I must have met Nick Knight within the metaverse, I realise, because the timer on our free Zoom call ticks down toward zero. Nevertheless, this could have meant venturing into one in every of the few virtual worlds that currently dominate the landscape, where every little thing looks prefer it’s made out of mismatched Lego blocks, working legs are a distant fantasy, and dysfunction reigns supreme. It’s not exactly the perfect meeting place for the renowned photographer, who’s more used to working throughout the exquisite visual worlds of artists like Björk or Alexander McQueen.

Actually, the shortage of attractive options from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, or Fortnite creator Epic, is partly what Knight’s here to debate, as he shares plans for his own metaverse outpost – a virtual version of his IRL fashion and photography space, SHOWstudio. On the forefront of this project is an ongoing collaboration with the model and artist Jazzelle Zanaughtti (higher known by their Instagram handle, @uglyworldwide), which has seen them create 8,000 one-of-a-kind avatars together.

Titled Ikon-1, this expansive series of avatars is crafted in Jazzelle’s image, recreating them as a photorealistic render. The relative freedoms of the digital world, though, allow Knight – working alongside digital artist Tom Wandrag – to warp and deform their body and clothing. In a single image, they’re transformed right into a cyborg wrapped in glistening metal. In one other, their skin is studded with crystals beneath a gravity-defying chest piece.

After all, 8,000 images is rather a lot, and the indisputable fact that Knight is offering the Ikon-1 avatars as NFTs may draw comparisons to the collectable profile picture projects that got here before them. But these are in an entire different realm to CryptoPunks and Bored Apes. Where Ikon-1 fundamentally differs, is in Knight’s commitment to hand-crafting beautiful images, as a substitute of feeding just a few basic attributes into an algorithm and letting it churn out 1000’s of bland iterations. “Attempting to create something that is gorgeous, it’s not only done on the stroke of a brush,” Knight says. “To do anything well is incredibly hard, and it takes work.”

To do that work, Knight assembled a team that also includes the nail artist Marian Newman and the hairstylist Eugene Souleiman, whose Ikon-1 headpieces bring some real-world physicality into the project, via scans of natural materials resembling robin feathers, honey, and eucalyptus bark. The style, meanwhile, comes courtesy of 30 rising digital fashion designers. “I noticed about three years ago, once I was working with Central Saint Martins and London College of Fashion, graduates doing digital design,” Knight explains. “I assumed, three years ago, ‘Well where on Earth are they going to place that? It’s interesting, but what are they going to do with it?’ It’s turn into very clear now what they’ll do with it.”

The Ikon-1 NFTs aren’t only for showing off within the metaverse, either. Knight is intent on expanding the project right into a metaverse headquarters for SHOWstudio, with the assistance of acclaimed architect David Chipperfield (leave the tasteless structures and first school color palette of Mark Zuckerberg’s sad little island on the door). Then, each NFT may even double as a type of ticket, granting holders access to numerous events, resembling virtual photoshoots with Knight and Jazzelle, where they’ll give you the chance to walk across the room and even offer creative input.

Below, Nick Knight and Jazzelle tell Dazed more in regards to the potential of their metaverse project, and why it’s vital to construct its foundations on creativity, as a substitute of corporate greed.

What made you wish to enter the metaverse?

Nick Knight: The conversations began right at first of the pandemic, when there have been numerous conversations about having to exist within the virtual space. So it’s probably been about three years we’ve actually been working on it, however it’s very coherent with SHOWstudio, and what we’ve been doing right since its starting. 

Jazzelle: I used to be initially drawn to the project because [of] how latest the metaverse was to me. And because it was Nick and SHOWstudio who brought the project to me, and [knowing] how much they support creative freedom, I knew that the probabilities for the project were limitless! This project pushes the boundaries of what we consider ‘reality’. It’s exciting due to what number of questions it leaves us with.

Nick Knight: Also, I believe it’s really vital that it shouldn’t be Mark Zuckerberg and a bunch of corporate stuff that shapes the metaverse. That’s not situation. We must always have creativity that doesn’t exist behind a paywall, and that you just’re [not] giving all of your data to access, and just becoming fodder for any person’s promoting demographic.

