Jeremy Stoppelman, who was born on November 10, 1977, in Arlington, Virginia, is an American business executive.  He is the Yelp’s CEO, which he co-founded in 2004. His father, John, was a securities lawyer, and his mother, Lynn, was an English teacher.  As a kid, Jeremy had an interest in computers and business and started investing in stocks at the age of 14.

Jeremy Stoppelman desired to become a video game developer and took computer programming classes, where he learned Turbo Pascal software programming system.  He attended at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and attained a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering in 1999. He acquired a job with @Home Network after he graduated as a software engineer.  He implemented and designed various website features using the Netscape Livewire for @Home’s provisioning system and proprietary billing.

Jeremy Stoppelman acquired a spot at X.com after four months of working for @Home Network as an engineer, which later on retitled to PayPal.  It was then that Jeremy met Max Levchin, an entrepreneur who later became a stockholder to his company, Yelp Inc. Jeremy became the Vice President of engineering and is also one of a group of PayPal’s early employees, which referred to as the PayPal Mafia.

Jeremy managed a team with 43 persons (6 managers and 37 engineers) that were responsible for software development at PayPal.  He left Paypal after the acquisition by eBay in 2003 and attended Harvard Business School for one year. During his school break, Max Levchin encouraged Jeremy to do an internship at the business incubator, MRL Ventures.

In the summer of 2004, Jeremy got flu and had difficulty finding recommendations for a local doctor.  He and Russel Simmons, a former PayPal colleague, began brainstorming on how to create an online community where users could share recommendations for local services.  Both men pitched the idea to Levchin who provided initial funding of $1 million. Under Jeremy’s leadership, Yelp grew to a market capitalization of $4 billion and hosted 138 million user reviews.

Steve Jobs called Jeremy in an effort in persuading him to turn down an acquisition offer by Google and in March 2012, Jeremy rang the bell for the New York Stock Exchange after his company went public.  According to Jeremy, the biggest challenge that the Yelp has encountered is the same problem Google faces in its rankings. Business holders had used those commentators that leave undesirable reviews and raising accusations that Yelp fiddles with reviews to favor companies that advertise, leading to legal troubles for the company.  In February of 2013, Jeremy accepted a salary of $1, though he continued to earn income from his investment of 11% interest in the company.

Google was supportive at first with the company.  Yelp even signed a partnership arrangement in 2005 with the company to allow access to some of the Yelp’s reviews. Jeremy Stoppelman has accused Google of stealing Yelp’s review content, altering systems so competitors sink lower in search results, and creating a network of politicians to protect its dominance, but Google denies the accusations.

Yelp compiles the reviews of local services, from plumbers to doctors and restaurants to nail salons.  The company makes revenue by selling advertising to these businesses. It is on track to generate almost $1 billion in revenue last year.  But compared to Google, it was tiny: traded on the New York Stock Exchange, it has a market capitalization of $3.7 billion, making it less than half of 1% of the size of Google.

In 2016, the San Francisco-based company pulled out of Europe after losing a battle with Google.  Yelp financed tens of millions of dollars, but it abandoned the venture, lay-off 175 employees. Yet, Jeremy Stoppelman refused to give up.  The company pressed a new complaint with Europe’s anti-trust watchdog, arguing the search company abused its dominance and pressuring Brussels to bring new charges against Google.

Last year, Jeremy Stoppelman tried to recruit the other members of Silicon Valley to his cause.  He tried to convince start-up founders to speak out, but many were reluctant. As Yelp’s CEO, he had to first convince his investors to let go of the Google partnership in 2007, which was bringing in 5% of traffic.

Recently, Yelp has hired Evercore to help preserve the company against an activist investor, who recently called for a board shake-up and potential sale.  Yelp co-founder and CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman and the board have now selected Evercore to work with the company and survey the market, but the bank hasn’t started running a sales process.  At the current market evaluation of over $3 billion, there are few, if any, credible buyers.

