They portray, match by match, the results based on the work of 32 artists from the participating countries
NFTs have become an artistic resource and at the same time a new type of “currency” thanks to tech. The main reason for this is that NFTs have the ability to certify that a work is unique, which protects both the work and the artist. These crypto assets are based on blockchain technology and are created in a process similar to that of cryptocurrencies. Now, at an exhibition in Doha, you can start to see (game by game) the 64 NFTs that reflect all the World Cup matches .
The exhibition, From Strike to Stroke, features the NFTs of 32 artists from qualified countries . They will be responsible for the artistic part while an Artificial Intelligence (AI) will merge the pieces from the two countries, for example the work of Edurne Andono (the one selected by Spain) and that of Ronald Gamboa (the representative of Costa Rica) have been united thanks to the AI that in turn has reflected the result of the match. And so with all the matches until reaching the final. In this way, each of the 64 matches will become a unique piece based on the vision of the artists, the AI algorithms and the results of the game. In Doha, the exhibition will be available until December 23, and then it can be visited at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra), in the city of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. They will also be available on this website, which will be updated daily.
Edurne Andoño , is a renowned artist who began to stand out in the digital area during the confinement caused by the pandemic. She was selected to participate in two of the most important events on the planet in this field: the NFT in Liverpool and the ETH in Barcelona. Her works have also been selected by Adobe. “We are all part of this incredible Universe – Edurne explains about her work – and, like the stars in the night sky, the players will illuminate the stadium. We are all connected, like in football, to achieve your goals, together we are stronger. It is an honor to represent my country Spain with this piece, for the Qatar 2022 World Cup.”
From Stroke to Strike includes both traditional artists who have never created NFTs and NFT artists who have not worked within the traditional realm of fine art. But in the exhibition Edurne Andoño is not the only Spanish. The person in charge of the algorithm that joins the works is also european , more precisely from Alicante. His name is Victor Merino. Merino himself explains that “it is a generative art program that uses the images and data from the game to automatically generate the final image. With that image and the party data we compose the NFT that is created in the blockchain as a certificate of authenticity. Full development took about two months”. The algorithm uses an application in the Cloud that is “fed” with the images of the match. And the final NFT is only executed if no error is caught.
“The passion shared by football fans for the love of the beautiful game can be tangential to the passion shared by art lovers,” says Dr. Shurooq Amin, who is responsible for the exhibition. By connecting 32 artists from both traditional and digital realms, Ithra not only bridges the gap between Web2 and Web3, and between football and art, but also between humans and machines, as artists collaborate with generation technology of AI to create unique NFTs.”
