Mark Choi - Industrial Designer

Client: Internal Project

Category: NFT

2022-2023 | Card79

Fast Company IBD Award | Experimental Design | Notable Mention

Core77 Award | Speculative Design | Notable Mention

Indigo Award | 3D CAD for Graphic Design, VR Design, Digital Art | Gold

BOLD Award IV | BOLDest Blockchain & NFTs | Finalist

Interaction Awards | Expressing | Shortlisted

The Beginning

The Kintsugi Upgrades collection was initially inspired by ancient artifacts found in the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Malopolska’s Virtual Museums. Imagining an ancient world revived with modern technology has been a driving theme in our NFT series. As technology for virtual reality and the metaverse grows more potent, Kintsugi Upgrades is made to represent a clash of the old and the new but ultimately works in service of the future by creating objects that will populate virtual worlds.

We researched the process of kintsugi as well as the rich 3d digital archives that different museums have of their most prized artifacts. We pinpointed specific pieces with unique historical stories and distinct silhouettes to start with. We digitally shattered these artifacts and then began reconstructing them and augmenting them with new digital functionality. The result is an entirely unique creation that is functional once again, but in the case of Kintsugi Upgrades, the original functionality has completely changed.

The unearthed Kashan ware vessel

Broken To Rebuild

One of our goals with this NFT series is to capture the tension between democratizing digital spaces and the unique ability to own and possess digital assets. Each NFT is modeled after a real-world artifact that has been digitally scanned and uploaded online. We then artificially shattered the digital renderings to create a new object with upgraded capabilities that could only exist in the metaverse. While the core utility of the object still serves a purpose, like vases and water containers, the technology required to elevate their functionality is still far from reality. The metaverse will be fraught with these types of challenges, determining what is accessible and what is exclusive in a purely virtual form.
Innovation is a core value of our design studio so we have begun designing for a virtual world that is soon to be our future. Our NFTs are a way to show the innovation behind turning physical assets into digital commodities. They also serve to show the plausibility of transitioning more of our lives from the physical world into the digital.

A Purely Digital Artifact

The purpose of Kintsugi Upgrades is to help old products find new functions. Many of the original artifacts served some form of domestic purpose, like vases, water jugs, and food containers. By transitioning these artifacts into the digital realm through their Kintsugi Upgrades, they can no longer serve the same functional purposes as their real world counterparts. To mediate this tension, we designed each NFT to retain some aspect of a functional purpose, even in the metaverse. There is no current plan to create these NFTs as physical objects because the technology required to create them is not yet possible. For this reason, they remain confined to the metaverse.

The NFT Collection

The collection of 12 Kintsugi Upgrades selects objects from different cultures and historical periods to deconstruct and rebuild. The strength of each concepts are being able to see the beauty of the original historical object and then build off of that as we imagine the futuristic functionality that is embedded into the upgraded parts of the artifact.