Yelp has struggled to defend off rivalry from Google, which is both the largest search engine and a rival in the review market.  The company has also behind other companies that offer technology and tools to measure the efficiency of ad spend and has failed to keep up with Google’s local discovery features.

In the past years, Yelp has been on the M&A market.  In 2015, the company hired Goldman Sachs to conduct a sales process.  That effort ended when Jeremy decided not to move forward despite having numerous interested buyers.  The Evercore-led process could just end up with the company looking for a buyer, but the company hasn’t made any decisions yet about selling this time.

Jeremy Stoppelman is an American business executive who is known as the co-founder and CEO of Yelp, a local-search service powered by a crowd-sourced review forum.

JEREMY STOPPELMAN: THE CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF YELP

Nate Talbot aspires to be a channel for the transcendental nature of the digital experience using VR and VFX. Talbot is interested in the conflict between vitalism and the emergence of digital lifeforms. The artist considers his work to be a study of the panpsychic, techno-shaman, and bio-engineered chimera.

Nate Talbot is a graduate researcher with Incubator BioArt Lab and is in his first year of his MFA at UWindsor. Talbot intends to research indigenous botany, photogrammetry, cephalopod intelligence, AI, and holography in the future. Talbot has worked with Adobe Medium, ZBrush, Cinema4D, Houdini, Octane, Redshift, Photoshop, After Effects, and Davinci Resolve, among other programs.

"Something like a sea of glass, similar to crystal, was also before the throne. Each of the four living creatures had six wings; they were covered with eyes around and inside" Revelation 4:6-9

In his work series Vivid Places, Ernst Miesgang works with a modified document scanner. With this mobile scanning wand, he seeks out special places to portray the location and the people present there. The artist uses the scanner to produce samples of the surfaces of the environment, as well as details of the people he encounters. As the scanner is dragged over the surface of the subjects and objects to be examined, it reads in line by line. This creates images of deformed, alienated and distorted bodies and objects. s then uses these images to create digital collages in which the subjects and the terrain seem to merge with each other in the image. The form of the collage always makes direct reference to the respective place portrayed.

The collage shown here is a portrait of the Sonnenpark in St. Pölten. The form of the collage is the elevation of the 50000 square metre park, which is home to a Kuklturverein. The mostly unpaid work of the association is very important for the cultural coexistence in St. Pölten - the reason why it is important to me to artistically reappraise this lively place.

Friend Five is a visual artist from Austria (Europe) who collects old photographs from the beginning of the 20th century at flea markets. He digitizes the photos and edits them in a way to make them look fantastic and surreal. The title of this series is called Delusions. His inspiration comes from dadaism, surrealism, literature, movies, pop culture, street art, and so on. Friend Five's images invite you on a journey into a strange world that seems similar to ours but is completely different.

Ernst Miesgang, Friend Five: After The Fallout, the Air Seemed Clear and Pure

Milton Sanz is a 3D artist from Rosario, Argentina, who was born in 1993. He worked for marketing agencies and the music industry all over the world. However, Sanz discovered his true calling as an artist and entered the world of CryptoArt.

Sanz's paintings capture dreams with expressionist and hyper-realistic aesthetics, materializing organic realms in which his characters' emotions seek to cross the screen. His current work explores the trend of digital naturalism.

The existence of an unknowable god reveals to us that the only homeland is that of the spirit.

QFILMSTV is a Bath-based video production firm that works with clients all over the world. QFILMSTV assist businesses to advertise their brand, services, or products across all digital media channels by creating dynamic video content and eye-catching TV commercials.

The company was founded in 1998 by Antony Quintin to show his passion for narrating stories.

QFILMSTV is recognized as one of the most respected, unique, and trustworthy video content suppliers, with 20 years of experience working with big organizations and brands such as AutoTrader, Avon & Somerset Police, BBC, Costco, GWR, CBS, 4Music, McLaren, Ferrari, BMW, Nissan, and many others.

Services are adapted to each client's needs, QFILMSTV collaborates on concepts and provides amazing films that exceed expectations. QFILMSTV has extensive experience in a variety of industries, including corporate business, music, entertainment, automobile, and sport.

