Tim Shea on Undercurrent's Wavelength NFTs from ocean buoys

0:22working on right now something i have not seen across the space at all yet and this is really cool and you're tying it all together with some interesting initiatives that are giving back as well i would love for you to kick it off to the audience with just an overview of what is under current army how did you get this idea and what are the solutions

0:37that your team is bringing yeah 100 well yeah thanks again for having us my name is tim shea i'm the founder of the undercurrent army collective i'm also the founder and ceo of a company called latticework insights which is what undercurrent ladder is up to we focus on things like you know data integration data visualization as well as data

1:00storytelling i also have a background as a creator executive producer under a brand called 97 entertainment where we're making you know independent feature films and then there's a live art collective we have here in los angeles called live action art so the genesis of undercurrent is that you know we saw this you know nft space emerging

1:25and we were very intrigued right you know this is you know it enables creators to have a direct relationship with their fans or direct relationship with their customers but there's a big problem and the problem we saw is that all a lot of the nft cryptocurrency blockchain stuff it siphons attention away from this physical world it's a very like cerebral

1:48kind of heady space and then furthermore it siphons resources away from the physical world it is in fact damaging to the physical worlds so obviously lots of literature about you know the electricity footprint the amount of electricity that it takes to keep a blockchain running and there's a problem there so we wanted to flip the script

2:10on that we wanted to use an nft project to we recognized them as a unit of attention and we wanted to siphon that attention back to the physical world tell stories about you know this planet that we're living on as well as redirect this you know newfound wealth that this community is experiencing redirect a lot of that wealth and resources back to climate action

2:35organizations and resources and so forth so undercurrent is a it's a trend undercurrent is a blueprint for nft and blockchain technologies to adopt to use the sort of viral mechanics that are built into the products as well as setting a standard for giving back for offsetting the impact that these projects have on the climate yeah that's a great intro

3:02tim and that you said it best you know we're sort of taking away from the real world and the way that you've designed this first set of nfts and undercurrent is it's really a great snapshot of the world and really brings you back and educates you about how the world is working right now and i would love for you to just explain the current set of nfts the first set

3:24that you've released here and you know what exactly they're symbolizing and you know what why are they so limited in rare edition cool no that's a good question so you know we wanted to have a voice in this movement we made a decision early on to come in as a creator as opposed to a speculator although we recognize that those things are somewhat intertwined

3:48And so we thought you know what are the skills that we could bring to this universe that could make something cool so we know data visualization data integration technology providers right builders of technology was going to be our core skill set we certainly saw a lot of the nft activity as trolling there's a lot of trolling right i think the idea that you

4:12would buy some of these you know jack dorsey's first tweet and a whole long tale of other nfts that popped up our gimmicks their gimmicks in a way we also saw that there was an oversupply of a certain sort of genre of nfts you know a lot of people would just tend to refer to them as just motion graphics so the motion graphic graphics people i think are having a bit

4:36of a renaissance right now you know an astronaut flying through a building with like flowers everywhere it's just like sort of like that's the style and certainly lots of junk i think anyone in the world can go on wearable and so forth and see just lots of junk that's out there and so the crypto punks and autoglyphs projects for me really kind of

4:59grounded that conversation i instantly recognize that you know in 20 years time crypto punks are going to be hanging in the moma hanging in the moma next to jean-michel basquiat paintings and mark rothko paintings jackson pollock's and so forth and you know in fact you know like a like banksy you know who was kind of like the original prank artist or publicity stunt

5:26artist in many ways nfts have stolen that mantle from him right and it's just like they're quite good at grabbing attention so we knew we wanted to approach this from a fine art perspective but we knew that it was an nft at the end of the day this is an attention a unit of attention that we're producing so wavelength nft was the first project

5:46that we created it tells the story of this grand you know choreography that's happening on the earth it tells that it answers the question what is the frequency of the ocean i mean there's there's 1300 buoys floating in the ocean they take these 20-minute samples and they send the samples to space is that one of 17 satellites that are orbiting the earth those

