“I try to fight the brain”
An interview with Coldie
by Anna Seaman
Our 21st century society is drowning in images; a dizzying waterfall of visual data giving new meaning to the term ‘rapid eye movement’. What exactly compels our eyes to alight, to dwell, to focus? Branding agencies, UI designers and visual artists around the world seek the magic formula to answer that question and pause our continuous scrolling, competing over microseconds of attention, let alone minutes.
Even in the analogue world, our concentration is assailed from all sides. I personally struggle not to speed-read novels and become twitchy trying to sit through feature length movies. Recently, while visiting a world-class art museum I witnessed streams of people filing past masterpieces as quickly as if they were perusing a supermarket aisle.
This modern-day phenomenon of attention deficit anchors Coldie’s practice. Coldie, who can rightly claim his status as an OG crypto artist has been playing with perception ever since he began making art. As a young child he was fascinated by stereoscopy — a technique used to enable a three-dimensional effect, adding an illusion of depth to a flat image — and after art school, he knew he wanted to follow this path. Thanks to a chance meeting with Mr Ray Zone — member of the Stereo Club of Southern California and the so-called King of 3D comics — Coldie found his “rabbit hole” and his distinctive style was born.
“I think what happens is that a lot of people sidestep art — they can just scroll, even in a physical circumstance such as in an art museum. But when you make art that can only be seen through 3D glasses, you are fully immersed until you take the glasses off,” he said.
“The brain is forced to question what they are looking at and so, stops. It doesn’t take long for a memorable experience to happen so it is just that tiny little bit of time that I am fighting the brain for.”
3D Anaglyph (incl. signed Coldie/Hackatao 3D glasses)
In 2011, Coldie began his career making physical stereoscopic art — primarily anaglyph works (multiple superimposed red and green images) that can only be viewed in full using 3D glasses or lenticular prints, that use different surfaces to produce the illusion of depth. When he moved into crypto themed art in 2017, making his first NFTs in 2018, he had to grapple with perception in a different way.
“All my animation came from the necessity of my audience not being able to see the stereoscopic version. I had to fool the 3D effect for the masses and the best way to do that was to make the art in layers and then take a camera and fly around it to ‘fake’ the effect. I realised then that it gave me a whole new place to explore.”
Coldie’s early entry into crypto art cemented his place as a thought leader and his work is highly prized by collectors and institutions. Although digitally native, his work retains a physicality in both composition and presentation. His portraits are flat, made of collaged paper cut outs and his anaglyph works compel the viewer to seek clarity. This phantom physicality reaches out from whatever screen that displays Coldie’s work.
There is an obvious disconnect between reality and perception. His portrait of Vitalik Buterin (his Decentral Eyes series genesis) is obviously not intended as a lifelike rendition of Ethereum’s co-founder. Regardless, the brain pauses; this is flat but has depth, is clearly unreal yet familiar, a reverse-parallax regard from two eyes staring back. Uncanny and unique.
“Precisely,” Coldie laughed. “That’s the part of the brain I’m trying to access, because that makes you stop and think.”
A self-confessed story teller, whose creative axiom is that his work must “have a message, or open up people’s minds”, Coldie is also an advocate for curation in the crypto space, broadcasting a podcast on the subject during 2019 and 2020.
“I have such a reverence for stereoscopics in general but they are not the art, they are an addition to the art. It is a throwback to old comic books, to Rauschenberg and all the collage artists of the 60s — there is a reverence to flat design,” he said.
“I am always using my design to pay homage to the past but to keep it current. And the main thing is that it has to have a point. I want to reach people.”
With a Twitter following at more than 59,000 and with his work regularly snapped up by the leading collectors in the space, one thing is for sure, Coldie has achieved that part of his vision.