QFILMSTV is increasing their workforce in 2021 to offer 3D Graphic Design and Animation, as well as cooperating with well-known artists and companies.

QFILMSTV, founded in 1998 by Antony Quintin, is a video production company that produces high quality content for global clientele.

QFILMSTV: PASSIONATE ABOUT COLOUR, LIGHT AND MOTION

Ryan Smith was born in the summer of 1977 in Eugene, Oregon. One of the five children of academic and entrepreneurial parents– his mother, who has a Ph. D. in information systems later started a paper-craft company and sold it to a private equity firm. While his father, Scott Smith who would later become a co-founder of Qualtrics, has a Ph. D. on Marketing.

One of the early experiences that Ryan Smith had was when he moved to South Korea at the age of 17. He was promised a full-time job as an English teacher and that he would be provided a house to live in, however, it wasn’t an easy job for foreign teachers. Ryan Smith decided to distribute flyers in thousands of apartments in South Korea and provide private English teaching services that led him to earn about $84,000 per year.

Ryan Smith enrolled at Brigham Young University to study an undergraduate degree in business. While doing an internship in 2001 at Hewlett-Packard, Scott Smith was diagnosed with throat cancer, and Ryan returned home to be with his father for the treatments. During this, his father who was a longtime professor of marketing at Brigham Young University, had a concept to make it easier and faster to do market research on the web through a software that conducts surveys.

With the growth of Qualtrics, Ryan Smith decided to drop out of college during his junior year and focus on the business instead. He would eventually, finish up his degree in Management at Brigham Young University in 2016.

In 2002, Ryan Smith started Qualtrics with his BYU friend, Stuart Orgill, his father, Scott Smith and persuaded his oldest brother, Jared Smith to help with the technical side of things and code for Qualtrics. The basement of their Provo, Utah home became Qualtrics’ office for the next couple of years.

During the early days of Qualtrics, it was consistently being turned down by corporations and started to target schools that could use the software to conduct academic research and continued to grow as business school students recommend Qualtrics to companies.

The company moved to their first office in Provo, Utah in 2006 and reached it’s first $1.3 million with only 15 employees. And by 2007, Qualtrics extended its function not just to the academe but also to businesses. As the business expands its audience, more capitalists showed interest to invest in the business. For years, Qualtrics has been adamant to venture capitalists and even turned down an offer of $500 million. Finally, in 2012, after years of being adamant resolute to venture capitalists, Qualtrics accepted an equity capital from Accel Partners and Sequoia of $70 million and by the end of 2012the year, they already generated at least $50 million in revenue.

By 2013, Ryan Smith was became part included on the list off America’s Most Promising CEOs Under 35 as while Qualtrics continue to grow with 5,000 customers and $70 million in funding.

Qualtrics would then secure an additional $150 million in Series B funding and including Insight Venture Partners on the company’s board in 2014, with the company valued at $1 billion.

In 2016, 5 for Fight was launched by Qualtrics.  It is a global campaign to gather funds for cancer research by donating $5. 5 for Fight served as the biggest contribution made by Qualtrics to society. During the same year, Ryan Smith was honored to be part of Fortune’s 40 Under 40.

SAP, a cloud company that leads the market in enterprise application software announced the news of acquiring Qualtrics for $8 billion in the last quarter of 2018. By January 2019, the acquisition was completed.

Ryan Smith is an American entrepreneur known as the CEO and co-founder of Qualtrics, one of the leading platforms that helps gather and analyze data from customers and employees to use for market research. He is also a philanthropist – co-founder and board member of 5 for the Fight. He also made it to the list as America’s Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 in 2016.

RYAN SMITH: THE CEO AND CO-FOUNDER OF QUALTRICS

Ergin Ishakoglu spent eight years working as Digital Compositor on various projects varying from graphic design to feature film, advertising, music videos and filmmaking. Nowadays, crafting 3d in Istanbul.

