A MENU WITH FOOD FOR THE SOUL
SUMMARY
To present itself as a future-forward city, the City of Reno, Nevada, devised a novel plan for the restoration of a beloved local landmark. The Space Whale, a piece of public art appropriated from the Burning Man festival and exhibited publicly in the city Of Reno, was to be transformed into an iconic Non-fungible token (NFT) and installed in its new digital residence in the Metaverse.
This unique plan would allow the city to raise restoration and other public funds while distinguishing itself as a city engaged in innovation in developing cryptocurrencies and their associated technologies. Speakerhead was engaged to turn the city's dream into a reality.
APPROACH
The Speakerhead team faced some challenges with the Space Whale project. Our first approach was to gather all of the available photographic assets related to the piece. Both daylight and night views were acquired to assist us in lighting the environment accurately. We then accessed the original CAD design data and reengineered it for our purposes.
Since Reno’s natural desert environment provides spectacular mountain views by day and equally impressive constellation views by night, we determined that an alternating Day/Night environment was the perfect setting for the piece. The entire piece was modeled in Unreal Engine 5. Speakerhead had this to say about the project, “Many of our most current projects are being developed for Crypto, NFT, and Metaverse applications. The Space Whale project presented a rare opportunity for us to illustrate how complex pieces can be accurately modeled for these new spaces.”