Miss Metaverse
Web3 offers artists the possibility of establishing a collector base, independent of traditional art market systems, to potentially become self-sustaining artists. Ironically, the promise of independence requires the construction of a digital persona that grows dissociated from the very substance of self, which is essentially immeasurable.
Miss Metaverse is an immersive, interactive work, activated by the user’s webcam, thus inviting a reflection on private versus public embodiments of selfhood. Users will see highly distorted versions of themself, blanketed over by expressions of “value.” The pixelization pulsates in and out, showing less of the real person over time as the self is packaged into “readable” formats that are legible to other humans on the digital stage and to the machines that mediate the exchange.
Each statement is punctuated by an emoji, which renders these declarations more winsome, genial and playful—underscoring the need to please an ever-present, ever-watchful audience by shrinking the self into a likable mold. Yet, Miss Metaverse’s use of emojis is also arbitrary and meaningless, like the value statements themselves.
The final, minted artwork doesn’t incorporate any images of the collector, layering the statements of value over ultra-pixelated, AI-generated images of pageant contestants instead. This process replaces the collector’s digital identity with that of an overproduced beauty contestant, a symbol for the successful artist.
When viewing the work in live-code view, collectors can toggle between the view of themself and that of beauty pageant contestants. Self-effacement is literally one click away.
When artists market themselves, they enter into a pageantry with very fixed notions of worth. Collectors, too, are active participants in this spectacle. In Miss Metaverse, artist and collector acknowledge the spectacle in a moment of shared honesty, one that nevertheless helps assure the collection, and the artists’, success.