ERGIN ISHAKOGLU'S MYTHICAL ORIENTAL INTERIORS

A voxel is a value on a regular grid in three-dimensional space in 3D computer graphics. Voxels, like pixels in a 2D bitmap, do not usually have their position (or coordinates) explicitly stored with their values. Instead, rendering systems deduce a voxel's position based on its proximity to other voxels (i.e., its position in the data structure that makes up a single volumetric image).

Polygons, unlike pixels and voxels, are frequently represented by the coordinates of their vertices (as points). As a result of this distinction, polygons thrive at representing simple 3D structures with a lot of empty or homogeneously filled space, but voxels excel at describing regularly sampled non-homogeneously filled areas.

Voxels are extensively employed in medical and scientific data visualization and analysis. Voxels are used to characterize the resolution of some volumetric displays. A cubic volumetric display, for example, would be able to show 512512512 voxels.

Mari is a freelance voxel artist and 3D designer based in Istanbul.

Mari › Mad Maraca › Voxel Artist › Alien Habitats

Cameron Burns is a well-known digital artist who has achieved great success in the music industry; however, he is now concentrating on thriving in the NFT sector and exposing himself to more art that he appreciates.

Cameron Burns, better known on Instagram as Captvart, is a brilliant digital artist residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The artist worked with Juice WRLD, MGK, Neon Trees, and Run The Jewels, to name a few. He was only recently introduced to NFTs by friends, and in just a few months, sold eight NFTs ranging in price from 1 to 5 ETH each. While the money may enable artists to reduce client work, it also validates their own activity and provides them with a strong incentive to continue it.

Cameron Burns is a 26-year-old freelance digital artist. He specializes in Album cover art and animation. Cameron Burns has worked with Run The Jewels, Daddy Yankee, ACER computers, The Lumineers, and many more.

CAMERON BURNS LOVES TO TELL STORIES THROUGH ART

Alex Marks was born and raised in New York City and has spent the last nine years rediscovering himself in Brazil. Marks is a self-taught 3D artist who is happy for the opportunity to combine his three passions in life: art, music, and technology.

Alex Marks was recently introduced to the NFT realm, which has drastically transformed his life. He is determined to bring others the same luck that he received.

"When I am not creating art, I am playing drums, learning Japanese, discovering more of the crypto market, or learning new software to keep up with the industry."

Alex Marks is employed by OTOY Inc.'s Octane Render, an unbiased rendering application with real-time capabilities. Octane render was the first commercially available unbiased raytracer to fully leverage the GPU, providing it a major speed advantage, allowing users to more readily change scenes in real-time.

Alex Marks: When I am not creating art, I am playing drums, learning Japanese, discovering more of the crypto market, or learning new software to keep up with the industry.

President Joe Biden has directed the US intelligence agency to “redouble” its efforts to figure out where the coronavirus originated, citing conflicting reports on whether the virus originated naturally or as a result of a lab accident.

Biden said in a statement Wednesday that the intelligence community gave him a report earlier this month that revealed it was split on the pandemic's origins. “Each with low or moderate confidence,” Biden added, two “elements” of the community lean toward animals as the source, while one leans toward a lab origin.

“The majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other,” he added.

Scientists have yet to determine the virus's origins more than a year after the biggest pandemic in over a century broke out. The first Covid-19 cases were discovered in Wuhan, China, where the Beijing government maintains a high-security coronavirus research center.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, politicians in the United States have discussed the virus's possible origins. Chinese reluctance to international investigations, as well as Beijing's own contradictory explanations for the virus's origin, have stoked suspicions of the Wuhan lab.

Robert Redfield, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Donald Trump, warned earlier this year that the virus had most certainly escaped from the Wuhan facility.

Biden's remarks on Wednesday makes it clear that the US is still looking into whether the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the outbreak, a theory that health experts have largely dismissed.

In March, Biden instructed National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to draft a report on the virus's origins. He announced on Wednesday that a new report will be issued in 90 days.

“I have now asked the Intelligence Community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion,” Biden said. That includes “specific questions for China,” he said.

