APENFT Foundation announced that the second call of its $100 million Art Dream Fund would be launched on August 1, and registration would close on October 30. The theme "Post-Human Era" for this year's call seeks to explore whether the future of humanity can transcend traditional human-centered humanism and how people should position themselves in a complex ecosystem consisting of non-human animals, plants, and cyborgs. Winners will share a prize pool of over $100,000. In addition to prizes, they will also enjoy the opportunity to build their art studios in The Sandbox—a metaverse game to be launched by APENFT and TRON—as well as to get involved in annual online and offline exhibitions curated by APENFT, workshops, artist residencies, and other educational events. 

This call is open to artists and creators of any age, nationality, and profession and welcomes digital artworks submitted by both individuals and teams in the forms of video, animation, virtual reality, augmented reality, sound art, and data-driven art, among others. "The most essential quality that distinguishes us from other calls is our core values—great inclusivity and openness—which are also the values that govern the world of NFTs; here, every good work has a chance to be seen," Sydney Xiong, director of the APENFT Foundation, emphasized, "We've always been committed to nurturing and supporting young artists and creators who are open-minded, daring, imaginative, and able to inject fresh vitality into the art sphere."  

TRON x APENFT exhibition hall on The Sandbox

The same openness and inclusivity permeate the review process of the Art Dream Fund. This year's review panel comprises more than 10 artists, curators, experts from auction houses, art professionals, and financial practitioners. Such a composition is expected to introduce opinions from diverse areas such as art, finance, technology, and design, allowing submissions to be assessed from a more comprehensive perspective. Expert juries include Philip Tinari (Director of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art), Jonathan Crockett (Chairman of Asia at Phillips), Josh Baer (Art advisor), Sylvain Levy (Renowned collector), and Conlan Rios (Founder of Async Art); the Nomination and Selection Panel includes Cheng Ran (Contemporary Artist), Laura Shao from Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Kenny Schachter (art writer), Ciara Sun (Co-founder of C² Ventures), Claire Huang (Async Art Advisor&Columnist), Mimi Nguyen (Lecturer at the University of the Arts London). Together with community members, the Nomination and Selection Panel will select 50 contestants for the final round with their votes. 

Themed on "Second Life", the open call in the last year received over 500 artworks, among which Infinite Falling by WMD Studio won the first prize and submissions of Verdi Jackson, Kong, Allyn Belfred, and Chengcheng Shi won the innovation prizes. In January 2022, all winning artworks were sold at the online exhibition and auction event co-hosted by APENFT Foundation and LiveArtX in Cryptovoxels. This year, on top of the three existing awards, APENFT teamed up with Async Art in setting up Async Visual-Audio Award for programmable art to encourage experimentation and innovation in interactive art forms. As Conlan Rios, Founder of Async Art expressed, “Async Art provides tools for everyone to create visual-audio interactive NFTs, without the necessity of mastering coding and programming knowledge. Through Async Visual-Audio Award, we invite artists to join us to turn the existing concept of art on its head and pave the way for a whole new category of programmable media. This is just the start, but we believe these simple building blocks will open up a world of possibilities for the creators out there, and we are really excited to see the genius ways people might use it.” Participants will have opportunities to attend the workshops co-organized by APENFT and Async Art and receive Blueprints-based NFT airdrops from the latter. 

WMD Studio, Infinite Falling (2021), digital animation, source: WMD Studio

Another highlight of this year's Art Dream Fund is that during the call and the selection, APENFT will co-host three online forums with ArtReview to discuss how NFT create new opportunities in the art world, the influence of the metaverse on art creation, and NFT collection and sponsorship, in an effort to foster people's engagement in the NFT and inspire their critical thinking in this regard. The dates and guests of the forums will be unveiled soon. Please stay tuned. 

The open call of the 2022 Art Dream Fund has started and will end on October 30. For more registration details, please visit: artdreamfund.apenft.io. 

About Art Dream Fund

The Art Dream was co-sponsored by H. E. Justin Sun, founder of TRON, and Sydney Xiong, director of APENFT Foundation, in 2021. It aims to identify, nurture and support quality NFT artists and their works with an initial investment of ＄100 million. Apart from the funding support for art creation, the foundation will also advise award winners on marketing, publicity, copyright protection, and legal affairs. The winning artworks will be mapped onto the TRON blockchain through the TRC-721 protocol standard and permanently stored on the TRON public chain and the decentralized storage system-BFTS. With the help of TRON and the APENFT Foundation, talented artists will stand a chance to take Dart in online and offline exhibitions, art fairs, and auctions at home and abroad, collaborate with renowned international brands, and benefit from crossover marketing.

About APENFT Foundation

Officially registered in Singapore on March 29, 2021, APENFT is backed by the underlying technology of the TRON blockchain, with additional support from the world's largest distributed storage system BitTorrent File System (BTFS). At the core of our mission, APENFT aims to facilitate the creator economy while catalyzing both financial and cultural inclusion in the metaverse. Our vision is to integrate both the virtual and the real worlds seamlessly. APENFT Foundation is the world's first NFT art foundation that realizes crossover purchases. We aim to bridge conversations between stakeholders in the traditional art world and the digital art community emerging around NFTs, promote inclusiveness and diversity, broaden our multimedia audience, and increase all members' engagement. In the future, our collection will be made available to the entire community through a series of curated online exhibitions in the metaverse.

About Async Art

Async Art is the premiere platform where users can create, collect, and sell programmable and generative art & music NFTs. Async breaks down the technology barrier many creators face and allows artists of all backgrounds to participate in the Web3 space. 

With our Async Canvas tool, users can create interactive, future-facing art and music without any coding knowledge. The platform provides streamlined solutions for audio and visual creators to make innovative NFTs, including 1/1s and an entire series. The platform encourages artists to experiment and push boundaries in the NFT space. 

About ArtReview

Founded in 1949, ArtReview is one of the world’s leading international contemporary art platform. Aimed at both a specialist and a general audience, it is dedicated to expanding contemporary art’s audience and reach, and tracing the ways it interacts with culture in general. It also provides the most in-depth and the most intimate reading for contemporary art.