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Encrypted Art Characters: Trevor Jones, a "traditional artist" in the encrypted world

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Art gave Trevor Jones a more wonderful life

Author: 0x13, Rhythm BlockBeats

Who is the hottest artist in the crypto art world in 2020? If you've been following crypto art, this is the name that must have popped into your mind when you saw this question: Trevor Jones.

Why do you say that? Let's look at a set of data first. 90ETH;

-June 2020, "The Architect - Satoshi Nakamoto (Founder - Medium Satoshi Ben) has been sold for 27.5 ETH;

-July 2020, Picasso Picasso's Bull" sold for $55,555.55;

-October 2020, Genesis sold for 302.5 ETH;

-November 2020, Would I Lie To You" sold for 152 ETH; "EthBoy" sold for 260ETH sold at the price.

Behind all the works of art that sold at sky-high prices in 2020, there is the same creator——< span style="font-weight: bold;">Trevor Jones.

Academic genius artists

A lot of encrypted artists are engaged in the blockchain industry They have never been in contact with art before, or even received art education. Some of them are engaged in programming, some are engaged in marketing, and even professional baseball players. Create art using blockchain technology and transform into a professional artist.

But Trevor Jones was a serious academic artist.

Trevor Jones is an adventurous Canadian who set off in 1996 and spent three years traveling four continents , and later settled in Scotland, and then began to study in art school. He graduated with honors from Rice School of Art in Edinburgh in 2003 and completed an MA from the University of Edinburgh in 2008.

After graduation, he chose to join Art in Healthcare, a company that provides art for the disabled and aims to use art to improve people's physical and mental Healthy charity and was hired as a drawing lecturer at the Rice School of Art in Edinburgh. From his student days until he officially entered the society and started working, Trevor Jones has been dealing with "art" in his life.

A big gamble: stepping into the encryption field

In 2016, Trevor Jones held a presentation at the OOTB Drill Hall in Edinburgh called Would I Lie to You: The Art of Politics and Propaganda? Art of Politics and Propaganda?), which became a turning point in his artistic career.

At that time, Trevor Jones had held 8 exhibitions and was well-known in the art world, but like most artists , he is still not rich. In the 2016 exhibition, Trevor Jones exhibited 10 portraits of world leaders, which were created with oil paint and garbage found on the street, combined with AR technology to make these works more interesting and topical , aggression and attractiveness. To Trevor Jones' surprise, the value of these works was recognized by a collector who bought them all, and Trevor Jones' account received a large sum of money.

This "windfall" has allowed Trevor Jones to calm down and think about the work and the direction of the next exhibition, and he I also started investing with this income, and thus got to know Bitcoin. However, at the very beginning, Trevor Jones couldn't understand the meaning of "DYOR". He traded his "good-looking cryptocurrency" on the trading platform, and the investment results can be imagined.

“I became obsessed, so I basically spent the rest of the year learning about cryptocurrencies At that time, I basically looked at my phone every three minutes.”

Trevor Jones began to discuss this Fascinated by the crazy ecosystem, he believes that this exciting field is full of world-changing possibilities and wonderful stories are happening every moment, and Trevor Jones will use it as the core of his next exhibition. Since then, he has sought out commercial galleries and other artists entering the crypto space, but at the time, he could hardly find any.

It often takes an artist a whole year to prepare an exhibition, Trevor Jones also spent a whole year in 2018 It is more like a big gamble for him to use time to prepare encryption-themed artistic creations. At that time, no one dared to say whether this theme was attractive to the public or whether it had market value. However, Trevor Jones resolutely made a bet. Fortunately, he won the bet, and since then he has devoted himself to artistic creation.

A pioneer in the combination of technology and art

This is not the first time that Trevor Jones has combined the most advanced technology and art of the times, which may have a lot to do with his native family background.

Trevor Jones' father is a heavy mechanic, so Trevor Jones has been influenced by other artists since he was a child Rarely possessed traits: pragmatism, strong logic, and a natural affinity with technology. Even though he was studying at an art college and studying sensual art, Trevor Jones would often reflect rationally on his own and other people's works.

How can we attract the audience's attention more effectively? How can we create a work that makes people stop and watch?"

Someone has done a study that shows that when a person visits a gallery, he or she looks at each painting for an average of 17 seconds.

Trevor Jones was very distressed by this, so he tried various methods to make the audience spend more time on the work . In 2010, Trevor Jones put a headset next to each painting in his first commercial gallery exhibition "Synaesthesia", and the music played in the headset was the source of inspiration for each abstract painting. This exhibition is more like a "social experiment", and the results of this experiment show that the average viewing market for each work through MP3 and headphones has tripled, from 17 seconds to 68 seconds.

In 2012, Trevor Jones drew and exhibited a large number of QR codes, which could be regarded as a very new technology at that time, visit Readers can scan the QR code to enter the website specially established for the work to learn more. A year later, Trevor Jones was attracted by AR technology and began to create digital art. Although many people believe that this is not actually prolonging the time people spend visiting physical art, but shifting people's attention from physical works to mobile devices.

“But I think the audience is still looking at the art, just engaging with it in a more dimensional way and understanding Art, I hope this encourages them to understand these physical works of art on a deeper level.”

Although Trevor Jones painted The themes, techniques, and styles of the art have often changed over the past ten years, but there is one main thread throughout, that is, to use the most advanced technology of the times to combine with artistic creation.

"Drawing is a visual language and like learning any language, it takes time to develop and refine." Trevor Jones continues to integrate all the "fresh ingredients" together, including AR, video, music, animation and other elements. The development of this Trevor Jones has provided a lot of help, but this also makes art a more complicated art. language. Therefore, Trevor Jones is still constantly learning, learning how to combine these elements organically and mash up information in the most effective way, instead of becoming something that people seem to be confused and complicated.

"Traditional Artists" in the Crypto World

Although Trevor Jones often incorporates advanced technological elements into his works, he still defines himself as a "traditional artist".

“I am excited about the form I paint, composition, texture, colour, line, form, tone, etc. ”

For an artist, whether creating digital art, physical art or a combination of the two, the most The important point is to upgrade the visual language to more clearly convey the message that the artists want to express. Therefore, the study of past and contemporary "traditional art" is an indispensable process.

“To be honest, I don’t think it’s necessary to make a distinction between traditional art and digital art, and it might hinder the development of encrypted art.”

Indeed, art institutions often do not like to accept new things, perhaps because they are pretentious, Perhaps because of all kinds of nepotism, all in all, encryption art, as a fresh product in the art field, is likely to be rejected by art institutions. Therefore, from a long-term perspective, it is potentially harmful to distinguish the two, draw a clear boundary between the two, and direct people's attention to the differences between the two. Therefore, Trevor Jones believes that we might as well put encrypted art in a small corner of a large gallery first, and slowly eliminate the gap between the two. While we are excited about the exponential growth of the encrypted art market, we should not abandon traditional art. Encrypted art and traditional art should learn from each other, learn from each other and make progress.

A bridge between two art worlds

Trevor Jones decided to become an artist at the age of thirty. At that time, he was suffering from depression, standing at the crossroads of life, Trevor Jones was looking for the meaning of life and looking for the direction of life.

“This story sounds too cliché now, but art is indeed an important reason why I can get out of depression. I have never been depressed again.”

It can be said that art has given Trevor Jones a new and more Wonderful life, so he is determined to always strive for art.

Regarding the differences between traditional art and encrypted art, Trevor Jones said that he hopes to be a bridge between the two art worlds. He hopes that in the future, encrypted art will be recognized by more people. Although there is still a long way to go, he is also working hard to create better artwork to bridge this gap.