Singaporean buyer of US$69 million Beeple NFT opens art and technology space

Singapore-based “technopreneur” Vignesh Sundaresan, who goes by the nickname MetaKovan online, grabbed global attention in March 2021 when he splashed out US$69 million on the non-fungible token (NFT) artwork Everydays: the First 5,000 Days by American digital artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple.\nThat record-breaking bid supercharged a speculative frenzy in NFTs. The Indian-born investor later boasted in a TV interview that he was prepared to pay even more, so convinced was he that NFTs were marking a pivotal moment in art history.\nMore than four years later, much has changed.\nThe NFT market has experienced a massive correction since mid-2022, with trading volume dropping by 90 per cent by most estimates, even as the value of major cryptocurrencies recovered from dips in the 2020s. Once in-demand “profile picture” NFTs, such as those in the “Bored Ape Yacht Club” series, now have price tags of less than US$20,000, despite some previously fetching millions.\nSundaresan also seems transformed. At the launch of his new experimental art and technology space, Padimai Art & Tech Studio, he is softly spoken and reserved, explaining that the “artistic laboratory” in Singapore’s Tanjong Pagar Distripark, also home to the Singapore Art Museum, seeks to highlight the need for more decentralisation of the internet rather than the flaunting of accumulated digital assets.\n\nHe envisions Padimai – which means “image”, “form” or “metaphor” in Tamil – as a site for experimentation, residencies, commissions and exhibitions that explore the intersections of art, technology and social practices.\nWhile Sundaresan admits he felt “a sublime attraction to the spectacle” of bitcoin and blockchain technology going mainstream in 2021, he says that his fundamental convictions have always stayed the same.\n“Christie’s was going to accept internet money [for the Beeple auction] so it was a very interesting moment for me that a traditional [auction house] was recognising that cryptocurrency has value,” he says.\nFor him, the allure of cryptocurrency was that it was nascent rather than mainstream, and counterculture spirit was something he had always espoused.\n“While my involvement in blockchains has evolved a lot over time, the conviction about decentralisation and reclaim[ing] the free internet as much as possible has been a continuous theme in my life,” he says.\nIn the same spirit, artists can still make use of the decentralised blockchain technology on which NFTs are based to reclaim agency, he adds.\n\nOne of the key figures who has helped him plan for Padimai is Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, whose works often touch on human perception and environmental consciousness through the use of light, colour and movement.\nAfter Sundaresan bought Beeple’s artwork, the London-based augmented reality/virtual reality (VR) studio Acute Art reached out to connect him with Eliasson.\nAlthough he was not familiar with Eliasson’s practice, Sundaresan took an interest in the artist’s background as an architect as he was planning to build “a monument around the Beeple 5,000 in the metaverse”.\n“I wanted to build a virtual museum in the metaverse and make it open to the public, so I was looking to speak to real-world architects who were interested in building this kind of structure,” Sundaresan says.\nHowever, as he held discussions with Eliasson during the pandemic, his ideas started to shift. In particular, seeing Eliasson’s Cirkelbroen – a bridge that enabled residents to run, walk or cycle around Copenhagen’s inner harbour – was a watershed moment.\n“An artist has been commissioned to create something useful to so many people, and as they cross the bridge, it has an impact on their life,” he says.\nWhile perched on Cirkelbroen, he began to see how the act of commissioning an artist carries the duty of determining how the commission will be “deployed” in the world, he recalls.\nSundaresan believes that digital artworks can overcome the chasm between cultures, especially when it comes to gaining access to art.\n“It’s the same artwork, if you are in America or in a small town in India,” he says.\nThat is why Padimai Art & Tech Studio’s first commission is Eliasson’s virtual reality work called Your View Matter (2022/2025).\n\nPutting on VR headsets, participants wander through six geometric virtual environments shaped after the five Platonic solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron) and a sphere. Moiré patterns pulse and respond according to body movements, all programmed to an ambient soundtrack crafted by Eliasson.\nThe experience, which Sundaresan has minted as an NFT for ownership, is also available for people to enjoy online.\n“I really wanted it to be on the internet. Whether you’re in Hong Kong, India, or wherever you are, as long as you have a VR [device], even a Google Cardboard, a US$10 VR [device], you can experience the artwork,” Sundaresan says.\nEvery visitor’s experience of Your View Matter is singular. Their journey through the worlds generates a unique data file that records the exact route and visual perspective in 2D. These encounters are then preserved in a blockchain-based archive – a decentralised, physically stored system – built by Sundaresan.\nThe work transforms perception into an embodied, spatial act, exploring the viewer’s role in creating meaning. The artwork also expounds on the ethics of perceiving, storing and remembering in the digital age.\nBesides commissioning more digital works – he has several artists in the pipeline – Sundaresan has “completely moved away from other parts of the crypto ecosystem”.\n“After 2021, I gave up all my distractions and focused on art. Now even when [I’m] coding, it’s for an artwork.”\nArt has become a “therapeutic tool” for him.\n“For me personally I’ve always been in this hyper-capitalistic world of money. Crypto is such a fast-paced, dystopian kind of thing that sometimes it feels like you are in this echo chamber, so when you look at art, you feel that [sense of] relief,” he says.\n“When you’re able to participate in the production of art, it feels even more gratifying, and that has become my approach to art.”\n