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DYOR 🔬

Artist Danny Cole is 23 years old now, but he’s been making art since he was a child, and experimenting with his fantastic world and its curious inhabitants, Creature World, since at least 2017. Creature World has been rendered in many forms, from fine art and physical goods to live, interactive exhibitions, NFTs, and fashion. This week, though, it took on new proportions and a novel locale.

Cole and a group of collaborators deposited a 12-foot sculpture called “The Creature” on a luxury residential building overlooking The Highline — an elevated public park that occupies disused railway tracks — in New York City.

This sort of guerilla art exercise has all the hallmarks of Cole’s work — it’s audacious, brash, bold… but also brightly hued, heartwarming, and kinda wholesome (aside from the maybe-or-maybe-not trespassing aspect).

We asked the artist if a contingency plan was in place if the first intended location didn’t work out.

“I try to stay tunnel vision towards my dreams,” Cole explains. “If I get in the mindset that I need a backup, it doesn't push me to treat the stakes as dire enough to see a vision through exactly as intended.”

The building’s management issued a statement saying they “concede the sculpture may have found a new home,” suggesting the orange figure may well be there to stay.

Cole won’t be drawn on what The Creature is made of, saying only, “As far as you should be concerned, it's a real Creature. Art is silly and I am not a savant nor am I trained. My craft is never the how. It's the what.”

What the what is, is also unclear. Is The Creature an act of public service or a savvy exercise in marketing and self-promotion? Is it a gift or an imposition? Can it not be all of these things and more at the same time?

What we do know is that The Creature is a delightful addition to New York’s impressive array of public art and one that wholly sidestepped the usual planning, committees, special interests, politics, and other encumbrances public artworks usually face. That alone makes it an intriguing work.

We asked Cole if further pieces are planned for New York… or other cities? “At this point, I would hope people realize already we are always onto the next. As long as I am alive, I will be striving to put more vibrancy all around me — and all of us.”

To the moon 🌙

• Tezos-based generative art platform fxhash has partnered with AI poetry platform Versa to create limited edition on-chain collectible poems:

• In a massive endorsement of the burgeoning Bitcoin Ordinals movement, someone burned a $95,000 CryptoPunk for a chance at a spot on the allowlist of an Ordinals project called Ordinal Maxi Biz (OMB). The project mints on June 29.

• And in other CryptoPunks news, following the recent sixth anniversary of the project, the team behind it announced a forthcoming book that “untold stories“ about it from the perspective of key collectors and community members:

• Confused about the ApeCoin DAO election process that’s underway and which concludes next week? Our friends at NFTnow break it down with the help of the DAO’s secretary.

• Sticking with the Yuga Labs universe, this week it set a launch date for the first stage in its new project HV-MTL, which it’s been teasing since March. Stage one of the NFT-powered game begins June 29:

• The German equivalent of the CIA — the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) — dropped a collection of 999 canine-themed NFTs called the “Dogs of BND” using coded clues on its Instagram page. The campaign was to recruit cryptocurrency and Web3 experts, and Decrypt reports the good bois minted out.

• Luxury Web3 fashion brand 9dcc sold out a collection of 200 baseball caps made in collaboration with Jeff Staple. The headgear is based on the ITERATION-03 caps 9dcc distributed during NFT.NYC, and are made to look like **checks notes** they’ve been shat on by a pigeon. It’s called fashion Brenda look it up.

• Nike has partnered with Epic Games’ Fortnite to create a new in-game world called Airphoria Island that’s a tribute to sneaker culture (and, of course, to Nike). Players who spend 10 minutes or more exploring the island before June 27 at 8pm ET will receive a digital sneaker, the Air Max 1 ‘86 Back Bling.

Thread of the week 🧵

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Until next time, see you in the metaverse!

Metaversal Badges are your gateway to the world of Metaversal and unlock unique opportunities, events, and surprises while commemorating key events and people in the Web3 universe. Collect yours below while you can.