6:14signals are relayed back to wallops island virginia where nasa is they collect and clean and archive all this data and send it back out to the national weather service for a whole variety of uses and then they allow it to for you to download it you can we pull it in through an api we pulled it through a python algorithm that we developed

6:39that tells the story of the unique kind of fingerprint of the top 20 surf breaks in the united states you know in many cases this is like you know 10 20 30 years worth of wave data this is what kind of makes them unique is that there is no other break just just like this each of the individual ones we so we built them it was quite it

7:05was quite a techno technological challenge to pull off we listed them on openc which we found to be a great partner in this they're each listed for one each we give back 10 of the profits for each nft and make a donation in the buyer's name to heal the bay which is a great climate charity here in southern california so that's the story of wavelength

7:30and a team wow that's great tim and i really like how you're trying to tie it into a more elegant form of art the fine art you know it definitely does seem quite memey on the you know on the crypto twitter where you're seeing influencers just post animated gifs and you're like well where's where's the artist that you know these renaissance artists

7:52and these like mona lisas eventually are going to be able to get onto the blockchain and actually you know move the actual art industry onto the blockchain right that's right yeah that's right to and to have a picture that actually has a lot of value either from the artist or through itself i think you know they say a picture's worth a thousand words and obviously

8:12these wavelength nfts have a lot of information in the frequency snapshot that you're that you're taking that's right that's right so it's pretty cool and it's really interesting how you have you know different buoys throughout the world and you're taking a snapshot and you're also trying to bring awareness to climate change and just how the world is

8:34changing right now and i'm curious with this amount of information and looking at this snapshot let's just say that these nfts are on the blockchain for years decades to come as they can be there forever if you look back is it do would you see the ocean changing or would the snapshot be completely different if you took it 20 years from now or 50 years from now

8:57it would you know i think i hadn't thought about this particular thing when we were building them showing the effects of climate change we were thinking more of like these are a lot of these breaks let's say for surfers have a sort of sentimental value a lot of memories tied up in riding some of these breaks but certainly it is a data

9:19visualization exercise as well and you can see the sort of seasonal patterns each line on the on the pieces represents one month of wave telemetry data in some cases you can see you know the seasonality you know summer to winter the patterns of those waves change the sort of larger lines on the right-hand side of the x-axis represent larger and

9:43larger waves so you see ones on the left-hand side they're 0 1 2 meters high and as they get out towards the right hand side these are waves that are you know five five ten fifteen meters high ten twenty thirty feet high these are massive waves that they're that they're displaying and so you know global warming and specifically climate change i mean that

10:08is the thesis that there is some areas are getting hotter some areas are getting colder and that storms are getting more intense and you'll see the effects of this and in some cases where let's say in we've got a great one from alaska we've got one from montauk on long island one off the coast of oregon those breaks in the northern parts of the

10:33globe are rougher there's more storms there's a lot more activity going on versus let's say southern california where it's a little bit more placid a little bit more consistent and certainly if you saw major aberrations in those patterns places that are close to sea level like florida are going to see lots of problems emerging you don't want to see a

10:5520-foot wave off the coast of miami it could be sort of catastrophic and so i think it's a good point that you bring up that you might be able to monitor closely monitor the effects of climate change with the pieces themselves definitely i think that's really cool and i find it interesting is these wavelengths it's a very niche not a lot of people

11:16think about this type of art you know it's a it's a very special type of art and putting on nfts brings a special type of crowd as well and i'm curious if your team thought ahead of who were the people that might be interested in this whether it's crypto investors fine art investors surfers people that study the waves you know it seems like you could it

11:38could be attracted to a bunch of different crowds it's a good it's a good question i we've had the question too like where did you get the inspiration for this and we knew the story like we knew what we wanted to do but how we had the inspiration is a bit of a mystery i think but i will tell you this once we started once we found the idea you just

