Series
The Evliya Çelebi’s Travelogues
Minted On o-mee & Manifold
Evliya Çelebi was a 17th-century Ottoman traveler who wrote a ten-volume travelogue, Seyahatnâme.
The volumes detail his travels throughout the Ottoman Empire and beyond.
The Evliya Çelebi’s Travelogues series uses AI to recreate passages from his travels.
Evliya Çelebi was a 17th-century Ottoman traveler who wrote a ten-volume travelogue, Seyahatnâme.
The volumes detail his travels throughout the Ottoman Empire and beyond.
The Evliya Çelebi’s Travelogues series uses AI to recreate passages from his travels.
Red Apple uses AI to reinterpret Çelebi’s writing on Hagia Sophia, Istanbul’s first imperial mosque.
“an image of Mother Meryem (the Virgin Mary), holding in her hand a carbuncle as big as a pigeons egg, by the blaze of which the mosque was lighted every night. This carbuncle was also removed in the birthnight of the Prophet, to Kizil Almà (Rome), which received its name (Red Apple) from thence.”
Series
The Mediterranean Botanicals Collection:
Bay Of Kotor
Minted On Nifty’s & Manifold
Over centuries, mariners returned to the Mediterranean with seeds and plantlings. The pursuit of empires, trade, legacy, medicine, religion, and aesthetics forged the UNESCO protected site’s landscape.
The bay’s naval fleet peaked at 300 ships to protect its prominent salt trade in the Middle Ages. But, its mariner history potentially traces back to the Balkan Bronze Age. Over millennia, great European empires (Roman, Ottoman, Venetian, Napoleon, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian) owned a piece of the Bay of Kotor for strategic and merchant gain.
Today, the bay strives for architectural revitalization and preservation while maintaining its wild beauty and traditions.
Today the Bay of Kotor strives for architectural revitalization and preservation while maintaining its wild beauty and traditions. Venice, Italy, continues to finance the restoration of Kotor’s Venetian structures.
Retired naval facilities around the bay have converted into five-star resorts and marinas welcoming mega yachts. Every year at sunset on July 22nd, sailors arrive for the custom known as fašinada, throwing rocks in the sea near Our Lady of the Rocks, a sailor-formed island near Pearst.
Retired naval facilities around the bay have converted into five-star resorts and marinas welcoming mega yachts. At sunset on July 22nd each year, sailors arrive for the custom known as fašinada, throwing rocks in the sea near Our Lady of the Rocks, a sailor-formed island near Pearst.
Exhibited at: NFT Biennial, NFTBerlin, Miami NFT Con, Utopian Dystopia Kochi, Belltown Art Walk, The Boca Raton with Lynn University’s NFT Museum
Over centuries, mariners returned to the Mediterranean with seeds and plantlings. The pursuit of empires, trade, legacy, medicine, religion, and aesthetics forged the UNESCO protected site’s landscape.
The bay’s naval fleet peaked at 300 ships to protect its prominent salt trade in the Middle Ages. But, its mariner history potentially traces back to the Balkan Bronze Age. Over millennia, great European empires (Roman, Ottoman, Venetian, Napoleon, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian) owned a piece of the Bay of Kotor for strategic and merchant gain.
Today, the bay strives for architectural revitalization and preservation while maintaining its wild beauty and traditions.
Retired naval facilities around the bay have converted into five-star resorts and marinas welcoming mega yachts. At sunset on July 22nd each year, sailors arrive for the custom known as fašinada, throwing rocks in the sea near Our Lady of the Rocks, a sailor-formed island near Pearst.
Exhibited at: NFT Biennial, NFTBerlin, Miami NFT Con, Utopian Dystopia Kochi, Belltown Art Walk, The Boca Raton with Lynn University’s NFT Museum
Amidst a violent storm, Alkima searched for her forbidden human lover. The gods surged the seas until her boat began to sink. Seafarers spotted her and sailed out to rescue her. Alkima tried to thank them with gold, but they refused the offer. Instead, they accepted everlasting gold, the mimosa flower.
Alkima still performs good deeds around the Kotor mountains trying to earn forgiveness and return to the gods’ realm. It’s said that she can be spotted on Fairy’s Gate at certain times of the night.
Greek botanist Theophrastus created the word dianthus to reference Dios (God/Zeus) and anthos (flower), bestowing the binomial Dianthus caryophyllus, which directly translates to Flower of the Gods. Its common English name may derive from the Latin word for a crown (corona) because of its use in ceremonial crowns. And while the linguistic line between Greek and Latin fluctuated between modern-day Montenegro and Greece, the Serbo-Croatian word for carnation (karanfil) is derived from Ottoman Turkish.
Greek and Roman mythology’s origin of the flower is from the goddess Artemis/ Diana. After an unsuccessful hunt, she blamed a flute-playing shepherd for scaring off her prey. She gouged his eyes and threw them between stones. As her rage curtailed into regret, the eyes transformed into carnations.
