RubenFro
- Ruben’s website
- Social Media
- Videos
- YouTube
- Vimeo
- Art listed on
- objkt.com
- Foundation
- SuperRare
- Showtime NFT
- Kalamint
- DAT Collections
- Henext
- Audio Tracks
- Soundcloud
Time Stamps
[0:58 – 1:23] Ruben’s first experience with NFTs was March 2021. He was working on the @pussyrrriot music video Panic Attack and they released an NFT collectible of the music video divided into four parts.
[1:32 – 1:48] Ruben is Italian and moved to Tokyo 15 years ago to work in software development and was doing that until 2 years ago.
[1:53 – 3:10] Ruben has always been fascinated by interactive installations. Two years ago he went to France to do an installation. Inspiration came from Rhizomatiks and @daitomanabe. Installations work was small but grew. Stopped when the pandemic hit. A year ago started doing more video art, but plans to go back to interactive art.
[3:14 – 5:47] Ruben discusses his process. He uses @unity for 3d art and started looking into point cloud. He got into using Unity more and going deeper and built his framework with shaders he built in Unity. He uses photogrammetry mixed with 360 photography to capture large areas. This allowed him to move into large areas to record the streets of large cities. He built tools to process footage using his framework and shaders to create the interactive installation.
[6:07 – 8:25] In January 2020 Ruben worked on a project in Vietnam that fascinated him and realized he enjoyed this more than creating apps. He decided to focus on video art and music videos. He then worked with Acronym and @ASUS_ROGNA for short films. He started his visual effects company. He is happy choosing his projects to connect with artists such as Pussy Riot and @DEATHPACT
[8:45 – 10:08] His most recent footage is from Vietnam. He’s more attracted to his footage from Vietnam than his scans from Tokyo. Ruben hasn’t had requests for his videos to be stereotypical Japanese. He’s had freedom to explore and use scans from everywhere.
[10:44 – 11:50] Ruben is one of the earliest and most successful artists on @hicetnunc2000. He was introduced by @JoanieLemercier because they were both into the ecological aspect of NFTs and @ethereum. He now realizes it’s not exactly as black and white. He started because of that and stayed on the platform because of the community.
[11:57 – 15:40] At the time, Ruben found the Ethereum platform to be too much about how much you’re selling pieces. It was great to see artists with successful sales, but he also felt it was more about that than the art itself. On hic et nunc it was more about enjoying and sharing the work with each other.
Ruben now feels it’s different and is seeing more diverse art with artists with different backgrounds dropping pieces. One thing he enjoyed about hic et nunc is it was popular in developing countries like Brazil and the model with @tezos with low gas fees and pieces that were affordable for a lot of people was revolutionary in a way and that was empowering for artists. On Ethereum you needed more money for pieces. He is staying on Tezos platforms for his drops but is exploring Ethereum platform as well. Ruben did drops on @withFND and @SuperRare with more planned. Only problem he sees with Foundation and SuperRare are the file size limits.
[16:16 – 20:11] Ruben responds to Kizu asking if motion capture artists face a bias due to the larger file size. He says it is challenging, but we are at the beginning of this NFT world and it’s still early to say. Ruben says the space has to evolve and improve technologically so there is a larger file size. There are trends as well. Right now, it’s all about generative art. He feels the more the space grows, the more pieces we are going to have and the larger the art will be. He loves working on music videos, but is limited in what he can do. He did a video for an event in New York City last month, and it was 12 minutes. He minted it in 5 chapters and it on @opensea, but would have preferred to mint the entire video. He says right now some projects get more attention than others, but thinks we will reach the point where NFT art can have different things and artists and collectors will be focused on different things.
[20:55 – 24:38] Ruben’s art is more than the tools he’s developed and point clouds. It’s about how you move the camera and points on the screen so it feels natural. Ruben composes music for the sound pieces. He’s not interested in using his framework to create thousands of pieces. He enjoys making art, learning, and creating tools. It’s about finding your voice. In the NFT space with trends coming and going he feels good seeing young people learning 3d and creative coding, but he worries people are chasing trends, and missing the theme of working on themselves and finding what’s unique about their work.
[24:48 – 25:29] Ruben’s favorite artist is @Reuben_Wu. He is inspired by how he works and the passion put into this work.
