[FX Street] Latticework Launches WavelengthNFT - a Climate Action Protocol for Blockchain Projects

The NFT revolution gives brands and content creators the cutting edge to transact with consumers. This virtual art has continued to siphon attention away from the physical world and negatively affects the environment.

There needs to be a change, and this is why the Undercurrent.Army platform was created. Undercurrent’s goal is to ensure that climate action and viral mechanics are built into the DNA of selling on the blockchain network.

This is a way to protect the environment while also enjoying the huge potential of blockchain in eCommerce.

Undercurrent.Army is a platform dedicated to the production and distribution of generative crypto art, designed to inspire awe, inspire innovation, and to protect the environment.

The platform launched the Wavelength NFT project, a limited-edition collection of 20 breathtaking art pieces.

Each art piece tells the multi-year story of a single surf break from across the United States: from Hawaii to Alaska to Puerto Rico. Each art piece is the result of a generative-art computer algorithm. The algorithm converts each break's historical wave telemetry into 100% unique pieces of art. 

Yes, there is money to be made from NFT, but we can do this without harming our environment in the process. This is what the Undercurrent.Army platform is all about.

The platform is helping create awareness for environmental consciousness as we embrace the current NFT revolution. Urgent and effective action needs to be taken in order to offset the environmental impact of crypto mining. If this is not done, we might be heading towards a more catastrophic outcome in the future caused by cryptocurrency mining. 

Before we start, please can you introduce yourself so those reading can know who you are? 

Thank you very much for hosting 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 a data science & marketing agency focused on these same sorts of cutting edge applications of data integration, data visualization, and data storytelling for brands and marketers.  

I’m also an executive producer and a filmmaker and have produced a handful of independent films under the brand NineSevenEntertainment, as well as live art series called Live Action Art.

Thank you for that introduction. Can you tell us what Undercurrent.Army is all about? Just give us a brief overview of what the project entails?

When we first saw this new surge in NFT activity we quickly recognized that yes it empowers creators by giving them a direct relationship with their customers.

But the problem is that the whole crypto and crypto art movements siphon attention away from the analogue physical world, and they’re fundamentally damaging to the environment.  But there’s a way to flip the script.  

Because NFT’s are really just a “unit of attention” - in many cases the purchase of an NFT is itself the story, as opposed to the artwork itself -  we could hijack this attention and redirect it back to the physical world, and in fact redirect the wealth that’s created back to the physical world in the form of climate action.

So this trend we’ve created - this “undercurrent” - is a blueprint for how brands and creators should be thinking about executing blockchain projects, where they can leverage the native viral mechanics of NFT’s and also bake climate-offsets into the DNA of the unit economics, whether that's e-commerce or collectibles or intellectual property management.  Donating 10% or more of the profits from a successful blockchain project to climate action should be the standard.

What was the inspiration behind it? People would love to know the reason behind the project, so let's hear it. 

We knew we wanted to contribute to this movement as a creator, not as a speculator, even though we knew those two things to be tightly intertwined.  So the question was immediately: What unique skills can we bring to the table to add our voice to the movement.

We obviously saw a lot of trolling happening with NFT’s, and an oversupply of what would normally just be called “motion graphics''.  

There’s a lot of junk out there. But I think the CryptoPunks and AutoGlyphs projects grounded that conversation for us.  In 20 years when they rewrite the Art History books, Crypto Punks will be “hanging” in the MOMA next to the Jean Michel Basquiat’s, the Jackson Pollacks, and the Jeff Koons of the world.  In many ways Banksy was the original publicity stunt artist before NFT’s took that mantle. 

So we knew we wanted our first project - Wavelength NFT - to feel like a fine art project.  But at the same time, Wavelength is an NFT, so there’s a publicity-grabbing, attention-grabbing story behind it that ties everything together.

The platform's name is "Undercurrent.army." Why such a name for the platform? Surely there must be a reason for choosing this particular name? 

Undercurrent is a collective and we’re working to create change, both on a technological level but also towards a positive climate action agenda.  But in today’s attention economy, in order to create change you need to also create trends.  Creating this undercurrent of trends is what motivates us.  So we’ve created a blueprint for like-minded folks to join us in this art + technology “army”.

To spawn this blueprint into life, we created Wavelength NFT which essentially answers the question “what is the frequency of the ocean”.  We looked at data from 1300 buoys across the globe, these buoys communicate with 1 of 17 satellites orbiting the earth, which send the signals back to NASA in Wallops Island, VA where the data is cleaned, stored and distributed back out to the National Weather Service.  

We access the data through their API, and using a python algorithm, we created a unique one-of-a-kind art piece for each of the Top 20 surf breaks in the United States.  These are truly stunning art pieces that could framed and hung on a wall.  Or if you prefere, the collection is listed for sale on OpenSea for 1ETH each.  And 10% of all the profits are donated to Heal the Bay in the name of the buyer.  

What is the vision/mission of this project? What do you hope to achieve in the long run? 

