Chitchat with a Creator: Sutu
Meet Sutu: an XR artist using art and technology in new ways to tell stories.
Sutu (aka Stuart Campbell) uses art and technology in new ways to tell stories. He has been commissioned by the likes of Marvel, Google and Disney to create VR art for properties such as Doctor Strange and Ready Player One. He has also created three VR documentaries; Inside Manus for SBS, Mind at War for Ryot Films and The Battle of Hamel for the Australian War Memorial. He is also known for his interactive comics including the Webby Award-winning Nawlz, Neomad, Modern Polaxis and the Eisner-nominated These Memories Won’t Last. He holds a Honorary Doctorate of Digital Media from Central Queensland University, is a Sundance and Tribeca Fellow and is the co-founder of EyeJack an Augmented Reality company.
How did you hear about NFT and start your journey?
It was my friends Sean Gardener and Jimi Frew from Emanate who initially roped me in. They invited me to collaborate on an NFT with deadmau5. I had some other friends like the artist Giant Swan from Australia telling me for months that I needed to get into it before that, but I was too busy at the time to get started. However, Sean and Jimi finally twisted my arm and our first drop was incredibly successful; it kinda blew my mind. My whole life I have been making digital projects and always experimenting with ways to monetize my work, I have done kickstarters and sold apps on the App Store, but often these alternative marketplaces relied on additional experiences and merchandising for their value to be seen. It wasn’t until NFTs that native digital work could be owned and valued for what it was.
“In Titan's Light” - The First NFT Drop by Sutu
Could you name one person you admire in the Web3 Space, and tell us why?
I’m grateful to have had the mentoring and support from Coldie - who is a very important and poignant artist in our generation. He has been recognized internationally for his iconic work that often comments on contemporary digital and tech culture. At the same time, he has been an important community builder and very supportive of me personally by providing a lot of advice. He helped me out on the deadmau5 dropped and has collected a bunch of my works over the years. Total legend!
Could you tell us about your company EyeJack and the product you're currently developing?
I’m a digital artist, and I have my personal website at sutueatsflies. I also co-founded a company called EyeJack that creates immersive art experiences and technology. For most processes, I will design a new kind of digital experience for my own art. For example, in the past, I made Augmented Reality comic books, and then I will reverse-engineer that process to develop software that enables other artists to make similar experiences, so from that I made some software that lets anyone make AR books very easily.
Lately at EyeJack, we've been working on a new webXR format which I’m calling a multiverse cube. It’s a cube where each side of the cube shows you a view into a different 3d world. So there are 6 sides of the cube looking into 6 different worlds. And now I’m curating an exhibition featuring 30 artists who are all using our multiverse cube technology to create their own cubes. And the thing about this new format is, it’s XR, meaning it works perfectly in the browser, AR, VR, and it’s a collectible NFT format. I’m super excited about this because it’s my dream to create collectible digital experiences.
Tell us about an artwork you created that is very special to you.
One of my favorite pieces is (Never) Lonely Boy The project is a mix of nostalgia and futurism. It shows a boy playing on a tyre swing in an abandoned lot, and then suddenly he is surrounded by holographic virtual friends. The work often provokes feelings of playfulness and melancholy at the same time. Audiences might appreciate the color and energy of the animations, but ultimately the Boy is still arguably alone in that he is spending his time with virtual friends instead of real friends. For me, it explores the idea of becoming so immersed in our own fantasy worlds, that it can often impact our sense of connection and reality.
(Never) Lonely Boy by Sutu
In addition to art, what else are you interested in?
I’ve been getting into web3 gaming and interactive world-building. I built my first web3 game Circuit Breaker at sutuverse.com. It’s a speed run game where players can play as my Neonz avatars and then run through a 3d neon maze to try to get the fastest time. I recorded the fastest times on the blockchain and have a community leaderboard. I also regularly set bounties for different ways to complete the levels and compete against one another. What I love about it is seeing how crazy good players are at completing their speed runs. There are so many players way better than me, and they are very inventive in how they figure out the fastest time. I'm looking forward to expanding this universe with more levels and beginning to create some original Neonz stories.
A Trailer for Neonz and Circuit Breaker
*Follow Sutu on Twitter.
