Miami’s busiest week of the year is about to unfold, with the global jet set due to storm the city just after Thanksgiving for seven straight days of nonstop art and parties anchored by the Art Basel Miami Beach fair. The week is both loved and feared by locals, many of whom worry about how impossible it will be to be everywhere, at once. The FOMO is real.
While first rising to prominence for the actual art, the week has increasingly taken on a tech and web3 vibe, with numerous side events springing up around the city. Whether you want to collect individualized NFTs, test out a decentralized ride-sharing application or just do some good old-fashioned networking, The Block has got you covered. Here’s what we’re looking at:
November 28
- The MiamiWeb3 summit kicks off. Co-hosted by CTH Group and the City of Miami, leaders in venture capital, digital assets, financial services and government will gather to discuss “Going Beyond Crypto to Embrace Web3.” Speakers include City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis, Pomp Investments’ Anthony Pompliano and Doodles CEO Julian Holguin. The event runs through Nov. 30.
- Metaverse Miami, billed as a “web3-native, tokenized Metaverse, NFT & Art innovation conference,” opens and runs through Nov. 30 at the Eden Roc hotel in Miami Beach.
- DCENTRAL Miami will also open its doors at the James L. Knight Center in downtown Miami. It’s billing itself as the “biggest defi and NFT web3 conference” and will feature speakers including Grammy-winning producer Timbaland, Superbowl champion Warren Sapp and Ripple CRO David Schwartz.
November 29
- Phillips X and Particle host an opening party for their week-long “Streams of Consciousness” exhibition at The Sagamore Hotel in South Beach that will feature works from artists including Blake Daniels, Richard Wathen, Ellie Pratt, Gal Schindler, Maria Sainz Rueda, Julia Bennett and Nina Silverberg. Web3 experts, leaders and artists will participate in panels that run December 1-3.
- nft now, Mana Common, and MoonPay open “The Gateway: A Web3 Metropolis,” a five-day festival that will span 12 buildings and two city blocks in the heart of downtown Miami. Immersive installations and activations will include Instagram (Meta), RTFKT (Nike), Christie’s, Porsche, 9dcc (G-Money) and Art Blocks. Register for a free ticket here.
- The installations on the beach at the Faena Hotel are always a highlight of Miami Art Week, with exhibits free and open to the public starting up on Nov. 29 and running through Dec. 4. Random International will unveil a web3-focused work that explores “the impact of technological development on the human condition,” and visitors can collect individualized NFTs on Aorist’s marketplace. You can snag a free ticket to the opening evening here.
November 30
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eMerge Americas, Florida Funders, & Carve Comms host La Casa, an invitation-only event at Cerveceria La Tropical in Wynwood to “underscore the theme that the #MiamiTech community is a welcoming home, featuring a robust support system, for both newcomers and long-standing residents.” Speakers include Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, City of Miami mayor Francis Suarez, sports influencer Jake Paul, Passes CEO Lucy Guo, and Thoma Bravo founder & Managing Partner Orlando Bravo.
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Exchange.ART, a fine art marketplace on Solana, debuts an inaugural presentation at a 6,300-square-foot space next to the Miami Beach Convention Center at 7 p.m. EST. Dubbed “NFTs: Bagatelle or Art?” the exhibition is “designed to explore the intersection of art, technology and emerging cultural trends and bridge the gap from the digital art realm into the physical world.” Curated by Haley Karren, the event will highlight over 40 prominent Solana artists from the Exchange.Art platform including Laura El and John Lê.
December 1
- “Performance in Code: Deciphering Value in Generative Art,” powered by the Tezos blockchain in collaboration with generative art platform fxhash, will be on public view from Dec. 1-3 at Art Basel Miami Beach. The interactive, live-minting experience will enable visitors “to mint and claim a featured generative art NFT in real-time.” The exhibit will feature works from artists including Tyler Boswell, DistCollective and Ivona Tau. Prominent artists throughout the Tezos ecosystem will be featured in a conversation series that “will examine the merging of generative art algorithms and blockchain technology.” Check out the full schedule here.
