by Marlon Barrios Solano updated 07/24/2022

The question presented by the promotional video of the Celo blockchain "Can money be beautiful? resonated and set in motion many of the layers of research for this project: can money be an aesthetic expression? can money be en expression of ethics? how do we perceive beauty in a  economic system?

In the book Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain, the media artist Shu Lea Cheang writes that: “Money, Value, monetary exchange... have  been excluded... as if the internet and ... art were emancipated from these issues, living not on love and fresh water but on silicon an bits, living in an utopia of collective intelligence detached from economic constraints. Accordingly...interventions into established currency systems by citizens, artists and cultural workers could provide a source for new thinking and potentially create an ecology of value and values in which art and artists would play a central role.”             

The advent of the Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies are affording to artists, cultural workers and social innovators "the source of new thinking" and the creative potentials for deconstructing and redesign money systems with values intrinsic to their communities. 

Can WEB3  technologies serve as a site for artists to create an "ecology of value and and economy guided by values in which art and artists would play a central role.” ?   

MotionDAO, is a logical continuation of the research on social networks and communities of practice that  started in 2009 with the creation of dance-tech.net and movimiento.org  exploring the impact of the Web 2.0 on knowledge distribution, collaboration and co-creation.

Starting in 2019, led by Marlon Barrios Solano, MotionDAO  has evolved to be an artists/researchers international collective creating contexts of adoption and creative experimentation using Web3 technologies; investigating its impacts on ownership, governance and value creation within local and global communities of practice; it operates supported and supporting the social networks dance-tech.net and movimiento.org.

See MotionDAO Group

Dance-tech.net  and movimiento.org are global communities already connected by web 2.0 technologies; with MotionDAO, we offer a collaborative space for Web3 experiments on financial, governance and socio-technical innovation.

Shermin Voshmgir  in the smartphone  documentary Trust in the Blockchain Society, clearly expresses the importance of the Web3:

“You can think...that tokens are to the Web 3.0 what websites were in the early days of the World Wide Web. If You think of the history of the internet, the Web 1.0 in the 90s revolutionized information, which is why we called it the information data highway. The Web 2.0 revolutionized interactions: it provides internet platforms that were bidirectional, but they are centrally owned. And the Web 3.0  revolutionizes value exchange. And the core of the Web 3.0 is blockchain networks, and the killer application is the token”.

Trailer - Trust in the Blockchain Society from Trust in the Blockchain Society on Vimeo.

A Decentralized Autonomous Organization for a social network?​

The crypto-economics theorist  Shermin Voshmgir adds that besides token and cryptocurrencies "Web3 networks introduce a new type of Internet-based institutional infrastructure that enables distributed internet communities to self-organize and coordinate in a more autonomous way, steered by purpose driven tokens, and executed with machine enforceable protocols. They are commonly referred as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)"

For ARAGON.org a DAO is an internet-native entity with no central management, which is regulated by a set of automatically enforceable rules on a public blockchain, and whose goal is to take on a life on its own and incentivize people to achieve a shared common mission.

Trailer for Dance-tech interviews from 2015

MotionDAO's vision is to support the evolution of Dance-tech and movimiento.org from a centralized digital social network to a DAO; therefore exploring the affordances of all the instances of the Web3 ecosystem: governance, token economic, decentralized finances, NFT, etc.

MotionDAO  is also interested in exploring radical models such as  Platform Cooperatives integrated with DAO technologies in order to redesign ownership and governance; in creating a system that decouples labor and creative process with experiments on Universal Basic Income.

This is a very informative video on DAOs Decentralized Autonomous Organizations:

MotionDAO project is led by the following matrix of questions:

1. Can we explore the innovation potential of blockchain technology  to develop a sustainable economy within an international  arts community?
2. What if members of a global digital  social network have their own cryptocurrency?
3. What if they can express value and appreciation of their contributions and participation in the network with a crypto-currency  that reflects their ethos?
4. How can we use crypto-economic frameworks to question and inquire about the fundamental architecture, dynamics and ethics of contemporary economic systems?
5. Can we move from a model of centralized ownership to one of cooperative ownership and decentralized governance DAO ? 

MotionDAO  proposes several tactics based on the important developments in the Web3 ecosystem:

1.-The creation of a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).

