You may not know his name, but you’ve probably seen his work.
Alberto Mielgo has been producing digital art for film, television and advertising for years. Notable works include an episode of Netflix’s LOVE DEATH AND ROBOTS (for which he and his 70-plus team won multiple Emmys), music videos for The Gorillaz, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, in which he starred NFT Digital collaborated -art-turn-high art sensation Beeple.
Given the success of his former colleague and the high prices NFTs routinely fetch, Mielgo could be the next commercially popular digital artist to use blockchain technology to both reach a wider audience and grab the attention of the art world.
Nerds take over
While he said he’ll reveal more of his philosophy about the decline as the auction date approaches, Mielgo said he sees NFTs as a production and distribution medium as a natural addition to his work, as well as a democratizing power.
“As a digital artist, I always had problems finding the right format for my work. And I felt that the “art elite” who are 2% or 3% of the human population who have access to the big galleries or art fairs never treat digital art as art – they always thought we ” I work on films and commercials. “
The irony there, he says, is that digital artists largely love movies, commercials, and pop culture – they’re nerds. But now “the nerds are taking over.”
“The nerds think about crypto, these abstract concepts that are so beautiful. I think that only our generation or people have worked in technology or in the cloud for so long that we really understand it. Most people need the physical thing, they need the object, it is almost impossible for them to think about owning something that is not physical. I think we attract this world. ”
It’s a change the art world is grappling with, he said – after ignoring work like his for so long, they are now caught flatfoot. However, the new efforts to make room for his work do not occur to him.
“I think it’s an endorsement for sure, but not me personally, it’s more the digital art world. I think Beeple got into the art world, but it’s the people who already liked him that got him there. “
He said he suspects it’s the “crypto people, the younger generations, the new brains, the new thinkers … they’re like,” hey, this is OUR art “.
Ultimately, Christie knocks on the door of the crypto and asks to play in “our” world and not the other way around.
Faces melt
The corporate world could also have some catching up to do, says Mielgo.
He laments the current “bullshit” contract culture around digital art, according to which artists have to sign their “soul”. It is a landscape that is ripe for a revolution: the art world is “behind”, the big studios are “behind” and NFTs are opening up an alternative “parallel world”.
He told a story from the time he and Beeple were working on Spider Man: Intro the Spider-Verse, in which Beeple submitted fast-paced, explosive, “super-psycadelic” clips of “hardcore techno” music. Mielgo showed the clips to the Sony producers and was delighted when her eyes popped and her jaw dropped.
“You couldn’t even handle it,” he said with a laugh. “Everything was so fresh, like ‘Oh my god’.”
It was a whole new world for the producers “who drove to the studios in the limousine”, “who didn’t connect with real people”.
NFTs are a way to do it all over again, but only on a larger scale.
“It’s a real slap in the face, all of these dinosaurs.”
The auction will take place on April 14th at Makersplace
