Start by telling us a bit about you.

For the time of my studies I moved from Naples to Rome. Back then I first got a Bachelor degree in sociology, before I educationally turned to product design. After the bachelors in product design I focused specifically on CGI and VFX within a Master program.

I later decided that Rome wasn ́t the place for me artistically. So, I relocated to Berlin. It was here, that I found more like‐minded artists and digital creators which inspired me and who I can now call friends. To me Berlin is a more fitted place; regarding who I interact with professionally and privately. Not only because you get to work with artists from different backgrounds or different creative fields but by the fact that Berlin draws certain types of characters, who can never be stereotyped. As a digital creator you could live everywhere. But Berlin offers an energy that is unique and raw. Especially because it is home to so many unconventional thinking artists.

Berlin is a great space for innovative creatives like yourself. Was this where you started IOR50?

I have been based in Berlin since 2019. Since then I worked as a digital creator and art director. It was in the course of last year that me and my business partner Sam Aldridge have found our Studio IOR50. Within the works of our Studio, you can also outline the fields that my profession now taps into. Focusing on Art Direction, Animation and Visual Effects, the goal lies within creating technology solutions using biased rendering, real‐time engines and experimental approaches.

Of course, commissioned works for brands circulate around problem solving and visually creating something clients specifically have asked for. So, I use the tools at my disposal to create those solutions.
My personal art on the other hand is fueled by the connection to nature and our connection to it. I like to use elements of nature to mimic new creation. The concept of reprogramming through creation builds one of the base lines of how I approach my artistic works. The good thing is, that I can now bring in a lot more of my artistic esthetic into client assignments, as they specifically hire me or IOR50 to push our own looks and designs. I guess my creative practice distinguishes between either a creation, a curation or a cultivated fused process of both.

How did you get started with digital image making?

It was at an early stage of my product design bachelor’s studies, that I realized how vast and complex the possibilities were of building sculptures or multiverses with the help of softwares. With the help of digital image making, I noticed how I could further explore philosophical themes or technological themes that interested me in a way, that were denser and more structural.

You could say, that my education in sociology and product design have paved the way for the contextual language of my work, as some of the worlds and sphere I create are visual complex eco or mimic social systems.

When studying product design, we would design industrial objects or furniture at university, to then implement them into CGI programs. I knew that this wasn ́t enough for me. That there had to be more than just creating beautiful objects. I wanted to transform my own sketches and drawings to something that comes to life. Aspects of creation and real‐life simulations fascinated me. I felt the urge to create characters, universes and multiverses with CGI and VR. I thought that the digital space was the right realm to interpret own and new ideas. It offers more possibilities for the creation of worlds and characters than mere one‐dimensional images. You create something in the digital multiverse and it then develops a life on its own.

You ́re an art director working across a broad spectrum of mediums, can you tell us more about working across different formats?

The beauty of digital creation lies in its versatility. As an art director and a digital creator, I try to source inspiration directly from the medium I am currently working with. If creating a music video, I would try to visualize the musical theme through its sounds and lyrics. When working on Fashion Editorials and digital fashion images, stills or moved ones, I would build a CGI theme or world to fuse them with the photographic images. I once worked on a film as co‐director and CGI & VFX supervisor for Harper's Bazaar china. We took the images of the model and the clothing to conceptionally extend them through the surrounding environment. By adding CGI and VFX effects we translated the film material, to then transport it into the digital multiverse.

The mediums I am working with determine the bases or the ground for each project. On that ground, I build characters and worlds, textures or surroundings to extent it story technically. Every job and every medium is different; which means that I have to adjust and start with a blank page every time. This is also what keeps the work so eclectic. I love the fact, that every job is a new and fresh start.

Working across different formats gives you the advantage of recognizing and solving problems that you might have already encountered. The challenging thing about it is, to constantly think outside the box. No matter if artistically or conceptually.

The flexibility of the Digital landscape allows creatives like yourself to vastly different aesthetics with each project. Your work feels very much like a convergence of hyper digital and nature. What draws you to these themes?

As an artist I would say that the purpose of all my works is to create authentic, intellectual and futuristic storytelling. I am not afraid to crossover different genres or fields of inspiration such as technology or nature. These fields definitely inspire me and I do take a lot of inspiration from them, but for me it is also quite important that philosophical themes are imbedded into my work. Themes such as the relationship

Between reality and virtuality or utopia vs dystopia, there is creation itself . Philosophical questions like: "Is there a God?" "Who has created all this?" "Are there strange entities that maybe control us in a simulation?"
This leads to another question; are we able to achieve the same through our own creations?

A lot of my previous works have in common that they draw their main inspiration from nature or advanced technological solutions/ elements . But behind them are deeper inspirations that I source from these kind of questions. Yet I don ́t let myself get to restricted by certain theses. I use them as inspirational thoughts that always build the starting point for a new digital creation.

Finally, you recently started selling NFTs, what are your thoughts on this new realm of art collecting?

From an artist point of view, I believe that NFTs offer many advantages to artists and digital creators. Most importantly the fact that they enable artists to become independent from external factors, such as capitalistic mechanisms and workflows. The chance to finally work purely artistically; being unbound from paychecks or demands of clients, which restrict artistic freedom. Through NFTs, digital artists can completely focus on the ideas that they would like to realize. The liberation from the need to sell their creative energy, to other parties who then hold governance over creative processes and ideas, is an ultimate goal.

The huge potential of NFTs to free artists and creators, by granting them economical independence, have been unprecedented to this extent, until now! We are experiencing a reform; due to a new paradigm of royalty structure through NFTs. Thanks to that; I guess that we can expect a substantial change in how artists will work in the future.

Thank you.