Ian Cheng debuts '3FACE', an innovative NFT project with Outland

Ian Cheng has collaborated with Outland, the new platform that bridges contemporary art and NFTs, to produce an innovative digital artwork series. The unique project, titled 3FACE, is one of the most ambitious NFT artworks to interpret web3 data and marks Cheng’s most complex NFT work to date.

Each 3FACE adapts to its owner by reading the owner’s wallet and public transaction data, which then informs the NFT’s visual content, composition, and metadata. Cheng likens 3FACE to an “energy creature” that is symbiotically linked to the collector, as it absorbs one’s wallet data and mirrors their personality back to them. Collectors will be able to update their 3FACE reading as their wallet accrues more transaction history, and therefore incentivises web3 users to experiment with how their online behaviour reflects their psychological and existential state.

Unlike many data-driven artworks, which map arbitrary connections between information and imagery, 3FACE collects from a range of data points. These are interpreted through a personality model framework developed by Cheng to create a rich visualisation of one's psychic composition using generative techniques influenced by authored art assets.

Cheng’s 3FACE addresses the urge for psyche management and introspection in our chaotic and stressful era. As one might undertake a medical check-up or a palm reading, 3FACE considers the practice of reviewing one’s inner self within the realm of emerging web3 technologies and the primacy of our digital lives.

3FACE is a key entry point and token into Cheng’s long-term project on “existential health” that began in 2021 with Life After BOB, an episodic anime series that has been exhibited at The Shed in New York, LUMA Foundation, Samsung Leeum Museum in Seoul, and Light Art Space in Berlin.