The Art of Ethereal: Bringing Cellarius to Life

Whose future is it? Hers, and his, and theirs, and ours.

A sampling of the Cellarius faction portraits from our Ethereal Summit pop-up.

On May 11 and 12, our parent company ConsenSys hosted the third Ethereal Summit at the Knockdown Center in Queens, New York and invited Cellarius to participate, along with many other spokes from our Mesh. The creators of Ethereal wanted to build a different kind of crypto conference. Since this one explored the intersection of blockchain and the arts, we wanted to showcase that aspect of our project and spread the word in an unexpected way. We set up shop in “The Crypt,” a semi-outdoor concrete space with a distinctive patina that felt perfect for the Cellarius blockpunk aesthetic.

The Knockdown Center’s very blockpunk Crypt space. We displayed some not-yet-published art commissions.

We teamed with some artists from a group called Drawn Together NYC: Boris Rasin, Michael Scarola, Derrick Dent, and Rosalind Bunting. Drawn Together’s talented roster of artists creates design concepts, multimedia experiences, and fine art solutions for a wide range of projects and businesses, and they understood what we are going for right away.

The artists of Drawn Together NYC, from left to right: Boris Rasin, Rosalind Bunting, Derrick Dent, and Michael Scarola.

Boris, Michael, and Derrick created custom, in-universe faction portraits of Ethereal attendees. The CX Universe Guide imagines that nation-states and traditional economies will break down after the Cellarius AI seizes control of Earth’s energy sources and communication channels in 2084. In the absence of familiar institutions and technologies, people will begin to form factions according to their allegiance to Cellarius. We wanted to get attendees thinking about their own relationships to technology and start dreaming up characters to explore in the Cellarius universe. So we posed the question: which faction do you think you would be?

Boris drew background art for four different factions:

The 4 faction backgrounds, clockwise from top left: Bucolic, Elite, Ad-Hoc, Homotranscendus.

Bucolic: Bucolics are AI skeptics who reject technology and live on the peripheries of megacities, observing from the outside and farming small pockets of fertile soil. Though their process is completely manual and their harvests are meager, they feel a great satisfaction from working with their own hands, in stark contrast to the highly automated farming processes elsewhere.

Ad-Hoc: Ad-Hocs live off the Cellarius grid and make their own augmentations and tools with scrap pieces they scavenge and rework. Comprised of mostly poor and marginalized groups, they use ingenuity and what little tech they can access to get by.

Elite: The crypto-Elites of the future are pro-Cellarius and experiment with AI and aesthetic enhancements. Living in the highest levels of the megacities, Elites have access to bleeding-edge technology. They are known for having lifespans beyond the normal range of humans, and enjoy the neural boost that comes with AI coupling.

Homotranscendus: During the Reformation, it wasn’t just the home habitat that was transformed forever, but also humankind itself. The campaign was more than just re-imagining the economic machinery of the planet Earth, but also a re-imagining of the of the human brain and body. Through Cellarius-engineered advancements, the next evolution of humanity was born: Homotranscendus. Homotranscendi are fully integrated with AI and no longer depend on their human forms to express consciousness and gather information.

We even got a portrait of ConsenSys’s own Joe Lubin, who wore a custom Cellarius Ethereal t-shirt design during his keynote address (thanks, Joe!). Something tells us that Joe would be a Homotranscendus.

Future Homotranscendus Joe Lubin on Mars.

Reimagining how familiar scenarios from your own life play out in a future setting or speculating about how you might react to a superintelligent AI’s takeover of the world is a great place to start inventing your own ideas in the world of Cellarius. We hope some attendees will be inspired to start making art and stories based on their portraits!

Every single Ethereal portrait, as arranged by our designer, Octavian.

As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, we are also commissioning works from artists we admire to create the first round of content for the Cellarius universe. We decided to commission a mural that would take shape over the two days of the Summit and give attendees a behind-the-scenes look at the process of making a large-scale landscape painting. The design depicts what the Knockdown Center might look like a century from now, in 2118. Visitors to the Crypt got a chance to watch Rosalind transform the canvas from a faint pencil sketch into an impressive and detailed final product:

Rosalind’s “Knockdown Center in 2118” painting took shape over two days.

Rosalind & Boris outlined the sketch first, then Rosalind added color, starting with the future-NYC background.

We hope that the Cellarius platform will allow experienced artists and creators to get directly in touch with their fan bases and share some glimpses of their artistic process, just as Rosalind did with her live painting.

The Drawn Together NYC artists got to learn more about the possibilities of blockchain and decentralization for creatives in the process of chatting with the attendees. Michael noted, “There were so many passionate and interesting people from all over the world that came through. And they had as much fun as we did learning about and playing in the Cellarius world.” Rosalind agreed: “Probably my favorite thing I learnt about over the Summit was how Cellarius involves the creative talents of so many more artists in their company, and loved seeing some of their amazing artwork. Can’t wait to see more!”

We were also excited that the long-term goals of the Cellarius project resonated with the Drawn Together NYC artists. Derrick said, “This was probably the coolest on-site portrait job I’ve ever worked on. I had a great time learning about the Cellarius project and the potential for a sprawling, community-shaped open sci-fi world. It was even cooler to have our portrait work used as an onboarding tool for visitors. People immediately took to creating their own story within this world, and that says a lot about how exciting this could be for folks who are creatively inclined.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

As Boris told us, “The more I spoke to the pop-up team and event attendees about the concept behind this project, the more it occurred to me that this is a game changer. Cellarius and the other projects from ConsenSys are sure to revolutionize our ecosystem in ways we can’t even begin to comprehend. It’s a challenge to explain exactly what this project is, because the underlying platform allows for limitless opportunities of invention, inspiration, and collaboration. Cellarius is whatever its contributors will it to be, and frankly, that’s a fundamentally crazy idea!”

That’s just the point: blockchain enthusiasts can become artists and use storytelling to push the conceptual limits of technology. Artists can use the platform to explore the possibilities of decentralization and blockchain for sharing and protecting their work. We can build it together. Cellarius is whatever our community of contributors wills it to be.