Scratching the Surface: How Vincent D'Onofrio, Laurence Fuller, & Sutu Are Setting The NFT World Ablaze

Vincent D’Onofrio and Laurence Fuller are artists to the core. While each cut their creative teeth to varying degrees on the silver screen, their journeys into the world of creative art certainly haven’t ended there. Both have made names for themselves in the world of poetry, and this shared passion has brought them together with famed NFT artist Sutu to collaborate on a fascinating blockchain-based collaborative digital art project.

While Laurence Fuller has been a known name in the blockchain art and NFT space for some time now, Vincent D’Onofrio is, admittedly, a relative NFT novice — particularly when it comes to the technological ins-and-outs of this powerful emerging digital art paradigm.

When Laurence reached out to him about collaborating via a Twitter comment (as revealed in a recent episode of TezTalks Live) in response to a poem he’d posted, Vincent wasn’t just intrigued, he jumped in with both feet. The two soon teamed up with generative NFT Artist Sutu, sparking an ambitious cinematic poetry project known as “Sparrow”. This creative journey has left everyone involved feeling inspired about the possibilities that such human and digital collaborations have to offer.

“Laurence and I are definitely scratching the surface like crazy to get into it as deep as we can, so that we can move forward with this new way of looking at NFTs and how to use AI as a tool without taking the human experience out of it.” — Vincent

“Sparrow”

Sparrow is, on its face, a beautiful film noir short story. But, there’s a lot more to Sparrow than meets the eye. With a fair measure of human input (it’s narrated by D’Onofrio, prominently features his poetry, and includes the likeness of both Vincent, Laurence, and others involved in the process), this film is entirely AI-generated and powered by cutting-edge Tezos blockchain technology.

The choice to realize their shared vision in the Tezos ecosystem was an easy one for Laurence, who had made his move into the space quite some time before this project was originally launched.

“I started using Tezos as a clean option for the technology. That’s how I came to start using Tezos in the first place. So it was only right that our first collaborations with Vincent were on Tezos. There was a huge art community that had built up around it that was here for the art. Our collaborators were in the ecosystem. I think Sutu got some love from the Tezos Foundation for his cube format, and being able to present this in Lisbon was, in part, thanks to Tezos as well.” — Laurence

Sparrow, which is a stunning achievement in and of itself, is really just the first piece of the puzzle for this ambitious project. Unveiled at this year’s NFT Lisbon conference in Portugal, Sparrow stands as the backdrop for a Tezos NFT release known as “Cube”. It’s a fully-immersive, NFT-driven augmented reality experience that allows viewers to experience this stunning film in an extremely unique and novel way.

“The finished piece that everyone’s going to interact with is going to be The Cube. It’s designed by Sutu. It’s six-sided, and you can move it around in AR. Each side is a different room, and you step into that room. Each of the six sides that you go in is a different part of the movie. Each time someone experiences it, it’ll be different, and the audience is like the director.” — Laurence

Cube 6 Sides ~ Laurence x Sutu x Vincent (vimeo.com)

While terms like “fully-immersive, NFT-driven, augmented reality experience” may sound like a tech word salad, it could very well be an integral part of the cinematic and art experience of tomorrow.

As emerging tools like augmented reality, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and NFTs continue their relentless march toward the forefront of the digital consumer experience, there may be a whole lot more of this to come. And, while film fans and art collectors may not have become accustomed to them just yet, it’s a safe bet that they will soon, as artists like Vincent, Laurence, and Sutu push the boundaries of technology, cinematography, and art.

To hear Vincent D’Onofrio tell it, striking out into this fledgling space isn’t just a fiscally responsible choice in the world of 2023, it’s more like an artistic imperative.

" No artist has to convince anybody of anything. There’s an old trick when it comes to being an actor or an artist, and you learn this from the best: do your thing. Just do it. Don’t talk about it. Do it. Don’t try to sell it. Just do it. That’s the task at hand." — Vincent

Cube will be dropping on Tezos NFT marketplace objkt.com in the very near future, and the opportunity to experience and interact with what could very well be a glimpse into the future of cinema, art, and poetry is one that nobody should pass up. I can’t wait to see what else the many talented and inspirational artists on Tezos will create next!