Henlo doges, I’m Dundo; a member of the Feisty NFD community, and a proud holder of one of the Doge Day Bronze Medallions (11/18) - handed to me by Salad Pingers over a coffee a week ago.
Over that very same coffee we discussed this proposal, which was first posted and discussed in NFD (Feisty Doge) community call last week. The proposal received support, and Path suggested that we post it here as well and hear your thoughts, feedback, and ask if OTD would be open to collaborating and co-contributing on the initiative.
I’m also one of the crew at Oshi Gallery - a place many local artists call home. Considering all the pieces that simply came together organically - this proposal was a natural next step!
I do apologize for the length of the proposal, and if I haven’t followed your very well designed template and proposal flow in this first draft. There is a bit of context I had to cover, and since this is the “Bark Tank” - I look forward to your feedback on how I can improve the proposal.
Here we go!
Doge: An Exhibition
Provenance of internet culture: a week-long exhibition. IRL + online.
Outcome:
A grassroots IRL+URL exhibition featuring the original Zora Doge(s) at Oshi Gallery in Melbourne, will showcase the “original” Doge for the first time, attracting attention from the broader community beyond web3, through art, story-telling, and education.
This project is successful when it captures the attention, and attendance, from the broader community, beyond web3, and media coverage organically, as a culturally significant event.
After all, Doge is the most iconic picture that the Internet has ever embraced, and it has an equally remarkable story. The exhibition will be displaying the one and only original(s). Another goal is to get the broader public, writers, journalists, and media, to take the time to understand just how much wow this really is, and share this with their communities.
Doge is a genuine story worth sharing because it is significant at many levels. This exhibition would be the first IRL+URL manifestation of this.
Benefits for DOG and NFD
Both are grassroots movements, communities of people who care about the culture, the art, connection, positive relationships and action. These are some of the highest values we should nurture, both on the internet and IRL.
Often, the internet is seen as a “negative space” - full of bad news, fake news, over consumption, bad faith etc. It is stories like the one of Doge that showcase the internet as a force for good - open space allowing people like us to do remarkable things for others.
It’s worth telling this story. And if the story is heard, and well received, the benefits will flow back to DOG and NFD in the form of attention, trust, and genuine interest from people that are either on the sidelines, or are yet to even enter this crazy world of tokens, DAOs, and internet goodness.
More tangible benefits for DOG tokens might include utility and awareness. For example, Oshi Gallery features museum-grade fine art printing on site with embedded NFC chips (DxP) that can link to anything - including NFT urls. We could, for example, make prints available to purchase in DOG and NFD. This could truly capture the attention, and become a “click” moment for the trad art and broader community members.
“Wait, what? I am buying a physical print of the original Doge by a currency made up from fractions of the picture itself.
Showcasing Pixels - at a gallery; how they work, making one of the Art Frames interactive, allowing people to explore pixels, learn about how it represents community ownership, and sense of belonging - is also something we should prepare and deliver.
These, and several other ideas can be discussed further, once we receive your initial feedback on the proposal and funding.
How
A week-long exhibition will utilize all 3 main areas of the gallery for different purposes, as well as the Oshi metaverse gallery in Voxels - an exact replica of Oshi. I have included plenty of details, videos, and photos of the gallery further down in this proposal.
The event is a great opportunity to capture stories, engaging video content, loads of wow pictures, and statements and stories from people attending.
Diving into the story of cultural provenance, the exhibition will showcase 8+1 of the legendary JPEGs, their stories; where they are now. Accompanying the exhibition, there will be storytelling, educational content, printed material and QR codes to links that dive deeper.
A large wall graphic with the key events and milestones in Doge’s history will be included.
On the opening day there will be a showcase event; first hand stories and experiences of the recent pilgrimage to Japan, how communities came together, and the uncovering of the statue. Salad Pingers could be the one to tell the story (he is in Melbourne), in addition to all the wonderful video content already created, and maybe some new content prepared. This could also be an opportunity to spread the word about the documentary, and other initiatives.
The communities that have gathered around individual Doge artifacts can be showcased further. NFD, OTD, etc. The human stories, what they stand for, what kind of work they focus on, primarily, but also how NFTs and tokens enable this to happen, out in the open. Freely.
