The Company will Put Universe of NFTs, Blockchain and Web3 on Full Display at Interactive Experience Showcasing Innovative Products and Previewing Future of Entertainment,
Content Distribution and Disintermediated Bond Between Artists and Fans
Blockchain Creative Labs Partnering with Official SXSW Music Artists and Feature Films
to Drop NFTs and Provide POAPs for Fans at Festival Performances and Screenings;
Dolly Parton, Grammy Nominee KT Tunstall, Electra Mustaine, Kovic and Callie Twisselman
to Release NFTs of Songs During Festival
Thought Leadership Sessions to Feature Executives from WWE, FOX Entertainment,
FOX Sports, CoinDesk, Samsung, Eluvio, UTA, FTX, Bento Box Entertainment, Collab.Land,
The Female Quotient, IndieFlix and Others, Producers Paul Feig, Jenny Bicks
and Tommy Pallotta, and WWE Superstar Charlotte Flair Set to Appear
Austin, Texas — March 7, 2022 — Blockchain Creative Labs (BCL), FOX Entertainment’s NFT studio and South By Southwest’s (SXSW) inaugural Blockchain category sponsor, today announced its full SXSW schedule and a major takeover of Trinity Hall at 5th & Trinity (311 East 5th Street) in downtown Austin to kick off the Festival.
Strategically designed to serve as a centrally located venue in the heart of SXSW, through a series of installations, Blockchain Creative Labs @ SXSW will put NFTs, blockchain and Web3 on full display for Festival-goers at an interactive experience that will showcase innovative products, preview the future of entertainment and content distribution, and demonstrate the power of disintermediated bonds between artists and fans.
Open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CT and 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. CT from Friday, March 11, to Sunday, March 13th, activations set to reside at Blockchain Creative Labs @ SXSW include an extensive gallery of NFTs created by leading content creators, exclusive NFT drops of music from official SXSW artists, NFTs from feature films premiering during the Festival and a number of thought leadership sessions featuring leading technologists, creators, artists, executives, marketers and academics discussing the future of blockchain and the metaverse. All SXSW badge holders and the general public are welcome to attend the experience and can gain access by RSVPing at bcl.xyz/sxsw.
“Since launching Blockchain Creative Labs last year, SXSW has served as an important mile marker for our company as a time and place where we would host the creative and tech sectors to bridge together traditional media and Web3,” said Scott Greenberg, CEO of Blockchain Creative Labs. “Blockchain, NFTs and the metaverse will be driving themes of SXSW this year, and we look forward to welcoming guests to BCL at 5th and Trinity to share ideas, debate best practices, learn from one another and together help pave the path forward for the industry…while having a lot of fun during the process.”
As SXSW’s Blockchain sponsor, this year’s roster of artists and filmmakers at the festival are able to tokenize their work via BCL’s concierge services and technology and make them available for purchase by fans at the SXSW x BCL NFT marketplace, sxsw.bcl.xyz, starting March 11. As part of BCL’s strategy and mission to expand mainstream adoption of NFTs and the blockchain, company representatives also will assist in onboarding guests visiting Blockchain Creative Labs @ SXSW who are looking to step into Web3.
At the heart of Blockchain Creative Labs @ SXSW is the BCL_NFT_Gallery, which will celebrate and drop a series of diverse and new NFT art, music, movie posters and other content from such creators as global superstar and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominee Dolly Parton and her Web3 experience, welcometodollyverse.com; Bento Box Entertainment’s TikTok studio, A Studio; FOX’s upcoming animated comedy, KRAPOPOLIS, from Dan Harmon; “The MaskVerse”; and more.
BCL is collaborating with filmmakers to take their original SXSW premiere posters and immortalize them as one-of-one NFTs that will be available on the SXSW x BCL NFT marketplace. Films to feature poster NFTs on the marketplace include the documentaries “Still Working 9 to 5,” “Mama Bears” and “The Pez Outlaw”; “Seriously Red,” starring and executive produced by Rose Byrne; “It Is In Us All”; and “A Lot of Nothing,” co-written and directed by Mo McRae – all of which will be dropped during the SXSW Film Premiere NFT “Countdown-to-Minting” Poster Party on Sunday, March 13.
Moreover, BCL will create POAPs (Proof-of-Attendance-Protocols) for a number of SXSW venues, including Mohawk, Antone’s, Stubb’s, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, Violet Crown Cinema, Stateside at the Paramount and SXSW Film Theater at the Austin Convention Center, for fans to get rewarded with a free and unique way to remember their attendance at shows and screenings throughout the Festival on the blockchain, enabling artists to establish and nurture their fan communities and monetize their content well after SXSW.
As part of the Gallery, BCL is also hosting the London-based start-up øxArt, a Web3 platform bridging the traditional and digital art worlds by facilitating physical art to be marketed and traded as NFTs on the blockchain. At SXSW, øxArt will launch the first curated exhibition of physical art sold via NFT Deeds that serve as certificates of ownership. The collection, entitled “Pioneers,” previewed last week in London.
SXSW attendees are invited to discover artists performing at SXSW via the blockchain at the BCL_RecordBlocks station, which will drop NFTs of songs from more than 30 acts, including Grammy Award nominee KT Tunstall, Electra Mustaine, Kovic and Callie Twisselman, among others.
The BCL_Web3_Exchange will be an intimate and decentralized sharing of ideas between Web3’s best and brightest in tech and entertainment through a series of fireside chats, discussions, debates about the future of blockchain and the metaverse.
