Recapping the Artist Panel at Mint and Greet 2022

During the Mint and Greet event last April 23, 2022, the guest of artists shared their insights and professional backgrounds during the panel—how they learned about NFTs and how they minted their collections, their thought processes behind creating their collections, and challenges they faced as NFT creators.

Mint and Greet invited several artists from different genres of art: Visual Art, Music, Brand and Photography.

Mint and Greet Artists Panelists

The panelists that Saturday included Kata, an Art Director for a commercial firm, who has a visual art collection coined as Kata Maran collections available in Tezos blockchain-based OBJKT; Musikavi, musician and performer, that has minted his own music through different blockchain platforms; Jowee Alviar, graphic designer and the co-founder of Team Manila Graphic Design Studio and Team Manila Lifestyle, who represent the brand name genre of art, and minted their limited collections on Rarible and digital posters on OBJKT; and Noel Guevara, an environmental conservationist and photographer by profession, has his photographs minted on Ethereum-based Foundation and Opensea.

Kata

Kata shared her challenges as a crypto artist. When she was starting, she did not know anyone except Jakestudyos and learned from listening to conversations in Twitter Spaces. When she mustered the confidence to speak, the community was helpful enough to coach her on what she needed to improve on her social media, particularly her Twitter bio. The results were almost instantaneous—after 2 and a half days, her collection became completely sold out. From then on, she was confident to market her art collection in the Spaces.

“Sa ngayon, wala namang masyadong problema sa sales. Ang challenge ko naman as an artist is ako mismo—although nasa hiatus ako ngayon—pero soon gagawin (ko) ang phase two ng project ko,” was Kata’s conclusion on her story.

[“For now, there aren’t many problems with sales. The only challenge is myself as an artist—although I am on hiatus right now—soon, I will start phase two of my project,”]

Kata’s inspiration behind Kata Maran is the situation of Filipinos working at home during the pandemic and are daydreaming of visiting beaches and other vacation spots. Her next project would be relevant to Filipinos who are going back to work because of lifting the health protocol in the country.

Musikavi

Musikavi shared that one of his challenges is marketing his music because it is time consuming for him as an artist. He has to wait for his turn to speak in Twitter Spaces and has to gauge if the Space would permit him to perform or if they simply want to chat with him. He had to “Space surf” or go to random Spaces to introduce himself and share his music. 

Musikavi added, “Tapos, internet connection talaga ‘yong sa akin. Live music kasi ako. Most of the time, napapansin ko, ang ginagawa ng mga musicians (is) pineplay nila ang kanilang tracks. Nawawala na ‘yong essence as a performer. Ayon lang ang challenge, ‘yong internet connection at times.”

[“Then, my real challenge is my internet connection. I do live music. Most of the time I notice what other musicians are doing, which is simply playing their pre-recorded tracks. The essence of being a performer is not there. That is my only challenge: my internet connection and time”.]

As a musician, Musikavi has performed a lot of his compositions over numerous Twitter Spaces. Because of people who supported his music and bought his NFTs from different blockchains, he was able to invest on a Macbook for him to improve his craft and create better NFTs. He will continue to compose his music and will create a new collection soon.

Jowee Alviar

Jowee also shared their challenge in the web3 artistry space as well. “We have our own community na bumibili na sa amin ng t-shirt. They don’t have (any) idea about blockchains, NFTs, paano mag-setup ng wallet…, so, ‘yong community na ‘yon, we want to turn them into NFT collectors. So that was the first challenge…”

[“We have our own community that purchases our t-shirts. They have (any) idea about blockchains, NFTs, or how to set up a wallet…, so, for that community, we want to turn them into NFT collectors. So that was the first challenge.”]

Jowee Alviar, together with the team of TeamManila, has been exploring how to market the brand by creating Jose Rizal animated art as their limited collection and creating ethnic inspired arts in Tezos blockchain based platforms and now venturing to other blockchains like NEAR protocol and testing the waters on where their followers could buy their NFT collection and soon have virtual shirts in Decentraland, a virtual world where users have avatars and can purchase blockchain items like shirts that their avatar can wear.

Noel Guevara

“Most of the challenges they have already touched on, but there is one thing that you would not expect to be a big challenge: when you get into NFTs and even marketing (you must) make sure your mental health has been checked. I cannot stress (pun intended) much on this…” Noel stated. 

The process of trying to overbid a bidder on an NFT, figuring out if the price listed for the NFT piece is right, or the back-and-forth row of lessening the price for profit or raising it for the effort exerted, were included in Noel’s discussion on what could affect an NFT creator and collector’s mental health.The excitement of bidding and the anxiety of how much the price of an NFT should cost can affect a person’s emotional and mental state.

Noel Guevara is passionate about conserving the environment and sharing his photographs of wildlife, like sharks, on Opensea and Foundation, which are in the Ethereum blockchain. He is planning to use a more environmentally-friendly blockchain that has less carbon footprint to be aligned to his own advocacy of saving Mother Nature.

With the amazing panel of artists, this encourages artists from different backgrounds and disciplines to see the human side of NFTs and as well as how the process they went through: from creating the concept, promoting their NFT collection either in Twitter Spaces or real life, and building up their community. The message was delivered well by the panelists and therefore there were about 12 individuals who minted their first NFT later that day.

BitPinas’ Mint and Greet was held at Draper Startup House in Makati City last Saturday, April 23. This event was in partnership with CryptoArt Philippines, Ownly, Tezos Philippines, TeamManila and First Mint Fund. The aim of the event is to introduce blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to the attendees of the event and onboard more artists and NFT enthusiasts into NFT through Tezos blockchain at the minting segment of the program to assist them on uploading their genesis pieces.

This article is published on BitPinas: Recapping the Artist Panel at Mint and Greet 2022

Editing by Meghan Lim, Michael Mislos

Images by Ken Surillo

Disclaimer: BitPinas articles and its external content are not financial advice. The team serves to deliver independent, unbiased news to provide information for Philippine-crypto and beyond.