload files, arrange their space and collaborate in real-time. No coding required.
• Exhibition visitors access online via a web browser, with no need to download, register or install anything.

Our MissionNew Art City’s mission is to develop an accessible toolkit for building virtual installations that show born-digital artifacts alongside digitized works of traditional media.
Our curation and product design prioritize those who are disadvantaged by structural injustice. An inclusive and redistributive community is as important to our project as the toolkit itself.

How to sell digital goods on the Roblox marketplace. 

Tezos is a cryptocurrency (XTZ) used for many purposes, among them NFT's. The reason some creators choose Tezos over more popular coins such as Ethereum (ETH) is because of the low cost of minting in comparison. For this reason, creators have used Tezos to mint multiple (sometimes hundreds) editions of a single piece and sell them at a lower price.  This lowers the value of each individual piece, but makes it more accessible for fans and collectors to support artists. To learn more see the link below: 

Logical Pictures, a European production company, launched a fund with Tezos.  The details are more financial than creative, but interesting still. More info below: 

Want to mint using Tezos?