Weekly Gems #7

Our Gems this week take you to the digital butchery of David Lisser, the surrealist worlds of Camibus and the exotic high-tech figures of OneRobot. These three artists developed their skills in very different ways. Ready to meet them?

David Lisser (@DavidLisser): Sculptor turned digital butcher

David Lisser is an artist exploring future food production and creating the techno-relics of tomorrow.

David started creating art at a young age. This was thanks to his grandmother, who was very artistic and encouraged him to pursue his creative side. She taught him about oil paintings, woodcarving and even embroidery.David went on to study art at the University of New Castle. After graduation, he started working as an artist: “Like most creative people I took on multiple side jobs in order to keep the money coming in for rent/bills/general life. And I still work as a freelancer in museums and galleries, hanging paintings, installing sculptures, et cetera,” David says.

In 2013, David got interested in the future of food, intertwined with its ecological impact, technological change and recent societal shifts. In 2017, he started to focus more specifically on cultured meat and the technology behind it: “I find it an utterly fascinating medium. On one side, it could cause some real change for animal suffering and environmental damage, but then on the other, it is a technical solution for a behavioural problem.” 

What he means by this is that generally we eat too much meat globally and we expect meat to be cheap (cheaper than it should be). The obvious solution would be to eat less meat. But changing human behaviour is incredibly hard. So instead, we have sought out a much more complex solution that should ‘save the planet’ whilst also satisfying our desire for meat: cultured meat. David: “It’s an ethically nuanced new technology to grow 'meat' in a way that allows us to continue our over-consumption whilst taking the burden of production away from natural/traditional resources.”

Some of David’s art as social commentary can be found on SuperRare.

Camibus (@CamibusNFT): Dali, surrealism and nudes

Camibus is an artist from Romania who only started her painting endeavours when she was 21: “I've always had artistic inclinations, ever since I was a kid, but I spent most of my childhood and teenage years playing music. Later I studied theater directing in college, I tried creative writing and won a national award for one of my plays, and in my third year of college I got hired at a local animation studio as a clean-up artist.”

At the age of 21, Camibus met her current boyfriend, who is an artist. Seeing his work encouraged her to pick up a pencil and start practicing. She explains: “I was fascinated by his work. I wanted to do what he did. I thought it was the best job in the world, so I decided I'd do everything within my power to catch up and acquire all the necessary skills to work in this field, even though I had no previous experience.”

Becoming an artist wasn’t easy for her. Starting at a later age caused her to develop imposter syndrome, which almost led to depression. Only once she decided to let go of what other people thought and stopped caring about results did she really start to enjoy the creation process.

Over the years, she kept honing her skills, mainly drawing figures and nudes. In January 2021, Camibus’ boyfriend got invited to exhibit his work at a gallery. They went together and it was here where Camibus heard for the first time about NFTs. She says: “I know an opportunity when I see one. Up until this moment, I’d never imagined I'd have the opportunity to create my own art. Just for art's sake.”

All the years of studying really helped, as she’d by now honed her skills and was able to create pretty much anything. But she didn’t have her own voice or style yet, something that made her recognizable. “Since my favorite subject was figure drawing I decided to do something about nudes. I'm also a huge Dali fan so I thought bringing in a surrealist motif might make things interesting. That's where I started: Dali, surrealism, nudes. The rest, I figured out later, a little more with each piece I created.”

Camibus’ work can be found on various platforms.

OneRobot (@onerob0t): Digital art machine

OneRobot has been an artist since 1999. He’s an award-winning motion graphics designer. His journey into art started when he was about 14 years old. His parents gifted him a computer which, according to himself, turned him into a real computer nerd: “I was messing around with some coding, making small programs that would produce some kind of simple visuals.”

Soon after, he became interested in the underground side of the cyberpunk subculture: hackers, phreakers, crackers, etc. This led to him studying Banking Information Security in university. The sum of these things made OneRobot end up designing a website dedicated to the Cyberpunk Manifesto by @cyberkristiyan: “Members of the forum that I used to be on, pointed out that the design was horrible. I asked them for feedback and examples of good design, and then dedicated myself to creating ‘the best website ever’. This is how I discovered Photoshop and all the opportunities the software offers.”

After university, he worked as an HTML coder, web designer, Flash designer, animator, to ultimately become a motion graphics designer in 2003. He’s now a motion designer working for the German Sky TV Channel.

As a designer, OneRobot always worked on the style the client desired. However, it would always be tipping towards the hi-tech-cyberpunk style. His current work is the result of an evolution that happened over the last eight to nine months. “I started in March with retro-futuristic vibes, then glitch art, then abstract minimalism. Then I applied the latter to human shapes and developed a "minimalistic cyber-influenced chic" style. Something really clicked when I tried to add some African vibes. In 2006, I was visiting Uganda for 1 month. I felt a connection with the people and was fascinated by their culture, even though I am of a completely different origin. I tend to believe that this connection and my "cyber-hi-tech background" fused into what you can see now. I’m now really happy to say: this is it, this is my style. I can't promise it’ll never change again, but something really clicked when I first created "Maono".”

OneRobot’s work is available on various platforms.