ACTZ COMISSIONS - ARCHITECTURE EDITION
Completing its 12th edition in June 2025, ACTZ Commissions is an initiative within the Tezos ecosystem that hosts auctions of works by artists selected through open calls. Each month, a curatorial team — led by Scott and Jesse — selects a theme and a group of contributors. “It was back in May 2024,” Jesse recalls, “I made a post wanting to commission a 1/1 for 50 XTZ. There was a bit of pushback about the price being too low, so I suggested putting it up for auction. If someone wanted to outbid me, they could.” Shortly after, Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, Head of Arts at Trilitech, reached out and asked: "Do you want to do more?" — and offered funding to help launch a proper series of auctions.
Since then, ACTZ has developed into a consistent and serious project, and it now also operates as a gallery on the objkt platform. This month’s theme: Architecture. And as one of the invited curators — along with Diane Drubay, Henrique Cartaxo, and Trippy Collector — I selected six artists from the open call: three women and three men, each from a different part of the world. I had the chance to talk with them about their ideas, follow their creative process, and discuss their pieces. And not only that.
I also witnessed how fragile the act of creating can be when an artist lives in a war zone. Following the Israeli attack on Tehran, I lost contact with Elham Yazdanian, one of the artists I had selected. Due to the escalating situation, she wrote to me: “I don't know if I will be alive tomorrow to commit to this.” She had to decline. It was painful, but of course, I understood. Still, I didn’t give up on her. Jesse generously offered to welcome her work at any future moment, whenever she's ready. I’ll be waiting.
On Architecture and Motion — or Architecture in Motion
TransFormation The Last Tree, Architecture in Motion Series. Hybrid workflow using custom AI model and traditional digital painting techniques, 2025, by URBANDRONE.
“Often the themes are simply a suggestion artists can riff on in their own way,” Jesse explains. “It makes each collection diverse but still cohesive.” For this edition, I selected artists with a body of work that resonates or holds real promise. Most of them have backgrounds in architecture, 3D, creative coding, or fine arts. That alone makes this a compelling mix.
The subtle, underlying thread seems to be what Zaki Jawhari, aka URBANDRONE — architect and media artist — has been exploring for some time: Architecture in Motion. In this series, the artist experiments with the notion of hybrid space, questioning the world we live in: “the construction of a digital landscape fed by a multitude of data, organized and processed by the machine according to a series of simple and repetitive rules.”
He describes this concept also as “a flexible, responsive take on a changing world and infrastructure, reshaping how we experience the city.” For him, it’s about combining public-private partnerships, government regulations, and grassroots initiatives to make urban life more just and more sustainable. Still, he adds, “A balanced approach that combines market forces with regulation and community involvement is the most effective path to building sustainable, efficient cities in the long run.” TransFormation The Last Tree — his piece in the exhibition — draws you in, inviting you to zoom in and let the details unfold.
Oh, did I mention that URBANDRONE started his artistic career performing live at electronic music festivals and producing interactive digital experiences? Yes, he did.
Chaotic Structures
Chaotic Structures, MP4, 2025, by Ferdoropeza. (Still from video)
Daniel Oropeza, a.k.a Ferdoropeza, is a multidisciplinary artist from Venezuela who grew up in a small town east of Caracas. “I studied music composition in Caracas. After graduating, I moved back home. But by 2016, the economic crisis made it impossible to stay. Like many others, I left. I moved to Panama, where I’ve been ever since,” he told me.
Daniel still composes academic and symphonic music, though his main focus now is digital art and technology. “I do write poetry from time to time,” he adds. Multidisciplinary, no doubt.
About his ACTZ piece, Chaotic Structures, he says: “It merges several experiments I’ve been working on. It uses WebGL to build 3D geometry and applies textures based on images of old stairs, doors, walls, and columns. I then processed those into a rotating amorphous mass. I wanted to bring architecture to the edge of chaos, to make something impossible.” And he nailed it.
The work suggests a city in constant motion, endlessly reconfiguring itself — yet guided by a kind of controlled randomness, altering scale, rotation, and texture. “Light and color enhance the ephemeral nature of the forms, evoking both architectural models and urban dreams.”
UTO
UTO, 2025, by NUBPLUS. Interactive application. (Still)
Born in Turkey and currently based in Montenegro, NUBPLUS started out as a muralist and studied sculpture. From the beginning, digital processes were part of his workflow: “I mostly developed my ideas digitally, then used that to plan production. At first, digital tools were just a means to an end. But over time, digital production became my main medium. It wasn’t entirely intentional. I found more support in the digital world, and my own view of it evolved.”