Topics included on the BCL_Web3_Exchange range from how Web3 impacts Hollywood to a behind-the-scenes look at FOX’s new docu-comedy WELCOME TO FLATCH with executive producers Paul Feig (“The Office,” “Bridesmaids”) and Jenny Bicks (“Sex and the City,” “The Greatest Showman”), stars Sam Straley and Holmes, and Michael Thorn (President of Entertainment, FOX Entertainment). There also will be a discussion on the future of Web3 entertainment with WWE superstar Charlotte Flair, WWE executives and Robert Gottlieb (Executive Vice President, Marketing, FOX Sports).
Tommy Pallotta (Producer, “Waking Life,” “A Scanner Darkly,” “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood”), Erick Calderon (Founder and CEO, Art Blocks), Ben Jones (Creative Director, Bento Box Entertainment) and Scott Greenberg (CEO, Blockchain Creative Labs), will discuss animating content in Web3, including KRAPOPOLIS, which will be entirely curated on the blockchain.
To discuss how musicians and fans can become co-collaborators in an artist’s success, Emily Parker (CoinDesk) will moderate a talk with Vanessa Magos (Vice President of Business Development, Medallion), Charlie Durbin (Co-Founder, Decent), Nait Jones (Head of Growth, Royal) and Mark Kovic (an independent artist who assists with marketing for Dolly Parton and John Legend).
James Young (CEO, Collab.Land) will lead a conversation on how decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) can enable a new and different form of work outside the context of corporate systems, while Michelle Munson (CEO, Eluvio), Avner Ronen (VP of Product Development, Samsung Electronics) and Lesley Silverman (Head of Digital Assets, UTA) will discuss how Web3 is going mainstream.
Other panelists and moderators include Scilla Andreen (CEO and Co-Founder, IndieFlix), Gabo Arora (CEO, Lightshed.io), Michael Casey (CCO, CoinDesk), J. Clara Chan (Digital Media Writer, The Hollywood Reporter), Derek Coleman (Potion DAO member), Jamal Dauda (Blockchain Creative Labs), Yasmin Elayat (Co-Founder and CMO, Scatter), Marjorie Hernandez (Founder, LUKSO; Co-Founder, The Dematerialised), Melody Hildebrandt (President, Blockchain Creative Labs), Brian Kaplan (Vice President, Marketing and Digital, EM.Co), LATASHÁ (Music Artist and Head of Community Programming, ZORA), Sly Lee (Co-Founder, Emerge, Co-Chair, World Economic Forum Global Future Council for AR/VR), Uddhav Marwaha (Co-Founder/CEO, Friktion Labs), Leo Matchett (CEO, Co-Founder, Decentralized Pictures), Chris McCann (General Partner, Race Capital), Delleon McGlone (Potion DAO member), Kit Mueller (Vice President, Corporate Development, Stronghold Digital Mining), Kyle Samani (Co-Founder, Managing Partner, Multicoin Capital), Sutu (metaverse creator), John Swarbrooke (Art Specialist, øxArt), TAE (Potion DAO Member), Eli Tan (CoinDesk), Shiliang Tang (CIO, LedgerPrime), Danielle Simmons (Head of Strategy, Shareability), Brian Trunzo (Metaverse Lead, Polygon Studio), VanillaDelphia/ED (Potion DAO member), Lance Weiler (Founding Director, Columbia University School of the Arts’ Digital Storytelling Lab), Peter White (Television Editor, Deadline), Richard Whittaker (Culture Editor, The Austin Chronicle), Diana Williams (CEO, Co-Founder Kinetic Energy Entertainment), Rachel Wolfson (Senior Reporter, Cointelegraph), Anjali Young (CCO, Collab.Land) and Tristan Yver (Head of Strategy, FTX) and Shelley Zalis (CEO, The Female Quotient).
The BCL activation will also highlight the SXSW x BCL NFT Ledger, an infinite, immersive, room-scale, real-time visualization of all SXSW-related data on the blockchain during the ten-day festival that will be minted into an NFT and shot into the metaverse.
Also at SXSW, BCL and Dolly Parton will launch welcometodollyverse.com — an audience-centric Web3 experience that will allow fans to purchase official and certified Dolly NFT collectibles, including limited-edition NFTs of her new album Run, Rose, Run and a limited series of Dolly-inspired NFT artwork. To promote her novel, album and “Dollyverse,” Parton will make her first-ever appearance at SXSW on Friday, March 18, when she will give a live performance featuring songs from Run, Rose, Run, along with a few of her hits. The entire event will be streamed live for free on “Dollyverse” by BCL and Eluvio. In-person attendees at Parton’s performance will be able to claim a free NFT, while fans streaming the event will be able to receive tokens authenticating their participation.
Blockchain Creative Labs @ SXSW’s full schedule is outlined at https://www.sxsw.com/sponsors/blockchain-creative-labs/.
Before arriving in Austin, join the conversation around NFTs at SXSW on Discord: https://discord.gg/sxswnft.
To RSVP to Blockchain Creative Labs @ SXSW, please visit bcl.xyz/sxsw.
ABOUT BLOCKCHAIN CREATIVE LABS
Blockchain Creative Labs (BCL), a new business and creative unit formed in 2021 by FOX Entertainment and its Emmy Award–winning animation studio, Bento Box Entertainment, provides content creators, IP owners and advertising partners end-to-end blockchain computer ecosystem solutions to build, launch, manage and sell Non-Fungible Token (NFT) content and experiences, and fungible tokens, as well as digital goods and assets. BCL also manages a $100 million creator fund, established by FOX Entertainment and Bento Box, which identifies growth opportunities in the NFT space. In August of 2021, Fox Corporation made a strategic investment in Eluvio, a global pioneer for managing, distributing and monetizing premium content via blockchain, that will provide the underlying technology platform for BCL.