Accompanying the main exhibition, an adjacent area designed for more interaction with people, stories, and art. This is where the exhibition provides a “deeper dive” into cultural provenance featuring other examples of native internet cultural artifacts, and their stories. Harambe, Melon, Gigachad… to name a few.
I mentioned the “main gallery” area, “showcase” area, etc. - these are areas of Oshi Gallery that were designed specifically to enable a different vibe and experience for different things. I’ve included some videos and photos in the last section of this doc to help you visualize Oshi Gallery, as it is one of the premier digital galleries focused on culture-first, and is founded and run by artists.
Plan
A proper project plan and breakdown is yet to be completed. Oshi’s team is experienced in organizing and running art exhibitions of all shapes and sizes - traditional, digital, and NFT exhibitions. We will prepare a detailed plan as soon as we receive initial feedback and have a better understanding of the funding process and amount that you find reasonable.
Wen
Ideally, the week-long exhibition would take place between 20th February and 20th March.
Finances
There isn’t enough detail to the scope of the project yet for a 100% accurate breakdown, but from experience with running exhibitions big and small, we are confident a budget of 10-15k USD would allow us to deliver something quite remarkable, with real lasting impact.
How the project is funded is as important as the amount.
It just feels right to have a co-funded / co-supported model by aligned communities, in this case NFD and OTD. We also think there may be a local hub in Melbourne that could further support the initiative with some funds. Salad Pingers also suggested that this is something that we can look into legit local government funding for.
Government grants can take time, however, and since we’re looking at the late February to mid March period for this exhibition, we can’t count on any government co-funding… but we will try.
Prior to the Exhibition - a small-but-meaningful project
Since we’re already throwing a big cultural open day at Oshi on February 3rd / 4th, we thought it could be an opportunity to bring a “glimpse” of Doge: the Exhibition to the core art/web3 community here. Here’s a brief description;
Doge: A Pop up Exhibit (incognito mode)
Oshi is hosting an open day, culture-focused, to kick off 2024; this is a wonderful opportunity to show a glimpse of the original Doge, without any announcements…
We’ll have music/video/art performances by Eclectic Method, Basseado, Hipworth. Our resident meme and internet pop-artist, Lambie, will be painting something big, crazy, and sunny on the day. We will have web3 games, food truck, art everywhere.
Here is where we’d like to introduce “a hint of DOGE” Provenance of internet culture.
We expect quite a good turnout anyway, and since we know most of the people personally, this would be a nice surprise for them, and a hint of what’s to come. The Pop-up would include two large art frames side by side - one simply showing the Doge JPEG, and the other, in sync, perhaps one or a series of reels with a story. On the wall next to the art frames we’d include the backstory and a qr code to follow the doge.
Salad Pingers kindly offered to bring the Doge puppet, and also be there to share some of his stories and experiences from doge day.
Timeline
Targeting mid-Feb, earliest, to mid-March, latest, gives us some time to discuss, refine, and finalize the proposal, and funding - but we don’t have too much time.
The project and funding should be refined, and agreed upon by early January, in order to give us at least 4-6 weeks to prepare and execute a remarkable event. And… provide ample time to get people involved, get ideas from the community, refine them, and action them.
Team
Oshi gallery is a culture first, artist focused digital art gallery in Collingwood (Melbourne, Australia). Melbourne (Burn City!) is pretty packed with web3 connected communities and is often called the cultural capital of Australia.
If there is such a thing as an “NFT gallery” - Oshi certainly fits the description. But it is much more than that. Instead of writing another long section, I’ve prepared some links to posts, mostly videos, with context, that will help you visualize Oshi, and give you an idea of who we are, what we do, and what we stand for.
NOTE: As a new user of this forum, I am unable to include more than two links, or embed more than one piece of media - so please refer to the google doc below, a two pager that covers everything Oshi related.
Oshi
About Oshi, in context of our proposal:
Contact Info
Feel free to get in touch with me anytime;
Dundo
Twitter: @maroye
Discord: @maroye
Telegram: @maroye
We look forward to your initial feedback very much, and look forward to developing this further, into a truly remarkable, co-created Exhibition that will make a lasting impact.
