1) Tell us more about yourself.
Hi, I’m Yazid! Technologist by day and artist by night. I’ve been working in the field of technology for more than a decade. I was a programmer in the early part of my career and transitioned to managing IT projects and running R&D and innovation groups. In my spare time I used to try to do more creative endeavors such as designing and creating apps and websites either for fun or as freelance gigs. I’m also a father to two young boys.
2) How did you start your NFT journey?
I was doing research for work, trying to understand trends I was observing in other parts of the world where there was an emergence of new investors and investment assets. I was already familiar with blockchain from previous R&D work but I had not caught up with the latest use case of applying it for tokenizing digital artworks. I’m the type to get my hands dirty whenever I’m trying to really learn something so at one point I decided I was going to go through the process of minting something as an NFT so I could understand it better. In doing so I ended up discovering an entire new world in art.
3) What are the success and challenges you face as an NFT artist?
I consider myself very fortunate to have achieved what I have achieved so far. My work has been collected by more than 1000 individuals around the world, exhibited in shows, museums, and 2 of the largest art fairs in the world this year—Art Basel Hong Kong and Miami Beach, published in books, released on the premier destination for generative art NFTs, Art Blocks, but best of all I’ve gotten to interact, learn from, and even collaborate with some of the most respected and admired artists in the space. And I have NFTs to thank for all of this.
Of course it comes with its challenges though. Primarily, time. I have a full-time job and a young family, so the time that I have to do art can be quite limited. Moreover, most of the activity in the global NFT scene happens in the west, which for us means we may often need to cater to those timezones. Some parts of the world only wakes up when it’s midnight here.
Secondly, despite what you might think by reading about NFTs in the media, it’s not like you just mint something and your art will be collected in the masses and you get to “roll in the dough”, especially if you’re just starting out. It will take time for you establish yourself as an artist, find your style and voice, and develop relationships with the community. But if making art is something that gives you personal satisfaction, the important thing is just to start doing it and to keep at it and continue to engage with the community. You may find that NFTs are a perfect vehicle to connect you to a global audience and allow you to capture value for your creations from potential supporters without needing to depend on any payment platforms, galleries, gatekeepers, or geographical location.
Lastly, I will just say that there are challenges that come from crypto itself. Putting aside the matter of its general acceptance/recognition or inherent price volatility, unfortunately there’s still some misunderstandings or stigma associated to it. Yes scams are very common in crypto and there can be many exploitive NFT projects with art that many would deem questionable, but this should not be equated to all of crypto/NFTs. There is a wealth of beautiful art from amazing artists out there that are being tokenized into NFTs.
4) What are your thoughts on the NFT art scene in Asia?
It’s incredible. A few months after entering the scene I discovered the Asian cryptoart scene through Crypto Art Week Asia. I remotely joined a conference organized by them in 2021 as the only Bruneian representative at the time and I was amazed by the amount of talent and creativity coming from this region. It inspired me to establish BruneiNFT so that a community could be formed where people could support each other and learn more about NFTs. I also ended up establishing a “mint fund”—a modest pool of funds dedicated to help newcomers mint their first NFTs—which I’m proud to say has been used to help some of my favorite local artists here enter the scene. I’ve stopped proactively reaching out to local artists to encourage them to get into NFTs due to some of the potential negative connotations, and I didn’t want to give the impression that I have anything to gain personally out of the outreach, but if there are people out there that are willing to learn, willing to put in the work, and to do it because they love making art not because they want to make a quick buck, come join us in the Discord. We’ll help you get setup. After having seen some of the work coming out of our neighbors, I have to say that we are not lacking the talent. It’s definitely there. But a lot of us just aren’t participating in the global landscape. If anything, because of our small population, we need more of us to be trying. And I believe NFTs can help us break through some of those barriers and act as an equalizer.
5) Tell us more about your work, past and current, especially those that you have made as NFTs.
My work is mostly comprised of generative art. This is a medium of art which involves the use of randomness and/or some form of procedural or autonomous systems in the creation of the art. For me this means I create art using code and algorithms. Generative art isn’t necessarily a new medium too, it’s been around since the 60s, but it has found renewed interest with NFTs because the blockchain provides a good source for unique randomness, which is generally an element in generative art.
One of the forms of generative art popularized by NFTs has come to be known as “long form” generative art. This is where the artist creates a computer program that is capable of producing a large number of random unique outputs, then collectors will mint from this project until the pre-determined maximum number of outputs are exhausted. I publish projects of this nature on the Ethereum and Tezos blockchains.
My art is generally of a minimalist and abstract aesthetic, and I like to explore themes of meaning, perception, and the blurry lines between analog/digital, man/machine.
6) Name some of your favorite NFT artists and pieces that you have collected.
Ever since getting into NFTs I’ve also gotten to collect so much art (one of the best things about NFTs if you ask me) so it’s super hard to pick favorites, but there are some pieces which caught my eye early on before I could afford them and I came back to collect them after some time. They are either pieces from some of my favorite artists like XCOPY, Manoloide, Nicolas Sassoon, Matt DesLauriers, Dmitri Cherniak, or pieces that are representative of the early NFT/crypto scene (categorized by some as “cryptoart”)—pieces like Bitcoin Angel by Trevor Jones, Last Stand of the Nation State by Slimesunday, or Hashmasks. And of course I’m happy to say that I’ve collected the early mints of most of the Bruneian NFT artists!
7) How do you see the future of NFTs.
I think it’ll be everywhere. Even Instagram has started experimenting with incorporating NFTs natively into the app. In the future I believe we’ll all be interacting with some form of NFT technology and we won’t even know it. The same as how we’re exposed to AI when we browse and watch Netflix yet most people are completely oblivious to it. From a technological standpoint, so far NFTs have proven to be the best and most viable solution to support the concept of ownership in the digital realm, so I don’t think it’s going anywhere anytime soon. If anything, it’s only just started.