AI Dreams for My Drone Sister 2.0 is a research project developed by Anna Nazo as part of the Web3 for the Arts and Culture (WAC) Fellowship, supported by the Tezos Foundation.

This project operates as a case study to explore Web3 AI-Neurotech performance art with visitor participation in virtual environments, using 360-degree imaging that are turned into generative NFTs. It is created in collaboration with the developer Vincent Rebers of the Bureau of Extraordinary Affairs, New Art City virtual gallery, and the Tezos-based platform fx(hash).

Culminated in a virtual exhibition and, its first in a series, NFTs drop, it will be launched on Tuesday 30th May 2023 at 18:02 BST with a limited edition of 22 NFTs. These will be used as a fundraiser for an impact-driven collaborative art-research project SWERVE. SWERVE investigates radically different ethical-aesthetic narrative ecologies in collaboration with Indigenous communities, enabling critical cross-cultural ways of knowledge production through innovative storytelling in more than human worlds.

Using the New Art City virtual environment as an entry point, it allows the user to navigate the space and choose one video-performance work for each in a series of NFT drops. By clicking on that video and following the link to the fxhash project page, the user can generate a unique NFT. Each NFT contains an excerpt from the initial video-performance, based on the user’s unique hash assigned by the fxhash platform. Each NFT also includes a line of AI poetry linked to the video excerpt generated.

Link to the fxhash project page for NFT Edition 1.0: https://www.fxhash.xyz/generative/slug/ai-dreams-for-my-drone-sister-2.0

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AI Dreams for My Drone Sister 2.0 is an iteration of Anna Nazo’s virtual solo exhibition AI Dreams for My Drone Sister, New Art City Festival (2022).

ANNA NAZO (she/they) is a London-based performance artist, researcher/educator whose practice engages computing technologies, AI in contemporary philosophy-poetics and art practice-led science. Her current focus is on AI & narrative ecologies including non-Western onto-epistemologies, neurotechnology, drone storytelling and web3. Anna’s work includes a live phygital audiovisual performance that relies on aviation technology via drones (swarm intelligence), neurotechnology (EEG headsets), spoken word AI poetry, and compound CGI (brainwave imaging, 360-degree imaging, AI-systems). It investigates questions of distributed forms of sensuousness, digital queer ecologies, and ethics of technology.
Over the last 8 years Anna’s professional practice and artistic research have spanned over 13 countries. She has exhibited and performed at globally leading cultural institutions in the UK and internationally including WRO Biennale (2021), FORMAT International Photography Festival (2021), Performistanbul (2020), Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (2019), National Museum of Art of Latvia/ RIXC Art Science Festival (2019), Angewandte Innovation Laboratory (2019), ArtFutura Festival (2019), Ars Electronica Festival (2018), CRXSS PLATFXRM Festival of Street Culture (2018), Victoria & Albert Museum’s Digital Futures (2016; 2018), MozEx exhibition curated by the Tate and V&A (2016), Tate Liverpool (2016), NYC Creative Tech Week (2016).
Currently a Research Tutor at the Royal College of Art (UK), Anna is also a founder of SWERVE, an impact-driven collaborative performance art research initiative.

SWERVE was initiated in 2021 as part of the Terra Carta Design Lab, a competition to develop solutions to the climate crisis, conceived by King Charles III and Sir Jony Ive within the Sustainable Markets Initiative.

AI DREAMS FOR MY DRONE SISTER is a virtual exhibition, launched as part of New Art City Festival in 2022. It provides a glimpse at a retrospective of Anna Nazo’s performances with the drone, AI poetry and brainwave CGI. This retrospective includes drone storytelling (follow the drones to read 'Artificial Grief: Distribution of the Sensuous' book chapter written by Anna), 360-degree archival video materials and AI poetry excerpts from the performances Flame 2.0, Devia, Granular Silt, Fractal Lymph, Phasing Never and Blue. The 3D environment was designed in collaboration with Megan Irusta Cornet.

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