“I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards.” –Philip K. Dick

Anticipating the Future

What do we talk about when we talk about science fiction? Science challenges us to imagine the world differently. Fiction invites us to imagine other selves in other lives — and, like science, challenges us to imagine the world differently, or other worlds entirely. Technology is in some sense a blend of the two, turning scientific concepts and innovations into tools that improve or enhance human lives. Those acts of imagination are a kind of anticipation, even a challenge.

Many ubiquitous technologies we use today were dreamed up by science fiction writers long before they could exist. Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) featured characters paying with credit cards more than 60 years before magnetic stripes were invented. The government in George Orwell’s 1939 classic 1984 uses surveillance to maintain total control over the lives of citizens. William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) refers to cyberspace as a “consensual hallucination,” a visualization of data from every computer on a globally accessible network that looks a lot like the internet.

Of course, for every Neuromancer, there are hundreds of sci-fi works that did not turn out to be prophetic. Some are thought experiments about worlds entirely unlike our own, while others hold a mirror up to this one. Science fiction isn’t about predictions, it’s about stories — exploring the infinite possible futures our world might unfurl into, and the technologies that would carry us there. The best science fiction feels truer than true, familiar to the heart if not the mind, but expanding both.

Sci-fi as UX Design

So science fiction isn’t necessarily all about figuring out the next big technology. But if you’re trying to build the next game-changing tool, platform, or product, science fiction might help get you there. After all, many of the people building blockchain protocols, products, and networks are working for social as well as technological change: moving power to the edges, dismantling destructive hierarchies, giving individuals control of their digital identities, and reimagining how everyone can exchange old and new forms of value in a more transparent, trustful way. That reimagination is also a kind of storytelling.

Cellarius is a transmedia storytelling experience rooted in science fiction. Some of the core goals of the project — blockchain-supported metadata, digitally native IP structures, more permissive licensing, a new kind of content marketplace — could be tested in any genre, but we’ve chosen near-future hard science fiction because we want the Cellarius story to explore the technologies we are helping to build and scale on blockchain. By bringing writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians, and all types of creatives to this project, we hope we can create a more diverse base of users contributing to the Ethereum ecosystem and grappling with its big technical, social, and ethical questions in its early years. This includes thinking about how Web 3.0 technologies could shape the futures of individuals, institutions, and societies — by creating science fiction.

Thinking about human outcomes is the best way to build tools and products. As Sarah Baker Mills wrote in her designing for blockchain deep dive, the human story is too often left out of product discussions, or brought in too late. The people who use and interact with technology are not just customers or marketing categories, and most of them won’t know or care about the underlying machinery, be it the TCI/IP suite of communication protocols that underpin our current experience of the Internet, or the low-level client specs of Web 3.0. People adopt technology if, and because, it will make their lives better or easier in some way: it lets them connect to people, lets them get work done more efficiently, lets them exchange goods or money faster. We need to understand the human context of what we’re making and include a wide range of people in the process, from the very beginning.

Optimism on the Cutting Edge

Many beloved works of science fiction are dystopian and cautionary tales about what could come to pass if we cede too much power to machines or surveillance states. Conflict often makes great stories, and sometimes taking danger or darkness to an extreme clarifies the version we’re living in now. But science fiction can also include optimistic tales of liberating heroes, more equal societies, and deeper knowledge. There is room in science fiction (and certainly in Cellarius!) for optimism: hope, ambiguity, freedom, and love stories.

Likewise, the best possible outcomes of scalable Web 3.0 technologies offer rich opportunities for storytellers. Individuals, institutions, and societies all interact and overlap in science fiction. What will the world look like when large groups of people can coordinate and collaborate without the mediation of a central authority? How will people approach business transactions peer to peer, in the absence of middlemen, with more tools for establishing trust and reputation? What will jobs look like when companies have evolved into networks? How do the dots between these connect in the lived experience of one person?

In fact, some Web 2.0 giants, including Google, Apple, and Microsoft, have hired science fiction writers to present to their employees on “design fiction” and meet with their teams of developers and researchers to workshop ideas. User research and user experience should start with storytelling, and making users and their contexts fully three-dimensional.

Does Sci-Fi Really Inspire Great Ideas? Ask Joe Lubin!

ConsenSys founder and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin is a devoted science fiction fan. His three favorite works? The classic 1982 film “Blade Runner,” directed by Ridley Scott — an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — and the Neal Stephenson novels Snow Crash (1992) and The Diamond Age (1995). Are there base notes of decentralized architectures and non-hierarchical mesh organizations in these pages? Only one way to find out.

All of us in the blockchain ecosystem should challenge ourselves to imagine stories about what real people will make of Web 3.0 tools and products. If we aren’t thinking about human outcomes, we are losing sight of what we’re trying to build. The next time you or your team is stumped, hitting a wall or seeking inspiration, consider reading a work of science fiction — or better yet, writing one.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by the authors and contributors above do not necessarily represent the views of Consensys AG. ConsenSys is a decentralized community with ConsenSys Media being a platform for members to freely express their diverse ideas and perspectives. To learn more about ConsenSys and Ethereum, please visit our website.

Why Blockchain Needs Sci-Fi Right Now was originally published in ConsenSys Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Media today is extremely centralized. Most content with a broad audience base is created in a very closed and exclusive system — there are a few major studios we can all name, and they continue merging with one another into ever-bigger monoliths. Old media distribution methods are inefficient and expensive. If it’s not a blockbuster, it’s not a success. Sometimes this system results in great art. But mostly it leads to safe art.

