The Manifesto

This idea was started during the NFT Bull market (Summer 2021) and will probably be released during the Bear market. Notable NFT projects have launched and failed, and the two aspects that seem to be most valuable at the end of the day are utility and community (excluding artists 1/1). I had been to so many crypto conferences and met so many talented folks in the web3 space that I wanted to take the best of all worlds, and try and build an inclusive community based project that could be the framework for a new way to create as a decentralized community. I liked BAYC’s IP rights to holders, but apes were too specific to really do anything super imaginative. I like LOOT’s open ended lore building project and wanted to take the best of those worlds and create a project where each NFT was a departure point for an individual derivative project, or a means to find other cross-genre creators to collaborate with on web3 projects.

Space travel seems to be the place where we all project our collective sub/unconscious. Hollywood typically presents alien worlds in a dystopian lens, as a violent or misunderstood force which needs to be overcome. In many ways this entertainment/brainwash it seems like a reprojection of what happened during Imperialistic exploration/exploitation of the Earth. But when I look at the stars I am filled with awe and wonder what life is like on other planets. So, space is like a blank canvas, the ultimate unknown, where we project our hopes and fears. The LFG Galactic Travel Agency is update on an irl project I did with friends called The Perpetual Epiphany Galactic Travel Agency, where we rendered something as thrilling as space exploration into a very mundane Travel Agency experience. People needed to choose a planet from the guide book, then they needed to get a boarding pass, and then traveler’s insurrance, and liability insurance, etc. All done straight face, but totally based in the realm of imagination. During covid we all were restrained from travel, so as this project was being conceived I was remembering that thrilling experience of exploration and discovering new places.

Many folks want to enter web3 but don’t necessarily know how, or have a community to support them. Some folks want to experiment in this space as a side project and not have it tied to their main body of work, and thats where the avatar/passport comes in to action. Its your ip, so if you build up a brand around that character, you own in. I heard someone say recently that storytelling is the future. You are free to develop who you are, what is origin, where do you come from, where are you going? It is open ended. A poet can use their avatar to release poems about the pixel flowers that bloom under two moon’s light, or a writer can create a short story about travels through black holes, or an Ai artist can prompt and release a guide book of intergalactic temples, a musician can make a glitch album of asteroid sounds, or a textile producer can bring to life line of anti-gravity socks (I leave it up to you and encourage your imagination), and these creators can all find each other and collaborate and build lore together cross disciplinarily. I want to be hands off, and let the community self actualize after I provide the frame work. I will continue to release projects under my avatar (as the Travel Agency itself; passports, luggage, etc.), and find different irl brands to work with to bring into our world. One thing I will lead by example and encourage others to do is my idea of “create to earn” model. You own the IP, so you own the value you create, but also I will give 33% of secondary sales back to a community wallet to support interesting projects coming from with in the community. If every LFGGTA project sent a small % back from secondary sales to this community wallet then we all grow stronger as a community and can achieve a lot. Again, this is a social experiment and I expect the passionate and qualified people in the community to self organize around these ideas.

NFT PFPs are about community, and the idea of LFG/GTA is to cultivate a community of creative dreamers and doers. Additional passports may be issued if there is demand over time. A number of passports will be held back to be gifted as Scholarship or Honorary passports artists/creatives who wish to participate in the creative ecosystem but have missed out on the initial mint. The most important thing is to have fun, be creative, don’t just passively own the NFT in a wallet and collect dust, do something with it, or sell/gift it to someone who will. I’m creating the pieces, but you need to play the game.

-OHR

The Art

I started playing with Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence GAN processes and making NFTs around the same time (Sept. 2020). I was creating new images out of datasets of my own photographs, and often I had the idea of breaking the Ai by feeding it images that were dissimilar just to see what the result would be. For this project I started with a photograph of Dali’s passport from a book of photos my grandfather made with Dali (Dali’s Moustache) as the foundation. After 2 years of COVID I missed my nomadic lifestyle and wanted to make an homage to the joy of travel and setting out to destinations unknown with a one way ticket. In 2011 at Black Rock City I did a public art piece with some friends called “Perpetual Epiphany Galactic Travel Agency”, which was similar in spirit. I wanted to take this energy into the NFT space as an art project that goes beyond a creator making new PFPs, but rather to create and cultivate a community around some open ended questions. What can we dream up together? How is value a reflection of creativity? What will the community dream up that I as an individual can not? My grandfather worked with Dali for 37 years, so I grew up on Surrealism, and one of my favorite games as a kid was the Surrealist game where a piece of paper was folded in 3 and each artist drew one part of a figure, continuing where the previous artist left off, and when everyone was finished it would be unfolded and revealed, often producing unexpected and shocking results. So the GAN technique is something like this for me. I created data sets with some of my favorite painters, photographs of heroes and saints, and some well known PFP projects. So that is the DNA of these images. The computer spits out infinite variations, and I hand pick the most interesting. Then I bring these images into photoshop and adjust the colors, then add them to the Dali passport, and add a holographic looking stamp. As I made each one I have imagined you, the new owner receiving them, and the sparks of your imagination being ignited. Who are they? What is their name? Where are they from? Where are they going? What are they running from/towards? Who will they team up with along the way, and what sort of adventures wait to unfold? In a way, Earth already is one big DNA GAN experiment. Humanity already is the avatar for our consciousness, and we life this life as a choose your own adventure when we become an active co-creator. “Play” for me has always yielded the best artistic results, so thats what I hope to pass on to what ever community forms around this project.

-OHR