At the shore of Herceg Novi, Forte Mare vaults out of the sea and into the sky. While there are no official records, it is taught that King Stjepan Tvrtko I of Bosnia placed the fortress’ first stone in 1382. Under its imposing stone face, the creeping prickly pear cascades down the wall within a leap of the promenade.
In the 16th century, Christian missionaries returned to Europe from Mesoamerica with the creeping prickly pear as a curiosity, where it was then spread throughout the Mediterranean by sailors. When Ottoman travel writer Evliya Çeleb visited Herceg Novi in 1664, the plant had naturalized. He described the city in his travelogues Seyâhatnâme as “a very solid and fortified city, so it is impossible to show or describe it!? It is surrounded by sharp cliffs and moats of hellish depth. It is a very high and beautiful city!” The bay’s unique microclimates are ideal for the creeping prickly pear, leading to its current listing as a national invasive species.
The angel’s trumpet’s pendulous blooms become fragrant at night. The old lore is, perhaps, a lesson of danger. Each part of the flower, including the smell, is toxic. The plant contains a low-potency tropane alkaloid that induces hallucinations and euphoria, but exposure can lead to muscle weakness, convulsions, paralysis, memory loss, and death.
The Romans overthrew the queen and built a road that ran around the bay and extended to the modern borders of Croatia and Albania. Majestic red, pink, and white oleanders lined the road when, as legend tells, a Montenegrin king visited Risan to build a summer home. However, a confidant warned of the potential misfortune due to the abundance of oleanders.
Naturalized around the bay from Australia, Herceg Novi, the city of sun, flowers, and stairs, celebrates the anticipation of Spring with the month-long Mimosa Festival because the flower blooms in February.
Binomial: Mirabilis jalapa. Mirabilis [Latin] means wonderful, admirable, or marvelous. However, the use of “jalapa” in the binomial has been a point of debate among botanists for over 300 years. Irrespective of its discoursed nomenclature, the Marvel of Peru denotes a period of prosperity as it was a popular landscaping complement to brutalist architecture in mid-twentieth century Yugoslavia.
Submarine Tunnel: Bay of Kotor examines the creation of the submarine tunnel built by the Yugoslavian military and how it represents a desire for change. A militarized space constructed for sovereignty and security was repurposed as a public space for pragmatic and leisurely pursuits.
Montenegro’s Lustica Peninsula served two primary purposes: agriculture and fortification. The lush, steep coast dives into the Adriatic Sea on the south and the Bay of Kotor on the north. The peninsula’s 13 kilometers (8 miles) form the Montenegrin side of the bay’s mouth.
One of the defensive sites sits near the opening of the bay. Hidden amongst the trees, the decommissioned submarine tunnel encased in the hillside is nearly undetectable to the eye. The Yugoslavian military bored 100 meters (328 feet) into the stone in the 1970s.
Since Montenegro gained independence in 2006, it has strived to make its mark in upmarket tourism. As a result, the country retired several military installations and sold them for touristic endeavors, including luxury residences and resorts. Today, the submarine tunnel constructed for sovereignty and security welcomes the public for pragmatic and leisurely pursuits.
Exhibited at: NFT.NYC 2022 Times Square, The Boca Raton In Partnership With Lynn University’s NFT Museum
Submarine Tunnel: Bay of Kotor examines the creation of the submarine tunnel built by the Yugoslavian military and how it represents a desire for change. A militarized space constructed for sovereignty and security was repurposed as a public space for pragmatic and leisurely pursuits.
Montenegro’s Lustica Peninsula served two primary purposes: agriculture and fortification. The lush, steep coast dives into the Adriatic Sea on the south and the Bay of Kotor on the north. The peninsula’s 13 kilometers (8 miles) form the Montenegrin side of the bay’s mouth.
One of the defensive sites sits near the opening of the bay. Hidden amongst the trees, the decommissioned submarine tunnel encased in the hillside is nearly undetectable to the eye. The Yugoslavian military bored 100 meters (328 feet) into the stone in the 1970s.
Since Montenegro gained independence in 2006, it has strived to make its mark in upmarket tourism. As a result, the country retired several military installations and sold them for touristic endeavors, including luxury residences and resorts. Today, the submarine tunnel constructed for sovereignty and security welcomes the public for pragmatic and leisurely pursuits.
Exhibited at: NFT.NYC 2022 Times Square, The Boca Raton In Partnership With Lynn University’s NFT Museum
Control and Cooperation examines how public spaces embody changing power dynamics. Each work is a street photograph that is stripped apart and put together again. Inspired by Eames’ Powers of Ten, the images transform into aerial botanical gardens with documentative remnants.
Exhibited at: Art on Paper during Armory Week, Photo London satellite event, INTERSECT Art + Blockchain Meetup During NFT London At The Institute Of Contemporary Arts
Control and Cooperation examines how public spaces embody changing power dynamics. Each work is a street photograph that is stripped apart and put together again. Inspired by Eames’ Powers of Ten, the images transform into aerial botanical gardens with documentative remnants.
Exhibited at: Art on Paper during Armory Week, Photo London satellite event, INTERSECT Art + Blockchain Meetup During NFT London At The Institute Of Contemporary Arts