- BEYOND BASEL, formerly WAGMIAMI, is planning opportunities for web3 community members to connect over three days of digital art displays and music performances. Organized by Trippy Labs in partnership with Club Space and sponsored by MoonPay and Samsung, the festival will take place at Factory Town in Hialeah. Installations throughout the venue will highlight works from artists including Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, Boreta, BT, Fvckrender, Jen Stark, Justin Aversano, Mad Dog Jones, Pussy Riot, Snowfro and ThankYouX. The event runs through December 3.
- Securitize, which has a regulatory compliant platform for issuing and trading digital asset securities, will host investors at the Wynwood Padel Club to discuss investing in fine art, private equity and shares in promising startups.
December 2
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Doodles will be “reimagining” a 20,000-square-foot complex in Wynwood including an outdoor lounge and live entertainment. The “DoodlePutt” experience features a 9-hole mini-putt course “that brings to life the Doodles universe.”
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ARTECHOUSE Miami previews an immersive art exhibition celebrating the Pantone Color of the Year 2023. “The exhibition, which cost $1 million to create, will feature immersive rooms of colors, textures, and interactions that plunge attendees into an array of visual, auditory, and tactile experiences to present not only the Pantone Color of the Year 2023, but also to draw out its many implications.”
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The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA Miami) is going punk, with Yuga Labs’ CryptoPunks hosting a Pussy Riot concert to celebrate the unveiling of Punk #305, which is being donated to the museum’s permanent collection. The free event is open to the public with required RSVP courtesy of CryptoPunks. CryptoPunk holders can receive VIP entry via TokenProof.
December 3
- Art Basel Miami Beach hosts a masterclass entitled “The Story of NFTs” with NYU professor Amy Whitaker and MCA Denver Director Nora Burnett Abrams. The chat is only accessible to Premium+ Card holders and will cover “how to benefit from or engage with NFTs, how they will impact the art sector in the future, and why to collect them.”
- Tech Runs, a basketball-themed web3 community popular with the city’s tech and crypto crowd, is partnering with the National Basketball Players Association to host Tech Runs Basel at SLAM! Miami in Edgewater to share its story “through an interactive art experience surrounding a theme of basketball and sports.”
- Teleport, a decentralized ride-sharing application built by DEC, will unveil the “fantastical and fluorescent” Teleport City, “a bustling, one-night-only metropolis of neon extravagance” where guests “can expect to find themselves in a prism of performance – an art-filled experience that’s part living gallery, part party, part immersive theater.” The company, which just raised $9 million, is hitting Art Basel week to test out its platform and is encouraging users to “skip the Uber and Lyft chaos and Teleport yourself for just $1.” As an Uber or Lyft ride between downtown Miami and the beach can sometimes cost well over $100 at the height of the week’s craziness, you may want to try and sign up here.
December 8
- And if one week of solid action isn’t enough for you, TechnoArt and Selina will welcome a “community of startups, entrepreneurs, investors and industry leaders to experience a new way of creation, a synergistic ‘coming of the minds’ that drives social and economic change through connection, empowerment, and pleasure.” Taking place at the Oasis in Magic City innovation district, TECHNOART LIVE XSELINA 2022 will host more than 40 startups from all around the world who will pitch their ideas.
Don’t Forget…
- If you’re still looking for more to do, keep an eye on a full listing of the week’s tech events being curated by the Miami Hack Week Team. There’s a Telegram group that you can sign up for constant tips and updates.
- While you could stay all week in the world of web3, don’t forget to check out the event that anchors the entire week. It’s worth the ticket price to visit Art Basel Miami Beach and wander up and down the isles of the Miami Beach Convention Center. The art is always stunning, and you never know just how someone might try and eclipse the banana that was taped to a wall and sold for $120,000 back in 2019. There’s also a Conversations program that will “embrace the concepts of hybridity, cross-pollination and community” with 35 speakers from Latin America, the U.S., Canada and Europe. Free tickets can be booked here.
- If you venture over to Art Basel, don’t miss the Design Miami exhibition next door. There are also a number of other art fairs in town including Art Miami, Context, Aqua and Scope. We’re especially looking forward to Pinta Miami, which will inaugurate The Hanger in Coconut Grove with Ibero-American modern and contemporary art. See you there.
(Updates to add Dec. 3 Tech Runs event.)
© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
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