A sculpture of Elon Musk has been lately noticed being towed behind a Tesla Cybertruck across the metropolis of Brownsville, Texas.
“We had the concept to to deliver one thing into life that will be extra placing and perhaps even crazier and funnier,” a French tech entrepreneur who goes by Louis XXII advised ARTnews. He declined to supply his actual identify.
Louis XXII mentioned the primary aim was to deliver extra consideration and visibility to a viral meme sparked by a unhealthy drawing of the billionaire and SpaceX founder posted on Reddit six years in the past.
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Louis XXII mentioned he’s the cofounder of ElonRWA, a “actual world asset meme” tokenized on the second layer of the Ethereum blockchain (often known as Ether L2) organized by the decentralized autonomous group FeistyDAO.
“The statue isn’t linked to the valuation of this [ElonRWA] token,” he mentioned. “It’s only a humorous strategy to signify this meme in different methods.”
The thought for the almost nine-foot-tall sculpture of Musk got here after Louis XXII and his digital artist collective commissioned a big mural of the identical unhealthy drawing from Reddit with the phrases “Occupy Mars” earlier this yr. Carlos Manuel Guerrero, a neighborhood artist in Brownsville, confirmed to ARTnews that he was the artist in an Instagram message.
The sculpture of Elon Musk subsequent to the commissioned mural in Brownsville, Texas. Courtesy of Louis XXII.
The town of Brownsville can be situated close to the brand new headquarters of Musk’s aerospace manufacturing firm, SpaceX, and its Starbase industrial advanced.
“We wished to deliver this meme into the actual world,” Louis XXII advised ARTnews. “How may we have an effect on the actual world? We’re a bunch of men on computer systems energetic on X, however we wished to the touch extra folks.”
A member of the decentralized autonomous group FeistyDAO often known as lil_dojo turned the drawing right into a 3D rendering, after which Louis XXII discovered an organization in Utah to supply the sculpture out of froth and fiberglass. lil_dojo had additionally beforehand bought the unique bodily copy of the drawing of Musk from the Reddit consumer and the accompanying NFT.
“It took a giant month to make it occur,” Louis XXII mentioned, noting that he had acquired custody of the statue on August 15 and that it was painted bronze, and never made of the particular steel.
In 2021, photographs of the unique unhealthy drawing prompted a number of responses by Elon Musk himself on the social media platform X, whose endorsement and feedback induced it to go viral.
Louis XXII advised ARTnews that the endgoal of the collective behind ElonRWA was to place out dependable and genuine NFT initiatives after quite a lot of scams garnered widespread media consideration.
A report confirmed a forty five % decline in gross sales of NFTs within the final quarter, however Louis XXII advised ARTnews, “We don’t care concerning the market, we don’t care about something. We simply need to have enjoyable. We need to do optimistic stuff, good mission. And we all know that in the long term, it [will] all the time pay again while you work with the correct folks, take time to construct actual initiatives with an actual worth.”
The information of the sculpture was first reported by the San Antonio Categorical Information.