Elyx resounds its message in the metaverse

• Yacine Aït Kaci created Elyx in 2011. The character immediately made a name for itself on Instagram.

  In 2015, Elyx was named the United Nations' first digital ambassador.

• Committed to the fight against global warming, Yacine Aït Kaci created the Elyx Foundation with Adeline Pilon to promote UN values ​​and respect for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015 by the 193 UN Member States.

• In this context, Elyx, which has already moved from the notebook to augmented reality, is trying out NFTs and, above all, virtual reality, with a metaverse project.

Holy little guy.

Starting from a drawing on a sketchbook, Elyx became in 2015 the first digital ambassador of the United Nations.

What a long way to go for this slender avatar, mute moreover!, but also, for its creator, Yacine Aït Kaci.

After entertaining the social networks by playing on the perspectives, the father and his creature enter Web 3, with not one but two projects.

The first, a collection of NFTs, Par11e1, which suddenly increases the family of Elyx by 1,111 offspring.

The second, a virtual archipelago whose first island has just been modelled.

Its name, Elyx Island.

As we will see, with Yacine Aït Kaci, nothing is ever left to chance.

Especially not in the metaverse, which could, according to him, encourage the citizens of industrialized countries to consume less in the real world,

GM.

Web3 will be spatial!

The new site https://t.co/zpz1zybjLO has thus become an island in levitation in the Archipelago of a Metaverse in the making.

Welcome to ELYX island!https://t.co/XSpxDUtbQr pic.twitter.com/G7C5IXgzbJ

— ELYX (elyxyak.eth) 🤩 (@elyxyak) June 16, 2022

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If we dwell on your journey, there is something that jumps out at you.

Whatever iteration of the web, you've put together some pretty crazy projects.

While preparing the show, we discovered that you were the inventor of

I was not alone, of course.

We created a group called Electronic Shadow in 2000, before filing a patent three years later.

We did a lot of installations, one of which was called “Trois minutes au carré”.

It's for you, it's a gift!

The postulate was to finally say if a space and merges with the image, we are not going to measure this space only by square meter, but by the time which will transform the space.

What's quite funny is that we won a prize from the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2005. We are the first distinguished Europeans.

They told us that this installation, which for us was completely futuristic, reminded them of the traditional Japanese habitat.

Inside, we do not count the space in square meters but in tatamis and it is totally modular.

It marked us a lot.

There was indeed a cultural look in our project and a non-verbal dimension that I will keep all my life.

Whether we are talking about virtual reality, online auctions… Each time, we can pull the thread and go back to much older things.

Throughout my career, it has amused me to follow the various technological developments, while drawing this historical thread which, in the end, is relatively coherent.

Let's keep doing it in this case.

During the advent of Web 2.0, you take advantage of social networks, visual in particular, with Instagram, to bring out a character who will change your artistic life: Elyx...

It's exactly that.

When social networks arrived, we had been shooting with Electronic Shadow for more than 15 years, talking about electronic shadow.

It wouldn't have made any sense for me to put my face and my name on Instagram etc.

As a result, you might as well highlight a fictional character who will become real through social networks.

Which character can talk to everyone across the planet?

A drawing.

When we are looking for a character, when we characterize him, we are going to look for particularities.

I did the reverse.

I de-characterized and looked for what could be common to as many people as possible.

Hence the drawing.

Everyone has drawn in their life at one point or another.

Childhood is the second common point.

The third, the smile.

By working them, we arrive at this rather simple drawing.

who, moreover,

didn't have a name at first.

It was the social networks that finally challenged me on this subject.

It was proof that the character existed for good.

Very quickly, I seized on this idea of ​​hybrid reality and made an augmented reality character out of it.

I drew it in a notebook and took it around the city as I wandered around.

Elyx has since become the United Nations' first digital ambassador.

This relationship to reality, to dimensions, how do we find it on the Web 3?

Whether we're talking about augmented, extended or virtual reality, it's kind of the same family.

Since 2000, I have been using the term hybrid reality, the hybridization of the real with the digital.

Meanwhile, there is a generation that has only known that, like my daughter.

This digital generation changes everything: this intuition that we had 25 years ago to say "it is not because it has no material reality that it does not exist", at the time we took us for fools;

today is ok.

And this is perhaps the basis of a new economy, a new industry, and a potential, vertiginous revolution.

Today, we are reaching a point of maturity where it can become something interesting.

A point that meets another.

On the one hand, we are witnessing the emergence of the metaverse, with the release of the Covid,

on the other, the IPCC, which tells us that we have three years to change everything.

That's good because precisely we want to change everything.

How can the metaverse help us achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in 2030?

The Elyx Foundation is working on it.