11:56become obsessed with it you become upset you sort of live in your brain you live on these buoys one you know one ten fifty hundreds of miles out into the ocean so we think that there's a lot of you know data geeks that are interested in this we think that there's definitely a fine art community of folks that are thinking about you know art hanging in their

12:17living room we know that the data visualization community will react well to these you know i will say in a year's time when we look back you know this will win the data visualization award i think it's a very cool project that if i saw this from the outside i would be very drawn to certainly surfers you know that the surf community is very closely tied with the you

12:41know the climate community that these these individual breaks have sentimental value to them and so yeah so anyone from any of these disciplines who are interested in owning a piece of you know unique you know breathtaking art and having you know making a donation to climate action organizations and their name we're very interested in working with

13:05them so we did this in the context of earth day and we say listen you know no reasonable offer no reasonable bid on the pieces will be refused so we would love to sell the whole collection and look back and say we've already donated hundreds of dollars to heal the bay and we hope that number is astronomical we'd love to look back and say

13:25we made a measurable impact definitely and i think it's great to release them on earth day and just remind me again you mentioned there was currently there's 20 different buoys that have 20 unique art pieces and those are on open c right now that's correct that's correct and is your team planning on doing further tranches or different projects

13:49i know if this sells out right away you know is there anything else in the works that you have you know more buoys or something else sure you know we i think first off we definitely have seen a lot of inbound interest in the project both from people that are interested in making other variations of it and then also you know traditional advertising agencies

14:11Brands publishers that are trying to figure this stuff out for themselves you know so we've seen a lot of stuff come in that way but certainly when we've talked a little bit about commissioning specific breaks there are some that are gorgeous i mean there's some that were very difficult to get data for their you know bieritz in france is a legendary

14:32surf break there's a buoy about 70 miles off the coast of france and we just couldn't find the data it's just like we're like in the spanish climate you know website like 11 clicks deep trying to find the stuff there's one off the coast of in ireland off the coast of galway so maybe unsurprisingly a really dedicated pretty gangster crew of surfers that

14:59serve in pretty cold water with some pretty gnarly rocks and cliffs that they're coming up against and so those are hard to get you know fiji tahiti there's buoys you know like i said 200 miles off the coast of some of these places and some of them are not managed by the by the by the noaa and in the us so we're definitely keen to start

15:22to react to see what the market comes comes in asking for but certainly we're also interested in a sort of broader application of you know how can we use this undercurrent blueprint to help other folks roll out similar projects in the future definitely and i think it's so interesting to have the buoys in all different countries and different oceans

15:42throughout the world and it just attracts like you know say you're in europe there might be one right nearby you that it's like oh wow there's like this is my where i live so super cool and we're running sort of short on time tim but for the viewers that are interested in you know learning more about these art pieces and picking them up and following

16:03your project as you release more what's the best way for them to get involved certainly they can visit us on our site on the site it's called undercurrent dot army we're very excited to get that top level domain they can see us on instagram at undercurrent army we're listed on openc under wavelength nft and we're certainly interested in

16:23collaborating with folks that are interested in poking around in this industry we recognize that you know nfts are a sort of new form of e-commerce it's a new form of engaging with brands building a brand in 2021 is hard work we know that you know there's data living and you know for an average brand has a data living between 10 and 30

16:44different databases and we know that the blockchain and nft space it really only has it's like you know five percent of the technology that's needed to support modern commerce modern marketing and attribution modern rights management and copyright and so you know we're interested in making an impact there and we're interested in collaborating with other

17:08folks in the space that want to move this sort of you know blockchain technology forward to so it can capture all of the promise that it's that it holds i completely agree and all the best moving forward with the project i will leave those links in the description box below as well for the viewers so they can take a look at under current army site and on openc

17:30and let's follow up in the near future i'm excited to see where this goes excellent ashland thank you so much for having us on the show really appreciate it