A conversation with Newtro artists, an emergent LATAM collective, and their latest collaboration called Creative Seeds.
Founded by Bulls and Lucasoxx in November 2021, Newtro is an artist collective born out of workshops exploring how artists can use new technologies within their practice. With a deep understanding of Latin American culture and artist communities the Newtro founders strived to foster a new kind of collective with a bottoms-up, localized, and highly collaborative approach to producing new works. Since it’s launch the collective has grown to include artists such as Pamilo Ceirone, Jotta, Aura, Kidd, Vinotintoo, and Ekeko and collaborated with a variety of groups like Zora, N3XTWAVE, and ENERGY.
Today, we’re excited to share an interview diving into Creative Seeds their group collaboration for the We Love The Art campaign using SOURCE. With the project, six artists each produced an independent selection of ‘seed assets’ that were then remixed and used to compose entirely new works. In the end, 7 new works were made out of 50 total seed assets. Here is an interview detailing the work by each Newtro artist…
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ABOUT NEWTRO WITH BULLS
Tell us more about Newtro and how the collective was born?
Newtro was founded by Bulls (Santiago Petruzziello, Cinema Postproducer, Argentina) in late 2021, then joined by Lucasoxx (Lucas Sosa, Electronic Arts artists, Argentina) as a co-founder, as a space for old and new (onboarding) web3 artists to meet and share knowledge. Our founding stone is our "Arts and W3B" workshop, which all members of the collective take for free. The collective is integrated by cultural managers and artists, developing new means for sustainability through technology and community empowerment. We offer workshops and support to bridge artists into web3, and we develop various cultural activations, fostering a vibrant collective and providing the knowledge and tools necessary for artists to thrive in the evolving landscape of tokenized art.
How does Newtro think about using Ethereum as a new medium for art?
As mostly Latin American artists, the great majority of Newtro's artists met each other at alternative L1 Blockchains, mainly because of L1 prohibitive gas fees. With the arrival of the L2 and gas fees solutions, we've encountered a vibrant ecosystem in the Ethereum blockchain, and a collective very eager to explore it! New platforms and dapps are all the time reshaping and re-creating new possibilities for art to thrive on the blockchain, so inside our lovely fam, we are always sharing knowledge about our new findings, testing and onboarding new dapps and activating the collective in cohesive cultural actions either on-chain or IRL.
How has Newtro approached collaboration between artists before?
In a way, we are all the time collaborating. That's the spirit of our collective. The idea that together, we can have way more cultural impact (which we believe, is then translated to value, regardless of price). No individual narrative can surpass the collective identity! And at the same time, the collective identity can never replace each artists' individuality. Paying close attention to empower each individual and offering new opportunities, is that the Collective's artists work side by side with cultural managers in an effort to create better and more opportunities for everybody and everyone. We believe this generates a very virtuous wheel in which artists' can grow their individual paths, and at the same time, a bigger, collective identity is enriched along the way! Our workshop is public, always open and free for Spanish speaking artists!
Regarding outside collaborations, we always try to hand-pick these ones, after an evaluation. Sadly, some projects still want to exploit artists, which in the blockchain tokenized art context are without any doubt, the value creators. We always team-up with projects that reflect a legitimate interest in artists development, and approach to us with a true collaborative and non-exploitative spirit. Something we learned from the previous bullrun, which at moments was plagued by artists' exploiters.
CREATIVE SEEDS - AN INTERVIEW WITH AURA, EKEKO, AND KIDD
Can each of you tell us more about yourself and your practice?
My name is Leandro Garcia Puppo, but I work under the pseudonym Suad, or Kidd! A few years ago, I became a graphic designer and illustrator, and NFTs have become my favorite way to share my art on the internet. I constantly try to merge the digital and real worlds in my works, reflecting my everyday life and drawing inspiration from simple things, music, and friends <3.- Kidd
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My work is very recent and still young. I started in 2023 creating fantasy worlds in Blender 3D. Over time I have been able to inhabit them and make them even more complex, and it is my idea in the future to continue including new knowledge and technologies in these magical caves.
It is a constant search to be in contact with a nature that I create myself. I give life to dream worlds and escape from reality. Playing with colors and textures, I try to imitate and alter the fauna and flora. My inspiration comes from my own connection with the vegetation and the spaces I inhabit and visit.
Many times I also include Adobe Premiere effects where I do the final editing of my animations and I also include Adobe Illustrator retouching in my static renders to generate distortion, accumulation of layers and games with the camera lenses. In this way, I reinforce this idea of acid and ecstasy that I like and experiment so much.
At the end of 2023, I was also able to expand my ideas to a physical plane, playing with ceramics and creating organic caves and sculptures. The colors and glazes fused together in the kiln giving me randoms, unpredictable and really beautiful results.- AURA(♡ μ_μ)
I'm from Argentina, I experience digital art purely for fun, in a very personal way, experimenting with any digital tool that comes my way and calls my attention.
- ekeko
Aura, can you tell us more about the seeds you’ve produced and what inspired them?
These seeds are born from previously created worlds. It was nice to go back to look for little details in my caves, it felt like a treasure hunt. I tried to make everything follow a line of shines and materials that reflect things. The idea was to be able to create a similar line of seeds that could eventually speak for itself about my identity and my visual aesthetic.
- AURA(♡ μ_μ)
Ekeko, what excites you about the opportunity to create art meant to be remixed?
I am excited by the experience of being able to mix other people's work with work I have produced and see what comes out of that spontaneous mix, and to see that other people can use seeds that I have created to remix with other things based on what their imagination determines for them.
- ekeko
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Kidd, how’ve new tools and technologies like SOURCE and Ethereum changed your practice?
These new technologies truly did a 360º turn in my mind about how I could sell and share my art, and made me realize that making a living from it wasn't as distant as I thought. Currently, a significant portion of the equipment I use is renewed and maintained thanks to royalties from my NFT art. Apps like Source open up the game for many artists who want to experiment and co-create art in a simpler and more accessible way. It seems like an excellent way to collaborate with other artists without barriers and with fair and transparent royalty models. Furthermore, from the collector's point of view, they are aware of what their collection contains and which artists were involved in it. It's just fantastic.
- Kidd
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Anything fun Newtro would like to plug?
Thanks to our excellent 2023 run, 2024 will be a year of huge growth four our collective! Stay tuned, many many things are coming, this collective is about to update to its v2.0! Follow us on Twitter, here.
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