NUBPLUS’s passion for making started early — his mother was an amateur painter. “Honestly, I’ve been making things for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is building small wooden boxes. That was over 30 years ago, and I’m still at it.” Today, Nubplus works with modular ceramic tiles and bricks, closely tied to architectural thinking. “My dream is to create large-scale architectural projects. As you can imagine, such designs require a lot of effort, time, and financial resources. That’s why I find it more practical to bring these ideas to life in the digital world. But one day, I believe I’ll realize those massive architectural dreams too,” he envisions.
He creates interactive work because he believes interaction strengthens the connection with the audience. “Since architecture is about people and society, I try to incorporate interactive elements in my architectural projects too.” A former graffiti artist, Nubplus was also heavily influenced by typography. He developed a visual language using surface designs based on Kufic script. “That language gave birth to the square-headed, two-legged ‘humans’ that now recur in my work. They might look like buildings, but at their core they’re emotional symbols. Their relationships with each other form structures that mimic architectural compositions. I love evolving this idea.”
UTO is his piece in this curation, an interactive WebGL artwork. “You can control the camera angle and move freely within the scene — it’s designed to give you that freedom.” NUBPLUS explains also that, while the architectural forms vary across aesthetic styles, the most essential element is always structure. “That’s why I wanted to highlight columns and beams as the core building blocks of architecture. No matter how dazzling the illusion created by repetition and motion may be — at their core, every unit is equal.”
Recuerdo
Recuerdo, 2025, Mariana Ju.
From northern Argentina, Mariana Ju lives not far from where she grew up. With a background in architecture, her work gravitates toward symmetry, rhythm, and structure. “At the same time, I like to push back against that structure,” she explains. “Using tools like KidPix lets me loosen up, be more intuitive. Architecture taught me how to organize space — but I had to unlearn some of it to let more freedom in.”
For her ACTZ Comissions Architecture Edition piece, Mariana revisited a model she had created in SketchUp during university. “I often work with unfinished or unbuilt projects from that time. I render them and then rework the images in Photoshop to create new visual narratives.”
Her collages often come with short texts, notes, or poems. “Writing is where many pieces begin. Poetry helps frame the visuals, or open them up. It lets the words and the image speak to each other.”
Color is central in her work. Her pieces are lush, vivid. “I’m deeply inspired by Luis Barragán’s use of light and color, and by Zaha Hadid’s formal language. Over time, I realized my color palette echoes the houses I grew up around — painted in bold pinks, greens, blues. It wasn’t about taste. Those were simply the cheapest paints available.”
Mariana explains that these choices weren’t purely aesthetic, but practical: “they were simply the most affordable paints available.” And it’s precisely in that essentiality that her work stands out — remarkably vibrant, and anything but ordinary.
Alometry: Bricks and Memory
Alometry: Bricks and Memory, 2025, Angeles Franco. Interactive application. (Still)
Angeles Franco is an architect who graduated from the National University of Tucumán (Argentina), and from the very beginning, she’s been drawn to both the technical and expressive dimensions of design. “Alongside my academic training, I developed an independent practice that blends architecture, digital art, biomaterials, and emerging technologies. Today, I work as a freelance BIM architect, teach workshops on experimental material design, and maintain an artistic practice that engages with territory, everyday life, and new ways of inhabiting the digital. I also teach Digital Techniques II at the university.”
Angeles says she first discovered Web3 back in 2020, during the pandemic, while exploring possibilities for remote work. “Thanks to the shift to online spaces, I gained access to platforms and workshops I wouldn't have been able to reach otherwise. One of them was a course on Cryptovoxels, and that's when the idea of becoming a ‘virtual architect’ emerged.”
Alometry: Bricks and Memory is her piece in this curation. An interactive collage that combines images of rubble, construction materials and urban noises. The work proposes a visual and sound experience built with bricks, debris and fluorescent colors. The background changes, the elements move, and with each click the viewer alters the composition and the sound, becoming co-author of the process.
“This artwork revolves around construction and demolition. It was born from a previous exhibition I held at the Museum of the City of Tucumán, which used to be a private home that was declared heritage and saved from demolition. That fact struck me, because in Argentina it's very common to prioritize what’s new and profitable over what already exists —even if that means losing memory and urban identity.”
Angeles also works with biomaterials and circular design, and developed a remarkable project called Generativa Materia — one you shouldn’t miss. “I’ve received two grants from the National Fund for the Arts and collaborated with communities such as the Colla Guaraní from Calilegua (Jujuy). I also brought this practice into the university, within the Technical Degree in Fashion and Textile Design at the National University of Tucumán.”
She’s currently preparing her first physical exhibition focused on these material explorations. “Generativa Materia is exactly that: the intersection of the organic, the discarded, and the experimental as a space for creation, reflection, and autonomy,” she concludes.
You can find all the pieces from my curation, along with works by the other artists featured in this June edition, at the ACTZ Commissions gallery on objkt.