We started a study with the firm PWC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) around this question: and if the emergence of the metaverse could become a lever and an absolutely crazy opportunity to change culture and mentality to achieve a kind of material frugality, because we have the opportunity for digital abundance?

As long as we resolve both energy issues, resource issues, etc., which are real issues, there is a really interesting window of opportunity.

However, virtual worlds are still very energy-intensive.

How can they be less?

In fact, what is obviously not sustainable in the long term is to superimpose functions.

We can't have a world in which we drive around for a yes or a no, or we take a plane to a meeting, where we consume fast fashion, and the metaverse goes by- above.

But if we take the carbon footprint of digital as a whole, that is to say emails, streaming platforms, plus bitcoin and all blockchains etc., we arrive at this figure, important but put it into perspective: this represents 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Even if its impact is increasing rapidly, 96% of emissions are therefore not due to digital.

The bet we are making is already to see to what extent these 4% can replace a large part of the 96%.

thereupon,

We still have a very interesting example.

The Covid.

This is the first time since the end of the Second World War that we have seen a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, of the order of 7%.

7% is what we should do every year until 2030 to stay within the limits of the Paris agreements.

Suffice to say that it is badly crossed.

But ?

There is a but?

Confinement is the moment when we consumed the most digital.

That's what kept us connected.

This is what prevented the economy from completely collapsing and also, paradoxically, what led us to go from 50% of the world's population who did not have access to Internet at 37%.

We have witnessed a massification of the use of digital technology.

Where there is a thread to be drawn is in the ability of this percentage of digital energy expenditure to create value.

And how this area can create more value with less energy, making people ultimately when they have their

, their 20 Mint machine or their Para11e1, in fact they really have something.

They have something going up in value, they're no longer in the consumer systems that got us into the wall.

Like fast fashion, which is the second most polluting industry.

What ?

Absolutely.

Elyx celebrated its 10th anniversary in full confinement.

It was a shame, we couldn't do any event or exhibition.

I had been fiddling around with my VR (virtual reality) headset for a while and I said to myself: “It doesn't matter, we're going to make a virtual museum”.

We started with Spatial, an application that is basically used to organize meetings in a virtual setting, with the possibility of customizing spaces.

We opened the museum about a year and a half ago.

Spatial has since fully embraced this model.

We have since organized with them and the studio t to my happiness”.

With the feeling of fulfilling oneself while having less, materially, one becomes a kind of celestial tramp.

It is a paradigm shift that relies not on faith but on proof that these things, although virtual, exist.

That,

Elyx also took advantage of the confinement to switch to a virtual world…

Absolutely.

Elyx celebrated its 10th anniversary in full confinement.

We couldn't do any events or exhibitions.

I'd been fiddling around with my VR (virtual reality) headset for a while and thought, "Never mind.

This museum will be virtual”.

We started with Spatial, an application that is basically used to organize meetings in a virtual setting, with the possibility of customizing spaces.

We opened the museum about a year and a half ago.

Spatial has since fully embraced this model.

We also organized with them and the Polycount studio an exhibition in the metaverse for our own NFT collection.

Para11e1, right?

Yes, because they are parallels of Elyx.

Each is unique, with eleven unique traits.

They form a kind of

of Elyx who will accompany us on the archipelagos of our metaverse.

Because I think the first phase of NFTs was identification, a bit like avatars, social network profile photos, the famous PFP (profile pictures).

How do we represent ourselves to others in the world of web 3?

But once you've introduced yourself fifteen times with monkeys, colorful women, you kind of know who you are.

We want to do something with this body and we move on to the second phase of the NFT, exciting, which will make the link with the metaverse.

That of architecture.

How does my space itself become an NFT?

Will come after the third phase.

Field.

And who says land, says country, governance... From there, questions of rights, freedoms, questions of democracy will begin to arise.

We will come back to the sustainable development goals.

The gender equality score, for example.

When we hear sustainable development objective, 80% of the time we think of ecology.

But it's much bigger.

Could this be the Web 3 revolution?

The feeling I have is that we are living for the digital age, what the renaissance was in the printing press.

Suddenly, we had a mad acceleration in the dissemination of knowledge.

As we have digital natives, there were print natives.

Which results 25 years later in an explosion, a questioning of everything.

The Renaissance.

Today, we have a generation, the gen-z, for whom it is an aberration to live in this world they inherit.

Global warming is omnipresent, they are not found in the values ​​of consumption patterns… They ultimately bring much more credence or importance to an NFT or to a community.

To be part of a community.

This stuff, really, it's an opportunity that we can't pass up.

How can Elyx participate in the movement?

When talking about tech to people who also want to change the world to avoid the most serious effects of climate change, the metaverse or the blockchain are rarely popular.