2.- $MOTION, as a cryptocurrency  for dance-tech.net and associated network members.

3.-NFT Galery of  Non-fungible Token Gallery  for dance and time based arts the potential for a digiatal marketplace

4.-DeFi Descentralized Finance knowledge base.

5.-Token distributions strategies such as incentives for participation and specific actions, research/art grants, BUI tactics and the development of a tokenomic model.

6.-Partnerships with festivals and institutions for Web 3.0 education and the use of $MOTION. Pop-up Labs on site.

For inquiries email marlon[at]dance-tech[dot]net

RoadMap

Based on fundamentals aspects of crypto-economic design,  these are the envisioned project nodes for our community value flows:

1.-Digital community of Practice Web 2.0:

Continuous development and maintenance of the digital social networks platforms www.dance-tech.net, movimiento.org  as the fundamental  collaborative content spaces  and architecture of the ecosystem of knowledge co-creation and exchange.

Ideal scenario:

The creation of an integrated social media platform with Web3 technologies for the dance-tech community. See Steemit

 2.-MotionDAO in NEAR:

Since August 2021 MotionDAO is  collaborating withNear Protocol for education and adoption (onboarding). Motion DAO is exploring the Near Ecosystem and has adopted the NEAR as the formal currency supporting the upcoming relaunching of the MOTION Token in January 2022.

Why Near?

3.-MotionDAO

Evolving towards the creation of a  Decentralized Autonomous Organization as a way to  transfer ownership and authority to the community members using the frameworks of Platform Cooperativism and Exit to Community.

MotionDAO in SputnikDAO Platform

Fall 2021

4.-$MOTION: A Digital Currency (ERC20 token)

SMOTION is a cryptocurrency for dancers, dance lovers, performers, artists, creators, innovators, technologists, movers and shakers of embodied arts/somatics  and other time-based artistic expressions.  It embodies, a collaborative and democratic ethos,  the value of movement arts, the primacy of movement and the vital contribution of arts to culture development and knowledge production,

It is envisioned to become an important social currency  supporting exchanges of value between dance-tech.net and movimiento.org members, nodes and hubs of the international contemporary experimental, performance dance and digital arts such as festivals, art schools, art and research centers and the like.

$MOTION will be an ERC20 token running in the  Near Protocol.

Drafting a Token Distribution Strategy:

1.-Participation on monthly LIVE educational and on-boarding sessions. 

2.-Basic Universal Income.

3.-Apply for ART+$MOTIONS Grants:  providing  artists with funds for  crypto-economic education for its deployment in arts  and research projects.

4.-Partnership and collaborations with institutions such as festivals,  education institutions and research centers./art spaces.

$MOTION WALLET

Dance-tech/MotionDAO uses the Near Wallet

4.-MotionDAO Gallery as NFT MarketPlace

Explores and unlock the potential of the NFT (Non-fungible tokens) technology  for the market of art/performance digital content distribution and  authorship, ownership, education and certification and the potential Integration to the $MOTION token. 

MotionDAO Gallery in VR

MotionDAO Gallery@MintBase

5.-MotionDAO DeFi 

Explores the potential of decentralized finance protocols for liquidity and economic creativity. 

Methodology:

The development of this vision in this new socio-technical landscape will be leveraged by:

1.-Online Web3 on-boarding and education sessions and think-tanks on the affordances of WEB3 for the dance and technology community:

Crypto in Motion:  Crypto-economy Labs for dance-tech Creators (Fall 2021

2.-Online Live Interview series with Web3 specialists, artists and innovators.

3.-One-on-one and P2P coaching.

4.-Partnerships with festivals, networks  and art education institutions. 

5.-Special projects in VR / XR environments

Leading Team

Marlon Barrios Solano (USA) is the creator of dance-tech.net and originator of MotionDAO. He is a Creative Guild Leader in the NEAR Ecosystem and is developing the on-boarding program in collaboration with other dance-tech members and Community Specialists of NEAR Protocol.

Kernel/Gitcoin Block5 Fellow.

MotionDAO @ Communication Channels:

Join to group in Dance-tech.net (You need to be a member)

All proposal and reports  for the Near CreativesDAO

FOO FOR THOUGHT:

ARTIST AND THE BLOCKCHAIN

THE CURRENCY LAB (GAME)