“It shouldn’t be Mark Zuckerberg and a bunch of corporate stuff that shapes the metaverse… We must always have creativity that doesn’t exist behind a paywall, and that you just’re [not] giving all of your data to access” – Nick Knight

You’ve brought dozens of other artists along for the ride.

Nick Knight: I do think it’s really vital that individuals like Jazzelle, and all artists, engage with the metaverse and begin to creatively shape it. Otherwise it’ll be shaped by commerce. And even worse, it’ll be shaped by the military. 

That is kind of a giant statement, but just go together with me: we’re creating one other civilisation. It’s a unique way of interacting with people [with] a very different set of norms. And if we’re creating a unique space for us as a civilisation, then it shouldn’t be shaped by greed and killing. You may argue the last civilisation was shaped by greed and killing, and it ain’t looking that good in the intervening time. Spiritualism, or art, or whatever you wish to call it… those are the kinds of things which may create and shape this latest civilisation. Not only how can we make one million bucks online.

Are you able to talk more about this concept of spiritualism within the metaverse?

Nick Knight: I used to be just joking with Jazzelle. I said, ‘These [avatars] might think that you just’re their deity. You could be their originator.’ And it’s not too hard to assume that that’s a possibility. AI is excellent at joining up the dots, and there’s a lot information online about deities, about spiritualism, about religion, about belief, about faith. How long before an AI gets all those bits and starts to construct a belief system? An AI God? I realize it’s barely sci-fi, a bit scary and a bit weird. But how long before that happens? I’m sure it’ll do.

There does appear to be a shift toward a latest type of spirituality, and I’m wondering if it’s someway linked to those latest technological frontiers that we don’t quite understand – a latest type of mythmaking?

Nick Knight: I believe that’s the kind of thing I used to be imagining with the marginally flippant comment that Jazzelle’s avatars might have a look at them as in the event that they’re some kind of creator. I do think we’re living through quite a difficult period, and I believe that does change people in so some ways. You possibly can tell it’s not normal, every little thing from Trump, to Brexit, to Ukraine, to the pandemic. It doesn’t feel just like the past. But I’m actually an optimist – I do think we’re heading towards a greater situation. 

The demonization of the longer term… once we discuss AI or cyborgs, regretfully, probably the most frequent images that come to mind are Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator, or HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I believe it’s all the way down to people like myself to try to show that, actually, there are numerous advantages from ourselves otherwise. The metaverse will not be nationalistic, it’s not gender specific; you might be actually way more free to decide on your individual identity.

Jazzelle, how did it feel to see yourself as an avatar for the primary time?

Jazzelle: It was surprisingly… well, surprising. I’ve had one million photos taken of me, so figured it could just be like seeing one other photo or video of myself. But, even though it is a rendering of me, it didn’t feel like me per se. There was a little bit of disconnect from my actual self, and [I] saw it more as my child, or [an] extension of my self.

Nick, do you may have an avatar? What does it appear like?

Nick Knight: I used to be playing a pc game a few weeks ago, and the person I used to be playing against was in the form of a cardboard box. I’m not going there, I’m not going for the cardboard box shape. I’m going for exactly this [Knight wears a sharp black suit with a neat, white pocket square]. Which also raises questions. It’s just as vital, what we appear like [in the metaverse], and what what we appear like says about us. Those things are still a priority, still a difficulty. 

The aesthetics of the metaverse, because it currently exists, do are likely to be very ugly. Why do you’re thinking that that’s?

Nick Knight: The interesting thing is that among the reasons that we do things on this world should not there within the metaverse. For instance, I wear suits from Kilgour. The suit is constructed to not mimic the form of your body. Actually, it does quite the other; the development of the suit is to compensate on your body. So if I’ve got one shoulder which is of course a bit lower than the opposite one, the suit will pad out a bit more. A suit takes an individual’s body and corrects, by structure and padding, to offer you what we see as a sublime line of a suit. But that is sort of the other to what you wish [in the metaverse]. It’s funny, because in fact I could have whatever body I need within the metaverse. Due to this fact, a suit has a really different function.