“The United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence,” Biden said.

Karine Jean-Pierre, a spokeswoman for the White House, declined to disclose which part of the intelligence community thought the facility was the most likely source. She claimed the study was inconclusive, but she wouldn't say if Biden would take any action against China as a result of it.

“We need to get to the bottom of this. As we all know, we’ve lost almost 600,000 Americans to Covid-19, and we have to get a better sense of the origins of Covid-19 and also: how do we prevent the next pandemic?” she said.

Asked whether Biden’s use of the phrase “lab accident” ruled out the possibility that it came from the lab purposefully, she replied: ”We haven’t ruled out anything yet.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, US information shows that three lab researchers were sick enough to seek hospital treatment in November 2019. The Chinese government is also restricting access to an abandoned copper mine in southwest China where researchers from the Wuhan lab obtained coronavirus samples following a 2012 incident in which six miners were ill with a "mystery" respiratory ailment, according to the Journal. Three people died.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, disputed the Journal report on Monday.

“We don’t have enough information to draw a conclusion about the origins,” she said. “There is a need to look into a range of options. We need data, we need an independent investigation, and that’s exactly what we’ve been calling for.”

During a hearing on Wednesday, Diana DeGette, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigation subcommittee, said she favored establishing whether the virus originated in a lab.

“We’re going to do whatever investigation is appropriate,” she said in response to subcommittee Republican Michael Burgess of Texas, a medical doctor, who emphasized the panel needed to look into the virus’s origins.

According to a World Health Organization research released earlier this year, the virus most likely transferred to people from bats via an undisclosed intermediary species. The report was challenged by the White House as being inadequate and lacking key evidence, and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus commented, "I do not believe that this assessment was extensive enough," and that the lab-leak idea needed more research.

Republican lawmakers have called for both investigations and retaliation, if it’s ever established the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab.

“If it did come from the lab, that’s something we need to know, right, because that’s a completely different problem for the world, and people who are in charge of that lab, and who set in motion this virus, need to be held accountable in some fashion to deter this in the future,” Senator Lindsey Graham said Wednesday.

The South Carolina Republican added: “I don’t know if it came from the lab or not, but it’s getting more likely that that’s the answer, as you exclude other possibilities.”

In March, Redfield, who oversaw the CDC under Trump, said he believes the Wuhan lab is the most likely source. The bulk of the public health community disagrees, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a Biden coronavirus consultant.

“I still believe that the most likely scenario is that this was a natural occurrence, but no one knows that 100% for sure,” Fauci said Wednesday in testimony on Capitol Hill.

JOE BIDEN ORDERS NEW REPORT ON VIRUS ORIGIN FROM U.S. SPIES

Toby Sun studied at Sun Yat-sen University taking up Bachelor in Public Policy from 2001-2005 in Guangdong, People’s Republic of China.  In 2011-2013, he took Master of Business Administration in University of California, Berkeley – Walter A. Haas School of Business. He was the co-president in Haas Asia Business Club and a Berkeley MBA Admission outreach committee during his college days.

From 2005-2011, he worked at PepsiCo as a Marketing Manager.  He launched Gatorade in international markets, making it the market leader in 11 months in China.  He managed new product innovation and marketing campaigns for 7UP and Pepsi Cola. He was also one of the fastest promoted employees in the history of PepsiCo as he got awarded 5 times in 6 years.

In 2013-2014, he was a Senior Consultant in Deloitte Consulting LLP.  He was into monitoring Deloitte strategy service line, and strategy and operation.  In September 2014 – January 2017, he worked as an Investment Director in Fosun RZ Capital in San Francisco Bay Area.

Neutron Holdings, Inc. is doing business under the name Lime formerly known as LimeBike.  It is a transportation-rental company that is based in the United States. It runs scooter, bicycle and car-sharing systems in various cities globally.  The Lime’ systems offer dockless vehicles, which users find and unlock via a mobile app. It charges start at $1 to unlock scooters and 15 cents per minute in the US, while $1/1€ for a 30-minute ride on unpowered bicycles.

