Refraction & The Future of Festivals
With over 1,600 members worldwide, including founding artists Nate Boyce, and Lorna Mills, the DAO has collective goals of uplifting artists, creating community and building modes of collaboration. Refraction DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) looks at the festival model as both an opportunity for tangible experiences, but also as a system that needs reinvention. And if you’re going to take a construct and blow it up, the best way to do it is with the help of 1,600 people.
Festivals are a model for collective experiences: encompassing artists, staff, partners, volunteers, and audiences. By focusing on community participation and ownership, Refraction is taking the traditional festival model and flipping it into a platform for expression and progress — and for their debut at Miami Design Week, they did just that. Contemporary artists, cutting-edge musicians and on-chain creatives gathered at the Future of Cities Climate + Innovation Hub to experience the pillars of the DAO IRL with musical acts including Yaeji, Jimmy Edgar, Sel.6, Space Afrika, Debit, Marie Davidson, Doss, INVT.
Over 60 visual artists, including Alex Gibson, Andy Rolfes, Elna Frederick, Laya Mathikshara, Mark Dorf, Raphaël Moreira Goncalves, and Suren Seneviratne + hypereikon created site-specific works that were minted live throughout the festival. Central to the dynamic works was curator Dina Chang. Diana Chang prioritized Refraction’s core value for the season–Creatives First”–with the help of Refraction co-founder Malcolm Levy, and selected artists that embody Refraction’s mission to promote diversity and support underserved communities. “I believe in artists, and I believe in art,” said Chang. “The best thing a person in my position can do is champion the voices and talents of others. In short, I’m always a fan, of those I meet and of those I know.”
Chang drew on subcultures and historic movements for inspiration, including legendary artists that have been active in the space since the '80s and '90s, like Krist Wood from Computers Club. Whether fresh or historical, established or lesser known, Chang’s curator style balanced progressive emerging talent, including the best new creatives coming out of Latin America, with more familiar names in the digital art sphere.
Many of the participating artists were recipients of Refraction Season 03’s Creative Grants programme, where artists are awarded across 3 funding tiers allocated across events, community programming, and commissions for the Refraction collection and editorial platform, totalling up to 100K $USDC. The projects chosen represented and lived alongside the previous projects collected, performed and facilitated by the DAO.
Andy Rolfes, 'Formentation'
Included in the exhibition was visual artist and director Andy Rolfes. Using performative and interactive toolsets alongside traditional methods, they work extensively across industries to build stills, animations, performances, and interactive experiences. Rolfes is a rising star in the visual art world, having worked with everyone from Lady Gaga to SSENSE to MoMA. Their portfolio only speaks partially to their mastery.
When reflecting on the work, Rolfes remarks: “As I played with dreamstates and concepts of euphoria, I found a place of thinking about ourselves merging with nature and how we reflect off each other. The key, though, came from watching a close friend deal with the loss of a family member, causing me to reflect about the beautiful ephemerality of some of our relationships in life. Things and people sweep by, making it all the more important to appreciate the beauty in front of us before it too fades off into another form. I didn't want to make this a piece about grieving, though I have my own family members I've lost through recent years. No, I wanted this balance to focus on the bright beauty that can be reflected out of that time.”
To design the exhibition, Refraction partnered with Nike and Virgil Abloh-collaborator Craig Barrow. With Barrow’s unique point of view and meticulous attention to detail, the Future of Cities Hub was enveloped in mirrors, light installations, and modular elements evolving over the course of the event. Responding not only to the artwork, but to the space itself, Barrow focused on taking advantage of the foliage by incorporating reflective materials to optically expand its presence, and carving out sections through design in an otherwise corner-less lot.
“With exhibition design, first and foremost, the artwork on display has to be clear and look good. It’s not about what I'm designing; the artworks on display have to shine through. My task is to enhance the artwork but also guide and engage the viewer; show them how best to experience a piece and give them the opportunity for moments of reflection with the art,” said Barrow of his practice.
Andy Rolfes, by Jason Gorelick at Gray Area in San Francisco
As a Berlin-based designer, Barrow was excited to visit the “Magic City”, and took inspiration from the surroundings he imagined would line the street. “It’s flashy and luxurious and at the same time rough and gritty, whilst remaining playful and fun. It may sound a bit obvious but for me having never visited Miami before, it’s my only understanding of the city and I wanted to reflect on this in the exhibition design. I wanted to create something lux but still a little tongue in cheek.”
Tonight, Refraction Festival moves from to a new location at the Frost Museum’s iconic planetarium for a one-night only world premier of Miami-based electronic musician Danny Daze’s Blue, a sonic art experience and live performance. Intentionally created for high tech planetarium environments, Blue is an immersive audiovisual work based on Daze’s forthcoming album. The 33-minute piece features meticulously crafted sound design and all-new original music by Daze. Its visual embodiment was created in collaboration with Sensory Works, Joseph Nickson, and Konx Om Pax. The experience is heard via a premium 40,000-watt, 16-point surround sound system and viewed in ultra high 8K definition on a seamless 67 foot dome screen.
Festival Curator, Dina Chang
While Refraction Festival’s Miami takeover might be coming to a close, the future of music festivals is opening up swiftly. By enablingweb3 infrastructure, Refraction has made it possible to transform the technology into a tangible, communal experience. The benefits of the web3 infrastructure are made clear when you enter their space and network. From the merch booth, to buying artworks, to joining a community with thousands of the most culturally tapped in people you can think of, Refraction makes web3 a space of possibility for those whose digital wallets are filled to the brim, and those who are simply crypto-curious.
