Bionic Blowfish NFT Art

Back in Odaiba in Tokyo circa 2018, we encountered the Joypolis, a palatial mall of interactive joys. It reminds me of the first wave of platform games back 30+ years ago in Japan, when I first became obsessed.

Bionic Blowfish Collection is inspired by platform games in the late 80s and cyberpunk. As a middle schooler visiting Japan in the 80s, I got hooked on Super Mario Bros one summer. Years later, I took my kids to interactive exhibits in Odaiba Tokyo. I was inspired by a virtual aquarium on display where a camera traced the visitor’s facial features and transposed them on CG animated walruses swimming by in a floor-to-ceiling panoramic video display. Technology back then felt magical and simultaneously bizarre at the same time. Reading up on the metaverse, as it was originally coined in, Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and then Ready Player One, got me exploring my imagination prior to getting on actual online communities with a video game interface complete with avatars with oddly faceted or elliptical heads from drafting dolls. Somehow, my imaginings around a retro-neo-Tokyo in Snow Crash, and watching Miyazaki’s post-War reconstruction era Japan and the looming presence of a pre-existing disaster in the process of renewal and repair. Similarly, that made me think of video game mascots being monumental as graphical presences in our children’s lives.

These bionic blowfish joins the EDM disco mash up. Pick your favorite color!

OpenSea