Neutron Holdings, Inc. doing business under the name Lime, formerly LimeBike, is a transportation company based in San Francisco, USA. It runs electric scooters, electric bikes, normal pedal bikes, Electric mopeds and car sharing systems in various cities around the world. The system offers dockless vehicles that users find and unlock via a mobile app that knows the location of available vehicles via GPS.

LimeBike was founded in January 2017 by Brad Bao and Toby Sun, both of whom were executives of Fosun International's venture capital arm. It raised US$12 million in venture funding led by Andreessen Horowitz in March 2017. The company's first location, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, launched in June 2017 with 125 bicycles.

LimeBike expanded in July 2017 to the cities of Key Biscayne, Florida, South Bend, Indiana, and South Lake Tahoe, California. On July 27, 2017, LimeBike launched with 500 bicycles in Seattle, Washington, becoming the city's second bikeshare operator.

The company closed a Series B round of venture funding in October 2017, announcing that it was valued at $225 million. A $335 million funding round in 2018 led to a valuation of $1.1 billion for the company, making it a unicorn.

As of October 2017, Lime had 150,000 users.

In January 2018 Lime announced at CES 2018 that they would begin a trial of electric bikes, branded Lime-E, in San Francisco. The following month Lime-S electric scooters were announced. There was criticism in April 2018 when Lime left several hundred scooters on the streets of US cities without the permission of municipal authorities. Public criticism increased in June when it emerged that the scooters were programmed to play a recording of the message "Unlock me to ride me, or I'll call the police" repeatedly, at high volume, when their controls were touched.

In May 2018, the company announced plans to begin development of transit pods, small self-driving electric vehicles. Lime applied for car-sharing permits in Seattle in October 2018 and later launched a service in December 2018 with a fleet of Fiat 500 Lounge cars branded as "LimePod."

In August 2018, the company signed a deal with Uber to provide them with electric bikes for the expansion of their Uber Bikes service.

In September 2018, a 24-year-old man in Dallas, Texas in United States died in a single vehicle Lime scooter accident. Responding police officer found a Lime electric scooter broken in half about 500 feet from where the victim was found unresponsive.

In October 2018 Lime announced the release of a new model e-scooter with larger wheels, built-in suspension and an aluminum frame to combat vandalism and extend vehicle life.

In May 2019, co-founder and chief executive officer Toby Sun stepped down reportedly to focus on R&D while Brad Bao, a Lime co-founder, took his place as CEO.

In September 2019, Lime was recognized as one of the LinkedIn's Top Startups for 2019. This was the first time Lime has been listed, and it was ranked at No. 12 amongst the list of 50 startups.

In October 2019, Lime announced it is predicting to lose about $300 million in 2019.

In January 2020, Lime laid off about 100 employees, or approximately 14 percent of its workforce, and ended its scooter rental service in a dozen markets, including Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego and San Antonio. Further layoffs in April were blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic, with the CEO saying, "We had to pause operations in 99% of our markets worldwide to support cities’ efforts at social distancing."

Started in March 2020, due to reduced demand for electric scooters during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, Lime had to suspend service in nearly two dozen countries.

In April 2020, Lime is reported to have acquired assets of electric skateboard startup Boosted.

Lime acquired the Jump e-bike and scooter business from Uber in May 2020, along with a $170 million funding round led by Uber, with Bain Capital Ventures and GV participating. The deal valued Lime at $510 million, down 79% from its $2.4 billion valuation in April 2019. At the same time, Brad Bao stepped down as CEO, replaced by Wayne Ting.

In November 2020, Lime reported the first profitable quarter and predicts 2021 full-year profitability.

In April 2021, Lime is listed as one of the 2021 Time100 Most Influential Companies by Time Magazine.

Toby Sun is the co-founder and CEO at Lime.  He is an entrepreneur, marketer and investor.  He is also a bike enthusiast, passionate to revolutionize urban mobility and solve the first and mile transportation challenges. He had 3 past jobs such as PepsiCo, Deloitte and Fosun RZ Capital. He also speaks Cantonese, Chinese and English.

