While you have a look at the NFT artwork of Idil Dursun, an architect and CGI artist whose work offers in future dystopia and cyberpunk aesthetics, it imparts an eerily acquainted feeling. A number of sci-fi traditions instantly leap out at you: a little bit of Blade Runner right here, a touch of The Matrix there. However what’s most unsettling concerning the sprawling and seemingly infinite cityscapes of Dursun’s artwork is that they don’t really feel like fantastical impossibilities; they really feel like a model of one thing you’ve already seen.
When you’ve ever walked by way of the middle of a dense city metropolis, you’ve seen bits and items of the weather Dursun seamlessly stitches collectively to construct her CGI environments. Spend just a few weeks in any of the world’s busiest and most populated locations, and also you would possibly start to doubt the sustainability of all of it. Cities like Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, New York, and Istanbul by no means fail to impress upon guests and residents how many individuals stay there.
The final metropolis on that checklist isn’t any exception. With an official inhabitants of almost 16 million individuals (although some put that quantity nearer to twenty million) residing on a small strip of land wedged between two seas, Istanbul’s pure setting has blessed it with pure magnificence and cursed it with restricted assets. Consultants predict that continued enlargement into the town’s northern forests coupled with the continuing growth of large infrastructure initiatives may result in ecological collapse. It’s this environmental context that impressed Dursun to start creating futuristic CGI environments, a course of she dove into after graduating from a college with a level in structure.
“Istanbul inspires me so much,” Dursun defined whereas talking to nft now. “All of Turkey does.” Taking a job at an architectural visualization firm proper out of faculty, Dursun spent her days studying technical expertise she would then take residence and apply to her CGI work at night time. “[That job] helped me learn a lot in terms of learning technical things like software, the executions of post-production, everything. I’d go home and apply those skills and blend them with the skills I found in tutorials online.”
The dystopic cyberpunk parts of Dursun’s CGI work draw from her fascination with subjects like overpopulation and the depletion of pure assets, along with her fellow architect Annibale Siconolfi. “I remember seeing Annibale’s artwork in high school, and I was just terrified,” Dursun defined. “[The scale] of the scenes was just so massive. And I felt that looking at those was not enough. I had to make my own. I had that urge to create.”
How Dursun began in NFTs
Dursun considerably randomly entered the NFT house in early 2021 after she noticed a buddy on social media make a sale on Basis. She didn’t know a lot concerning the crypto artwork world then, solely having heard of CryptoPunks.
“I thought they were ugly as f—k,” Dursun mentioned, laughing. “But now, I love them. Once you understand the culture, it becomes a whole different thing. My friend sent me a Foundation invitation, and I thought, ‘Ok, why not try it? It can’t hurt.’”
Dursun minted her first ever NFT on Basis in March 2021. The piece, referred to as Threshold, attracts on the muse of a selected neighborhood in Istanbul referred to as Mecidiyeköy, one of many metropolis’s most crowded areas. Threshold options decrepit buildings and a bridge supporting a metro prepare because it passes by way of an unlimited gate to a different a part of the town.
“Threshold is a piece that means a lot to me. It was the first time that I felt that I could be an environment concept artist, which is something I’ve wanted to be for a very long time. [That sale] really gave me hope.” She credit the customer of that piece, the well-known NFT neighborhood member NorCal Man, with serving to kickstart her and quite a few different artists’ NFT careers by shopping for their genesis works.
Bringing lore to her NFT work
Dursun defined that she created lots of her earlier works with some unstated lore behind them, with Threshold igniting her want to inform a narrative by way of her work.
“When you look at the artwork, it kind of feels like you’re looking at a graphic novel,” Dursun elaborated. “I started coming up with the idea for this main character, someone trying to escape from this dystopian world. In Threshold, for example, the gate splits the city into two parts. On the dark part, it’s the side of the city whose resources have been drained. And the other part is where the high elites live.”
“The space has had so many bad days, and we never stopped chasing our dreams and appreciating NFT culture.”
idil Dursun
Dursun defined that nearly each different piece she creates is part of the identical lore-based universe. One other one in every of her works, Invasion of the Misplaced Metropolis, is in a separate a part of the world that Threshold inhabits, for instance. Dursun plans to attach the lore of those particular person items sooner or later.
“I wanted these things to feel real,” Dursun emphasised. “They’re not only these pretty nightscapes or dystopian cyberpunk images. There are stories behind them.”
Collaborating with Drift for TIMEPieces
In January 2022, well-known photographer and NFT neighborhood member Isaac “Drift” Wright invited Dursun to TIMEPieces, TIME’s Web3 neighborhood initiative. The 2 collaborated on the publication’s Slices of Time NFT assortment. DRIFT submitted {a photograph} of the New York skyline at daybreak, whereas Dursun submitted a piece that reimagined what New York would possibly appear like 100 years into the long run. In Dursun’s piece, titled Highgardens of NYC, the viewer can discover a CGI rendering of Drift sitting on a ledge within the decrease left nook of the picture, overlooking the entire scene.
“I’m a huge fan of Drift,” Dursun exclaimed. “One day, he just texted me saying he got invited to TIMEPieces. I was so blown away. Working with Drift was such a fun experience because he does these great photographs of cities, and I try to take things to a whole different perspective. It was just a great collaboration for me.”
Reflecting on the most recent crypto winter, Dursun mentioned that the NFT neighborhood in Turkey mirrors what she sees taking place globally, primarily as a result of it has thinned out a bit in current months as fast flippers go away the house.
“People come in and see they can’t make quick money and then leave the space,” Dursun noticed. “I mean, I’ve seen that happen so many times. The space has had so many bad days, and we never stopped chasing our dreams and appreciating NFT culture. That’s so important to me, being a part of the community.”
Dursun’s subsequent mission entails an animation she’s been engaged on continuous for weeks. She’s going to show the work at a bodily exhibition someday within the close to future, however is holding particulars of the mission near the chest in the meanwhile.
The piece represents Dursun’s long-held want to develop her creative repertoire from CGI stills to the animation house. And, after lately watching Netflix’s hit collection Arcane, a manufacturing whose animation type garnered vital acclaim for its distinctive mix of 2D and 3D visuals, she feels much more motivated.
“I hope I can nail it,” Dursun mentioned. “I feel that I’ve reached my limits [with CGI stills], and I want to grow more. I’m also painting the artwork. It’s so much fun working in both 2D and 3D.”
Yow will discover İdil Dursun’s work on Basis, MakersPlace, SuperRare, and Nifty Gateway.