Loads of the terms that we use for the world are redundant while you get into the metaverse, and truly they’re quite unhelpful. We now have to be very careful, once we move into this space, that we don’t bring unnecessary restraints to the art we’re creating, which aren’t necessarily in that space.

Jazzelle: There are not any bounds within the metaverse. Things don’t must make sense. You possibly can be 100 feet tall one second and transform into, let’s say, a centaur the subsequent. You possibly can be and wear your wildest dreams. It gives space for creatives to manifest probably the most surreal of ideas.

Nick Knight: [The metaverse is] embryonic. It’s early, early days. Weirdly, a variety of it is definitely quite… I wouldn’t say infantile… however it’s shiny colors, it’s shiny surfaces. It doesn’t have the soul or the emotional integrity of our world, of this world that we all know. This world is stuffed with possibilities for change, stuffed with things that don’t work. It’s stuffed with pain, in addition to anger, in addition to love, in addition to all kinds of emotions that we undergo. Should you’re making a world, you don’t have any of that. It’s a kind of benign space. 

“There are not any bounds within the metaverse. Things don’t must make sense. […] It gives space for creatives to manifest probably the most surreal of ideas” – Jazzelle

Do you’re thinking that it’ll stay benign?

Nick Knight: Well, if you happen to go into Meta, and begin writing things about Mark Zuckerberg, in the end, you’ll be told to stop it. Who’s going to let you know to stop it? And the way will that look? And if you happen to don’t stop it, what is going to occur to you? The concept of a jail within the metaverse, or a police of the metaverse, hasn’t been formulated yet. They’re the concepts we’re going to must take care of. As I say, I don’t want people to be formulating them just based on how way more bloody money they’ll make.

I’ve spent about three years working on 8,000 images of Jazzelle, and I put as much care into each one in every of those images as I’d do if it was an image for Gaga, or I used to be doing a Dior campaign, or I used to be doing one in every of my rose pictures. I won’t ever create a picture that I don’t love, I don’t imagine in, and I don’t try perpetually to make pretty much as good as I possibly can. Otherwise what’s the purpose?

It is a very long approach to answer your query of why the metaverse is so ugly in the intervening time. It’s because it’s worthwhile to put care and love into it. Attempting to create something which is gorgeous, it’s not only done on the stroke of a brush. To do anything well is incredibly hard, and it takes work. I believe that is the primary iteration. After all, it’ll change.

You’ve said that fashion itself needs to vary and adapt to the metaverse, if it desires to survive. Why do you’re thinking that that?

Nick Knight: Two very vital reasons. Fashion is in regards to the future, it’s a future predictive medium. We’re creating desire, and what you will wish to appear like, so it needs to be looking into the longer term. The entire strategy of creating fashion imagery to do six month campaigns feels very outdated, considering so way more is occurring. That’s one reason.

The opposite reason is sort of simply that fashion is the third-worst polluter on the planet. We will’t just ignore that. I believe now we have to do something that rectifies that. There was numerous discuss NFTs being polluting, too, however the Ethereum blockchain that I’m working on had a merger back in September, which implies that that is irrelevant now. It’s turn into like one per cent of the quantity of electricity that it used to make use of, so it’s not likely even a consideration. I’ve been waiting for that to occur to launch the gathering. But I believe fashion cannot just greenwash stuff, and say, ‘Yes, yes, we are going to attempt to do a really small diffusion line of sustainable whatever.’

Perhaps we’re gonna have to search out a unique relationship to dressing. Possibly you may have a way of dressing for the metaverse – which is incredibly flamboyant, or moves around, and is way more experimental and kooky – after which a way of dressing while you’re in the remainder of your life. I believe those two things can exist quite happily together. If we wish to have more decisions, and give you the chance to do more things, and evolve, then we shouldn’t be doing it at the fee of the environment. You possibly can’t just dodge it. You possibly can’t keep saying: ’Oh, it’s awful, but we’re gonna do one other collection.’ It doesn’t make any sense. Sooner or later, we’ve got to say: ’Enough.’