TOBY SUN: THE CEO AND CO-FOUNDER OF LIMEBIKE, A SMART DOCK-LESS BIKE SHARE SYSTEM

Gucci has confirmed its participation in Christie's online auction Proof of Sovereignty, a pioneer sale curated by Lady PheOnix, one of the main voices in the new media scene for modern digital art and culture. The auction, which runs from May 25th to June 3rd online, features 18 new media artists that use blockchain technology, as well as metadata, storage, and legal norms that have been missing from millions of artworks linked with non-fungible currencies until now.

Opening a dialogue between 20th and 21st-century digital art, the sale will bring together artists from various backgrounds, practices, and decades, including Nam June Paik, known as the "grandfather of video art," and new media artists such as Marguerite deCourcelle, also known as "Coin Artist," Joshua Davis, known as "Praystation," Claudia Hart, Lethabo Huma, KESH, and Tamiko Thiel - passing through established artists recognizing the importance of the emergent NFT market, including Jenny Holzer and Gerald Laing Estate.

Gucci will be present with its first NFT, in keeping with its test and learn digital-first philosophy. The unique artwork was conceived using digital animation drawn from Gucci Aria, the House's latest fashion collection presentation, a fashion film co-directed by Gucci's Creative Director Alessandro Michele and award-winning photographer and director Floria Sigismondi.

Aria's overriding theme is expressed in the artwork that underpins the NFT: a desire to bloom and blossom once the shadow of winter has departed. The luxury brand describes the message of Gucci Aria as follows: “Doors open as darkness yields to light and that long-awaited feast of air, reconnecting the future with the past, tossing the House’s present back to the universe, back to its origins.”

Gucci enters a new media area with this visual story, which gives new meaning to the Creative Director's introduction to the collection: “The myth of foundation is reinhabited in the light of the present”.

Gucci will donate all its proceeds to UNICEF USA in support of UNICEF’s participation in COVAX — an initiative aimed at ensuring global equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

Gucci will be present with its first NFT as part of Christie’s online auction Proof of Sovereignty.

GUCCI ANNOUNCES PARTICIPATION IN CHRISTIE’S NFT SALE CURATED BY LADY PHEONIX

Brickspacer is a 3D artist and director based in Moscow.

The attitude of spontaneity that is imprinted in Brickspacer's fundamental personality is what makes it so appealing. He incorporates elements such as graffiti into a bold artwork that demonstrates the inventiveness of a new kind of vision. This is demonstrated by a brilliantly constructed image of a hidden statue spray-painted with pink graffiti and standing tall among the data swirls of a high-tech cyclone. Viewers can marvel at ferocious visuals of a green apple transforming into the next iPhone, pictures of floor-to-ceiling lights dancing in forms, and a nebula of emojis changing before their eyes.

Brickspacer's artistic direction and design skills make him a brilliant luminary. The meticulous details weaved in the dramatic architecture that demand the gaze of innumerable onlookers are cherished in his artistic style. Brickspacer's aesthetic is continually evolving, as his work incorporates more whimsical illustrations such as pixel art, hinting to video game inspiration. The multi-talented artist possesses a diverse set of abilities that open up unlimited options for work that may be used across multiple platforms.

As a creator, Brickspacer adds a sense of adventure and surprise to the table. As he delivers his spectacular sights, he keeps spectators in constant wonder and suspense, especially throughout the days of this current pandemic. He's created various videos of tatted rubber ducks fighting the coronavirus in a symbolic and unifying way, which puts awareness in a more humorous perspective, which is much appreciated given the current mood. With his own distinctive creative flair, Brickspacer continues to captivate and keep things fresh.

In other news, Rick Owens Fall 2021 fashion show. On the subject of underthings, the pentagram briefs from the January men’s show reappeared here wrapped around evening clutches, the implication being that these alien females had handled the “unhinged male aggression” that those briefs signified.

