Create Afrofuturist Art for Bitcoin

Create Afrofuturist art showing a better future. Ten best submissions earn $100 in BTC, and will be featured as NFTs.

By Mwiya Musokotwane

Note: This post was originally created at 1729.com which has evolved into thenetworkstate.com.

Last June, we hosted the African Renaissance Conference (#ARC20). Technological progressives from all over the continent and around the world participated. Close to 1500 people joined us to chat about Africa’s future. We’re now preparing to host #ARC21, and as part of that process we’re rebuilding the New African Renaissance website.

Here’s where things get interesting: we want to feature amazing Afrofuturist illustrations and artwork on the new website, and we'd like to crowdsource the work. If you're a digital artist and would like your work featured on our website – this task is for you! Wakanda is absolutely a starting place, but we're excited to see your vision of the Afrofuturist aesthetic.

Now, of course Wakanda does not (yet) exist. But artists often predict the type of future that awaits the rest of humanity. It could be Leonardo sketching his vision for flying machines, hundreds of years before the invention of helicopters. Or Back To the Future II's video chat, decades before such a thing became common. Their predictions are often not exact, but they are both inspiring and indicative of what's to be expected in the future. We're interested in seeing what artists today believe an optimistic African future looks like, a vision of a Bright Sun rather than the dystopianism of a Black Mirror.

✅ Task: Earn $100 in BTC

Create Afro-futurist art showing a future enhanced by technology

We’re looking for ten amazing visualizations of an optimistic African Future. 1729 will provide a prize of $1000 in BTC for the best 10 works of art ($100/design). In addition to the BTC prize, New African Renaissance will help the winners of the prizes turn their pieces of artwork into NFTs that we’ll help promote.

We can’t promise a huge windfall, but we can try to help great artists get a shot at helping their work gain exposure. You get the 1729 prize and you get to auction the art as an NFT. Each winning design will be featured on the redesigned New African Renaissance website, with links provided to artist profiles.

As conceptual references, if you’d like to learn more about NFTs, please check this article out. And if you haven't already done so, please read the Black Paper and Kilimanjaro; they describe the type of future we'd like to see in Africa.

As an aesthetic guide, please see below. You could choose to do something entirely different, so don't take the suggested aesthetics as a straitjacket – we encourage you to build your own style and vision. With that said, here are a few ideas:

1. The sun rising on a Wakanda style metropolis in Africa with flying cars moving around; here is a potential concept for aesthetic and another for perspective

2. Flexing; an example could be two men and women clothed in traditional Edo/Akan/Xhosa/Maasai (one per individual) apparel – having dinner in an upscale hotel

3. Several flying cars flying past Mount Kilimanjaro as Maasai herdsmen watch over their cattle and pilot a drone; here's an example of a great aesthetic

4. Vast farm with fleet of hovering/flying combine harvesters with turbines spinning nearby

5. Illustration of a man/woman inside factory assembly line with robots manufacturing something

6. Woman in afro looking into a microscope with a halo around head

7. Artist painting on canvas; listening to music in their Afro-futurist studio

8. Artist performing on concert stage

9. Model walking on a catwalk wearing African haute-couture

10. Female soldier kneeling to give a flower to a young child holding a football; quinjet style aircraft nearby with other soldiers walking out

We’re really excited to see your vision of the future of Africa! Once you create your art, simply submit your entry via the form below. Be sure to do so before June 10th, 2021. If your piece makes the top, we'll be sure to get in touch with you.‌

🏆 Winners: Best Afrofuturist Art

A total of ten submissions received $100 in Bitcoin for their Afrofuturist Art.

One of the winning submissions was a short story. This is the story of Osun: https://www.notion.so/Re-Imagining-Afro-futurism-