The first time I had contact with the internet I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea what to do with all that potential in my hands. If I had known how much this new technology would change the world and my life, I think I would have paid more attention. The fact is that less than a year later I was already a partner in a website development company and I was already immersed in this new world. The possibility of accessing and breaking down borders for knowledge was transformative. Now everyone was just a click away on my computer. The internet appeared as an opportunity to break down old walls for the free circulation of ideas and brought a new and collaborative spirit. The global village imagined by Marshall McLuhan seemed to come true. Sadly or not, the global village has come to fruition, placing more value on capital accumulation and building dominant technologies that don’t care about strengthening local values and wealth distribution. The rich got richer!
With the second technological wave of the internet, the birth of social networks, we imagine once again that knowledge and content distribution systems would finally be challenged to transform into a new reality. Each of us would own our own cyberspace and social networks would allow for the inclusion of everyone in a new collaborative and participatory environment. Once again hopes were dashed, the paths of this new internet became narrower and concentrated on a few platforms. The constant abuse of privacy and the misuse of knowledge acquired from the behavior of users started an era of disinformation and manipulation in which only profit and market domination mattered. Finally, the internet was born to change the world and was only helping to consolidate the same petty values.
In recent years, with the birth of the concept of web3, new hope has emerged to finally achieve a more democratic, accessible and free internet from the domination of large corporations. It is naive to believe that everything will change so easily and without barriers, but with each new web3 project, new ways of thinking the structures that sustain traditional society are imagined in ways never seen before. The possibility of creating decentralized autonomous organizations is one of the most promising possibilities. Initiatives such as the website Mirror.xyz offer unique tools for our new reality. The world is always changing, and the years of the pandemic have brought new challenges that call for a new structure to face them. Decentralization and reliance on new relationship rules can change the way we see and live in our world. The time has come to value all those who make our daily lives easier, freeing us all from the old chains of the industrial production process. The creative economy, new collaborative and cooperative business models are answers to a world increasingly at risk of self-destruction. We have arrived at the moment of transforming society as a whole for the benefit of ourselves. Each in their sphere of influence, with dedication. And art has always been one of the vehicles of transformation, for making us reflect on our reality as a mirror that shows us who and how we are.
Within our scope, we want to create new opportunities for digital artists in Brazil and Latin America, enabling everyone to earn a decent living from the hard work they do. For the first season of work, we are bringing together artists already established in the local market, with the idea of releasing them across the globe. From the establishment of the gallery as a viable and profitable business, we want to expand access to digital art, through exhibitions, seminars, lectures, classes and inclusive education, live or remotely. Our project was born with an accessible and inclusive proposal that, with your help and a lot of work from all of us, can become a reference for new artists and for the general public.