"What makes russian artist Stepan Khristoforov (aka Brickspacer) so alluring is the spirit of spontaneity that is engraved in its very identity."

BRICKSPACER: A VISUAL WHIZ AND INNOVATOR FROM MOSCOW

By playing with the reflections, the various dimensions, and perceptive of the urban setting, Thezairul creates effects of depth and volume. In this way, he makes it possible for the real world to cohabit with another world, underground or fantastic, within the same image. As if the dream could take over or add to reality, giving it more density and a new scope.

Perspectives are reminiscent of science fiction films. Who hasn't dreamed of a mirror world, slipped into the sky of their city or a secret universe in the bowels of the streets, under the metro or under the roads? These are the enchanting dreams that Thezairul's photographic montages represent. A surfer gliding on a giant wave above the buildings, giant penguins astonished to discover skyscrapers their size, parallel universes in the reflections of a puddle or in the cracks of the ground... His creativity is limitless!

In mythology, the Greek underworld is an otherworld where souls go after death. The original Greek idea of afterlife is that, at the moment of death, the soul is separated from the corpse, taking on the shape of the former person, and is transported to the entrance of the underworld. Good people and bad people would then separate. The underworld itself—sometimes known as Hades, after its patron god—is described as being either at the outer bounds of the ocean or beneath the depths or ends of the earth. It is considered the dark counterpart to the brightness of Mount Olympus with the kingdom of the dead corresponding to the kingdom of the gods. The Underworld is a realm invisible to the living, made solely for the dead.

In the Greek underworld, the souls of the dead still existed, but they are insubstantial, and flitted around the underworld with no sense of purpose. The dead within the Homeric underworld lack menos, or strength, and therefore they cannot influence those on earth. They also lack phrenes, or wit, and are heedless of what goes on around them and on the earth above them. Their lives in the underworld were very neutral, so all social statuses and political positions were eliminated and no one was able to use their previous lives to their advantage in the underworld.

The idea of progress did not exist in the Greek underworld – at the moment of death, the psyche was frozen, in experience and appearance. The souls in the underworld did not age or really change in any sense. They did not lead any sort of active life in the underworld – they were exactly the same as they were in life. Therefore, those who had died in battle were eternally blood-spattered in the underworld and those who had died peacefully were able to remain that way.

Overall, the Greek dead were considered to be irritable and unpleasant, but not dangerous or malevolent. They grew angry if they felt a hostile presence near their graves and drink offerings were given in order to appease them so as not to anger the dead. Mostly, blood offerings were given, because they needed the essence of life to become communicative and conscious again. This is shown in Homer's Odyssey, where Odysseus had to give blood in order for the souls to interact with him. While in the underworld, the dead passed the time through simple pastimes such as playing games, as shown from objects found in tombs such as dice and game-boards. Grave gifts such as clothing, jewelry, and food were left by the living for use in the underworld as well, since many viewed these gifts to carry over into the underworld. There was not a general consensus as to whether the dead were able to consume food or not. Homer depicted the dead as unable to eat or drink unless they had been summoned; however, some reliefs portray the underworld as having many elaborate feasts. While not completely clear, it is implied that the dead could still have sexual intimacy with another, although no children were produced. The Greeks also showed belief in the possibility of marriage in the underworld, which in a sense describes the Greek underworld having no difference than from their current life.

Lucian described the people of the underworld as simple skeletons. They are indistinguishable from each other, and it is impossible to tell who was wealthy or important in the living world. However, this view of the underworld was not universal – Homer depicts the dead keeping their familiar faces.

Hades itself was free from the concept of time. The dead are aware of both the past and the future, and in poems describing Greek heroes, the dead helped move the plot of the story by prophesying and telling truths unknown to the hero. The only way for humans to communicate with the dead was to suspend time and their normal life to reach Hades, the place beyond immediate perception and human time.

Thezairul plays with urban perceptions to transport us to other dimensions. We seem to be plunged into a world similar to that of the film Inception, only to find ourselves immersed in the artist's images.

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