Your monthly non-spammy newsletter from your friends at oio.

Boats, Boats & NFTs

Jesus, Yoda & the Big Ship by Collin Dyer on Rarible

March is a month of transitions. Between winter and spring, first and second quarter and various levels of lockdowns. This month we've been exploring new research tracks, welcomed new members in the studio and tried to absorb the hit from the huge NFT and Suez waves that flooded the world (and our feeds).

Oio News! 🗞

Some news from the oio space.

Welcome Veronika!

This month we welcome our new intern Veronika! Veronika just joined the studio early in March, to bring some new flair to oio's visuals. Veronika is a graphic designer currently based in the mountains of Liechtenstein. She recently finished a CS semester at the ETH Zürich and graduated from Kingston School of art. By working in areas of visual communication and experimental uses of simple technology, she has enjoyed asking what happens if our tongues are extended by pixels or how the trees we live with can tell us whether they are happy or stressed.

Designing {for / with / by} AI

Next week our co-founder Matteo Loglio will be partaking in a panel organised by IDEO Tokyo, about the intersections of Interaction Design and Artificial Intelligence. If you ever wondered about smart toasters stealing your job, you can't miss this event. Roby will be there too. The event is free and public, anyone could join by following the link below.

Oio radio's birthday

Last week we celebrated one full year of oio.radio - oio's emergency broadcast service. What started as a way to connect people during pandemic isolation (and it still kind of is), turned into a full-fledged community-run radio. Markus organised a full day of streaming with our Discord community - 8 hours non-stop of transmissions ranging from weird drone noises, live poetry and Balkan trap. If you are interested in spinning some tunes or hosting your talk show let us know! We are always looking for contributors.

Roby's birthday too!

Last weekend was Roby's birthday. Who the hell is Roby? Well if this is your first time reading our newsletter, just know that Roby is the artificial mind running our Discord, spamming your Instagram and sending those weird emails at 3AM. The last one was a joke. Was it? Who knows. Anyway last weekend was its first birthday - ONE YEAR of Roby. So we are planning something in the next few weeks, stay tuna.

Follow Roby on Instagram

⚡️ Oio Thoughts

Last month it was full-on crypto hype again - social media feeds on any possible platforms bombarded by a rush of crypto content, crypto praises, and crypto critics. Our Discord channel #decentralised was hijacked by all things NFT. To a point where we almost renamed it to #NFT, to meet popular demand (it didn't happen).

In just a few weeks we assisted the boom of crypto art in the mass market, the sudden realisation of its environmental impact, the use of this realisation to harass artist, and the subsequent emergence of alternative NFT platforms as a reaction. A whole Gartner hype cycle in just a few weeks.

However, what we find interesting besides this first art-driven rush, is what other industries and brands are currently doing with NFTs, and what will happen next. In particular, we were fascinated with NBA's early move. If you haven't seen it yet, Topshot is NBA's digital collectibles platform, powered by Dapper Labs (remember CryptoKitties?). NBA Topshot tries to replicate the real-world collectible cards experience - fans can buy card packs and re-sell rare cards on the secondary market, to create their own collection. If you were excited about Upper Decks golden special edition, or wrote letters to Panini to receive the missing 3 stickers for your Serie A album, this is potentially your next (very expensive) addiction.

So who is gonna jump next on this boat? And also, when will the NFT art boat get stuck?