The FIFA world cup is one of many events to look out for in the middle east this year. The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture is known as Ithra and is currently making preparations for a football-themed execution. This NFT exhibition is the first of its kind, showcasing 64 NFTs from 32 artists from competing countries.
The exhibition “From Strike to Stroke” is located at the Msheireb Galleria in Doha. It uses AI to combine the pieces from the match between two competing countries to create a distinct piece based on the match outcome. This exhibition displays one-of-a-kind NFTs representing the relationship between man and machine.
More About Ithra’s “From Strike to Stroke” NFT Exhibition
Saudi Arabia’s Ithra finds the intersection between football and art in honour of the 2022 World Cup. It melts art, fashion and sport in a unique, innovative way. The exhibition features 32 emerging and established artists who had to create pieces representing their individual countries using their teams’ jersey colours.
The collection will be presented as a set of NFTs created based on blockchain technology similar to cryptocurrency. According to Dr Shurooq Amin, as stated in the curator’s brief, football fans’ passion for football is comparable to the art aesthetes’ passion for their art. She further mentioned to the exhibition that Ithra connects about 32 artists from the digital and traditional worlds. Hence, bridging the lacuna between web2 and web3 and also between art and football. It also brings humans and machines together through artists working together with AI technology. Through this, they develop unique NFTs which integrate football, art, and technology.”
Ithra collaborated with Sputnik Floyd and sister company Mr B.Chain to launch this NFT exhibition. They gave every football match a unique fingerprint to document this historic event. Sputnik Floyd partnered with Mr B.Chain to create digital NFT artworks generated by individual match statistics. For example, the first World Cup opening match was between Qatar and Ecuador on November 20.
Ithra’s NFT artwork comprises an AI-central algorithm that combines statistics on possession, goal, penalty and other details about each match. It translated every attribute of each game into an original NFT under the title, ‘For the Art of the Beautiful Game’. Additionally, Ithra’s NFT artwork is not meant for commercial purposes.
The NFT exhibition focuses on ensuring visibility to make the art available to people from all walks of life, and it runs until December 23. It also opened up the Mshereb Galleria in Doha to audiences of all ages and backgrounds to appreciate the collection. Due to the success of this campaign, several other brands have mimicked the same concept during the World Cup events.
