An oversized pair of feet, psychedelic tape art, a track bed somewhere and graffiti everywhere: The Haus was a special kind of urban art exhibition. Also because it was torn down after two months despite the onrush of visitors. The Haus is now celebrating its comeback – as a Virtual Reality NFT collection.
In the matrix, Neo is given a choice: red or blue pill. One brings him back to his virtual dream world, the other opens up reality to him. The Wachowskis’ cyberpunk classic packages an old epistemological problem that has a popular template in modern philosophy of mind in Hilary Putnam’s brain-in-tank thought experiment. What can we know, what is truth and what is reality? In the transition to the metaverse, these questions will be renegotiated. Virtual realities shift our perception, transplant our sensory apparatus into simulated worlds and convey a feeling of transcendent states of consciousness. That sounds abstract, but is becoming more and more concrete due to the warming simulation machinery of the Metaverse. The crypto art project TheHaus on Chain shows how it “feels” to be here and yet somewhere else at the same time – with the help of NFTs.
“This is our house”
165 artists: inside, 10,000 square meters of exhibition space and over 70,000 visitors: inside: The house was full of superlatives. The venue for one of the world’s most spectacular urban art exhibitions was a former and now demolished bank building on Kurfürstendamm, Berlin, which became an art playground for two months before the wrecking balls rolled in. Each of the over 100 rooms was individually modeled, demolished, arranged and transformed into a clash-of-styles trip. As quickly as the room installations blossomed, they also disappeared again quickly. The building no longer stands, the exhibition expired in June 2017. However, The Haus is performing its NFT metamorphosis on the blockchain.
The house initiators DIE DIXONS, a Berlin street art crew, got together with the NFT start-up BLNFT and the AR / VR specialist Realities teamed up to reanimate the exhibition as a non-fungible token collection. Room by room, floor by floor, the exhibition is now being put back together again and is virtually accessible as TheHaus on Chain. As Augmented Reality NFT, the rooms can either be dragged onto the screen or entered directly as Virtual Reality NFT with VR glasses. The first NFTs are already available in AR form as an open edition for 50 euros, and as a VR version in limited numbers for 250 euros each Opensea and the exhibition that will run until the end of January GO! NFT in Berlin Schöneberg.
NFT parallel universe
“In the end, The Haus on Chain is a little metaverse in itself”, BLNFT co-founder Torben Jacobi explains the concept to BTC-ECHO. NFTs expand the scope for action and allow the miniature metaverse to develop into a place for immersive borderline experiences. “The nice thing is that you don’t just have a picture, but an NFT that you can interact with,” adds co-founder Sven Barth. The NFTs also enable other features: “Via the members area, NFT owners also have access to additional content such as artist interviews, live events or DJ sets”.
This is the gateway to the multi-layered NFTs Website of The House: “If you have an NFT, you can log in there, you will receive a code and with this code you can either feed your VR glasses, smartphone or tablet,” explains Sven. The stairwell and hallway are not for sale, but for loyal collectors: the inside is free. “They won’t be available in sales, but if you have a complete floor, you will get the NFTs on top”. In this way, the NFTs gradually come together to form a total work of art, with the aim of “allowing you to move around the whole house.”
Projects like TheHaus on Chain are pushing the boundaries of what is feasible, breaking down transitions between physical and virtual reality, and showing new possibilities for interaction in the NFT sector. The rebirth of the temporary exhibition The Haus is an experiment in which crypto, art and virtual reality are networked and the cycle closes: After artists have occupied The Haus, The Haus is now occupying the polygon blockchain – the ephemeral becomes immortal in the digital.