There is a double plea to be made.

First, to show that it is not a gimmick.

Yes, it's fun, and so much the better because it's easier to convince people when it's fun, rather than through fear, which encourages extremes.

The second plea is to see how this transformation can be done for industries, to ensure that an economy behind it develops.

Because there are two realities.

There is that of the rich countries which are in overconsumption, in material abundance, of waste, of energy.

All that, it must be lowered, we have no choice.

And Web 3 can be a good solution to achieve this.

Then,

there is another part of the world, much more important, which unfortunately has nothing to do with climate change and to which we are going to say “Oh no, you can't develop because it's too late”.

On the contrary, I believe that they should be allowed to develop.

Moreover, the countries in which blockchains are the most used are countries of the South: in Vietnam, in South America… And we must all be able to find ourselves at a crossroads.

We need much less, but in a very creative way.

The imaginary, could really become the basis for the creation of the next phase of civilization.

On the contrary, I believe that they should be allowed to develop.

Moreover, the countries in which blockchains are the most used are countries of the South: in Vietnam, in South America… And we must all be able to find ourselves at a crossroads.

We need much less, but in a very creative way.

The imaginary, could really become the basis for the creation of the next phase of civilization.

On the contrary, I believe that they should be allowed to develop.

Moreover, the countries in which blockchains are the most used are countries of the South: in Vietnam, in South America… And we must all be able to find ourselves at a crossroads.

We need much less, but in a very creative way.

The imaginary, could really become the basis for the creation of the next phase of civilization.

How to distinguish between the real and the virtual, if the latter becomes more and more attractive?

The real is irreplaceable, that's obvious.

The digital and then the virtual come to complete it.

That's why we talk about hybrid reality.

There is what we experience in the physical and there is something that continues afterwards, today with virtual reality headsets, tomorrow with glasses.

And we go from one to the other in a fluid way.

I had such an experience.

On Spatial, when you speak in your native language, you have the simultaneous translation of what you say above your head.

At the time when it was a novelty I found myself following the conversation between a Korean, and the founder of Spatial, who spoke in Hindi, while I saw the text in French above their avatar.

I knew I was living a unique moment.

Physically, I was in Paris, and, at the same time, under my helmet,

I found myself in front of a kind of campfire with guests, for some in New York, others in Korea.

It was super moving.

And this moment existed completely, because all those who took part in it share a common memory.

Experiences like that don't ape reality.

It's something different, new.

The more uses of this type we have, the more natural they will become.

We will go from one to the other without asking the question and above all without opposing them.

This is the metaverse.

It's not just 3D space.

It's the community, the people you know.

We start a conversation here, we can continue it on another platform, another format.

Our agility to move from one to the other will completely change our way of perceiving the world.

others in Korea.

It was super moving.

And this moment existed completely, because all those who took part in it share a common memory.

Experiences like that don't ape reality.

It's something different, new.

The more uses of this type we have, the more natural they will become.

We will go from one to the other without asking the question and above all without opposing them.

This is the metaverse.

It's not just 3D space.

It's the community, the people you know.

We start a conversation here, we can continue it on another platform, another format.

Our agility to move from one to the other will completely change our way of perceiving the world.

others in Korea.

It was super moving.

And this moment existed completely, because all those who took part in it share a common memory.

Experiences like that don't ape reality.

It's something different, new.

The more uses of this type we have, the more natural they will become.

We will go from one to the other without asking the question and above all without opposing them.

This is the metaverse.

It's not just 3D space.

It's the community, the people you know.

We start a conversation here, we can continue it on another platform, another format.

Our agility to move from one to the other will completely change our way of perceiving the world.

Experiences like that don't ape reality.

It's something different, new.

The more uses of this type we have, the more natural they will become.

We will go from one to the other without asking the question and above all without opposing them.

This is the metaverse.

It's not just 3D space.

It's the community, the people you know.

We start a conversation here, we can continue it on another platform, another format.

Our agility to move from one to the other will completely change our way of perceiving the world.

Experiences like that don't ape reality.

It's something different, new.

The more uses of this type we have, the more natural they will become.

We will go from one to the other without asking the question and above all without opposing them.

This is the metaverse.

It's not just 3D space.

It's the community, the people you know.

We start a conversation here, we can continue it on another platform, another format.

Our agility to move from one to the other will completely change our way of perceiving the world.

It's the community, the people you know.

We start a conversation here, we can continue it on another platform, another format.

Our agility to move from one to the other will completely change our way of perceiving the world.

It's the community, the people you know.

We start a conversation here, we can continue it on another platform, another format.

Our agility to move from one to the other will completely change our way of perceiving the world.

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