Takashi Murakami will be releasing his long-awaited NFT series entitled Murakami.Flowers into the metaverse this Lunar New Year. Murakami was born in the year of the tiger, which is coming around this year for the fifth time in his lifetime on February 1—and better yet, this date also happens to be his 60th birthday.
NFT stands for ‘non-fungible token’ and can take the form of any original digital content–art, music, videos, AI, etc.– that can be sold and traded online. In the art world, NFTs act like a new way to trade fine art but the original artworks are digital.
The Murakami.Flowers project is aimed to represent Murakami’s career as a painter. From studying traditional Japanese painting (Nihonga) in university to his career as a contemporary artist in America, Murakami is now stepping into the metaverse
There has been an element of secrecy and surprise surrounding this project, and the only information available stems primarily from the Murakami.Flowers official website, from him posting updates about the project to the official Instagram for the project, @murakami.flower2022, and his personal Instagram account @takashipom.
Murakami posted to @murakami.flower2022 on January 26, 2022, that this series of NFTs will all be pixel art, in an attempt to “digest what NFT art means in the context of old-school art and to present it as conceptual art to the contemporary art world proper.”
A soundtrack will be part of the Murakami.Flowers project. Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor and Daft Punk will be featured. It’s a surprise what Daft Punk’s role in the soundtrack is specifically, but fans are really excited about it nonetheless.
Murakami’s Awakening to the Metaverse
Murakami wrote that his “awakening” to the metaverse happened while watching his children play Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch in the summer of 2020:
“This experience was similar to the one I had when I first encountered contemporary art at the age of 26, when I was shocked by how there was always a gap between what you saw and the concept and realized that once I understood the context behind the gap, the artworks took on entirely different appearances. I shuddered with a sensation that made me want to roar in excitement.” (Taken from the essay on the official Murakami.Flowers website)
After releasing 108 images in Spring 2021 entitled “Murakami.Flowers on Open Sea,” Murakami quickly realized that he had not fully grasped what the world of NFTs meant and pulled all his work down before making any sales.
He has since traded cryptocurrencies to further understand the relationship between crypto and traditional currencies.
But in December 2021, Murakami released Clone X (a series of NFT avatars) with RTFKT, a digital wearables company. Partnering with the young and motivated people at RTFKT gave Murakami a greater insight into what the metaverse was all about, which helped him shape his own NFT project for Murakami.Flowers.
Despite all of his experience so far with the metaverse, Murakami has expressed that he still has a lot to learn.
Want to hear more about what’s to come with Murakami.Flowers? Sign up for the newsletter at MURAKAMI.FLOWERS (kaikaikiki.com) and follow @takashipom and @murakami.flower2022 on Instagram.
Music, art writer