Our work is to ensure that all future NFT and Ethereum projects adopt the “Undercurrent” blueprint of granting a percentage of their attention and a percentage of their revenue back to climate action organizations to offset the impact their activity is having on the planet.

But we’re also data scientists and platform developers, so we want to contribute materially to this technology ecosystem.  There’s a lot of promise to NFT’s and to blockchain generally, but as an ecosystem it’s still extremely immature.  

When you think of the technology that’s needed to support modern e-Commerce, modern marketing and attribution, modern copyright and rights management, the industry has maybe 5% of what it needs.

For most business cases, when you compare a blockchain to a traditional relational database, the value proposition often falls apart very quickly.  Even the claim that Non Fungible Tokens account for some form of “ownership” is a very dubious claim.  Smart contracts are obviously an enormous evolution forward, but if you think of the paper contracts that underlie intellectual property agreements, they contain a lot of detail. 

Even the savviest smart contract developer would be hard pressed to argue that a smart contract could represent that level of nuance, nevermind hold up in court.

So we welcome the day when you can produce, finance, license, distribute, sell, and rights-manage a movie on a blockchain, but we’re not there yet.  And so we’re eager to make an impact in bringing that maturity to market.

That's such a great mission on your hands; how does Undercurrent.army intend to achieve such a goal in the industry?

The first goal is really an awareness one.  We needed to weave this idea that blockchain is not a fundamentally sound technology into the existing zeitgeist.  And since NFT’s are creating such a surge of new wealth, as well as an economy based on attention, we’re creating a new standard to help refocus the wealth and attention onto climate action.

And the second goal is a technological one.  Our expertise is in data, data integration, database management.  This is our unique skill set that we can leverage to help bring some of these much needed developments into reality.

Is there any partnership or collaboration with other NFT projects to create more environmental consciousness in the industry? 

We’ve found a great platform with OpenSea.  It’s simple and it abstracts a lot of the more labyrinthian aspects of tokens, smart contracts, and blockchains away from the user experience of simply getting started.  We’ve had quite a bit of inbound interest from ad agencies, traditional brands, and publishers where many of them are scrambling to figure out how to leverage NFT’s for their clients.  

We think that Mario Testino - a famous fashion photographer who created the “Four Iconic Portraits” carbon-net-negative NFT art drop - is leading by example.  

We think that what Brent Weinstein and his fine arts team at UTA (United Talent Agency) are doing for their clients is very smart and measured.  We’re very eager to get Wavelength NFT onto SuperRare, which we think is the premiere destination for distributing this type of messaging into the community.

Aside from creating awareness for environmental consciousness in the current NFT revolution, do you have any plan to support environmental nonprofits to expand your project's reach? 

The parent of Undercurrent is Latticework Insights which is a data science and marketing agency focused on building brands quantitatively, but also on progressive causes such as climate action.  

We call this practice “Latticework for Good”.  We recognize that companies across the board need to adopt a “double bottom line” which acknowledges that there is more to running a successful business than just EBITA, and that a progressive agenda supports a healthier economic environment.  So we will continue to pursue projects and use our expertise to give progressive causes the additional edge that they need.

What are the biggest challenges facing this project, and how are you and your team tackling such challenges?

Since NFT’s are essentially an attention economy, we’re highly focused on the awareness piece.  NFT’s are not a “built it and they will come” proposition, unless you are Tom Brady or Steve Aoki.  So we knew from the beginning we would be leveraging a mix of traditional paid media, organic social, influencer marketing, as well as PR.  We also believe that an often neglected dimension to an NFT marketing mix is the “hand to hand combat” of selling pieces one-by-one to art collectors.  

And certainly, the NFT world is absolutely flooded with noise right now, so breaking through that noise is a huge part of the calculus.  After all the hype subsides, I think a lot of creators and brands will realize there’s a lot of textbook “blocking and tackling” involved in marketing and selling a Direct-to-Consumer product.  

The fact that a product is a monthly shaving subscription or a JPEG doesn’t change the basic economics.  Even just understanding that there’s a standard cost-per-acquisition dimension to running a successful NFT project is going to be a big realization for most folks entering the space.

 If you have the ears of the leaders of other NFT projects, what would you tell them regarding the negative environmental impact of most projects?

My message for other NFT projects, to the wider crypto world, and really to any business across the globe is to recognize the impact that our activities have on the environment.  A healthy planet is the bedrock of a healthy economic environment.  Economics and climate don’t need to be framed in Zero Sum terms.  Undercurrent.Amry leverages the data-driven stories about the environment to produce awareness and to funnel resources into materially impacting the climate in a positive way.  

So we’d call on all leaders of other NFT and Ethereum projects to adopt a standard financial contribution - 10% or more of the net profit - to climate action organizations to offset their impact on the environment.  I’d encourage anyone interested in climate action to consider bidding on a Wavelength NFT on Opensea, we will consider any reasonable bid and will donate 10% of the profits to Health the Bay in the buyers name.