The curatorial power is in the hands of a few elites in Hollywood and New York, and the barrier to entry for creatives to capture their attention and get a chance to contribute is very high. For a movie or a book to be a hit, it has to make tons of money and reach a cultural saturation point. (Making a feature film in the U.S. costs $30 million at minimum and needs to gross $120 million to break even. Seventy percent of book advances never earn out.) The decision-makers in these corporations are risk-averse, and much of the media they make is derivative, repetitive, and not diverse.

The gig economy and an apparent surplus of talented creatives has encouraged exploitative practices, notably including spec work, where an artist works for free in the hopes of getting paid later. Freelancers wait months for payments and endure inconsistent flows of work and profit. It shouldn’t be so hard to make a living as a painter or a writer or a musician while film and publishing and music executives net millions upon millions of dollars in personal profit every year, but it is.

A Decentralized Renaissance

We’re trying to rethink these outdated, limiting models for making art and telling stories at Cellarius. If you’re new to our project, here’s a short version: Cellarius is a science fiction story that explores humans’ relationship to technology. Cellarius is a platform that enables peer-to-peer, decentralized, transmedia content creation. Cellarius is a community where enthusiastic creatives and collaborators craft and evolve the story together. We believe that science fiction is for everyone, and we regard that idea as a challenge as well as a guiding principle.

In our White Paper, we discuss our aim to spark a “Decentralized Renaissance.” As we continue to onboard artists and collaborators, build the platform, and expand our community, the full scope of that ambition has crystallized. I hope the result is just as crazy as it sounds.

“Renaissance” is a heavy word, and we don’t use it lightly. It means “rebirth” or “reawakening.” The historical Renaissance, which took place from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries in Europe, was not only a massive surge in art and literature, but in learning, science, and information access. From the depiction of perspective in painting, to the development of the scientific method, to moveable type, major transformations took place in every field. It was a paradigm shift, a cultural transition in every possible sense: the medieval era ended and the Modern world began.

How can we use blockchain and Web 3.0 technologies to precipitate such a flourishing in the digital era? We want to create new channels of opportunity and new paths to abundance for creatives. By decentralizing the processes of creating, sharing, and funding art and stories, we hope to build a digital ecosystem in which new forms of creativity can emerge, and even flourish.

Rewriting the Narrative

The Renaissance showed how liberating capital can precipitate an increased interest in funding and producing art. The innovation of double-entry accounting, first in the Middle East and later in Italy, allowed for more exact, transparent financial management and therefore wealth accumulation, which families like the Medici used to support artists, scientists, and more. The arts flourished in this period in large part because patrons were investing in promising artists and commissioning ambitious, groundbreaking works. Greater accuracy and transparency in bookkeeping meant that businesses could run more efficiently, which manifested as wealth creation.

Add to this shift the ability to disseminate the written word widely, cheaply, and in vernacular language using the Gutenberg printing press, and the magnitude of the transformation in this era isn’t hard to believe. The printing press also led to the earliest regulations on treasonous language, which eventually emerged into the state-controlled system of copyright that still rules over the sharing of content today. It makes sense that a societal-scale unleashing of information would start to look pretty chaotic, pretty quickly.

It also looks a lot like the first generation of the internet, or Web 2.0. Copyright does a lot to protect and recognize the people creating value by producing “good” information, and it’s not hard to understand why artists suffer when their work becomes a stolen mp3 or e-book file online. When information is easily replicated, shared, and adapted, it’s hard to know which information is correct, and where it originated: which information to trust.

Despite all the ways the internet has changed information access and communication, we have yet to witness a uniquely digital-age flourishing in the arts. Web 2.0 unleashed a species’ worth of information and revolutionized our entire culture. Fandoms also came alive on the internet, forming communities online and exchanging suddenly abundant information about the art they love. Creatives can showcase works in progress and converse with fans directly on social media, all but breaking down the old distance between an artist and her audience. Web 2.0 is about sharing, replication, access, an abundance of information.

A problem with Web 2.0 for creatives is that it’s incredibly easy to steal and replicate digital media files, so getting one’s work out there often comes at the cost of making a living wage. A problem with Web 2.0 for readers and users is that we have no control over our data nor any value we create, so the profits from our attention go right to the pockets of a handful of billionaires in Silicon Valley, rather than where we might want it to go. Profits and recognition go to the aggregators of data and content, rather than the actual creators and contributors. The experience of browsing on Amazon or the Apple store isn’t such a different experience from pre-digital browsing at Blockbuster or a record store, but the marketplaces are extremely different, to the great detriment of artists.

When we introduce new mechanisms to establish trust, introduce provenance tracking, and user reputation to the already-productive communities and networks of Web 2.0, the result could be an open, permissive, yet safe and profitable digital environment to benefit creators and consumers of art alike. The reader or viewer doesn’t have to move from walled garden to walled garden, but has access to a rich, diverse, open landscape, where information travels freely and innovation is possible. It is new in the sense that it is digital, but this mode of open-source storytelling also resembles the ancient collective traditions of mythmaking and folklore, the roots and sources of our most beloved and enduring stories.

Just as in the historical Renaissance, a quantum leap in creativity follows a revolution in the movement and exchange of money and information.

Rethinking Coordination and Collaboration

We believe that in the case of blockchain-supported collaborative storytelling, the medium is the message. Many blockchain and Web 3.0 advocates are optimistic about those technologies’ potential to reduce the need for third-party intermediaries, which consume value and introduce friction to transactions and exchanges. Feedback loops can become not only cheaper, but shorter. Information and asset provenance is trackable and transparent. The lore and IP are collectively owned and controlled by the community.

The current societal model of intellectual property law does not foster an open, creative environment of adaptation and remixing. The outdated institution of copyright can become much nimbler on a blockchain-supported network. We want to explore on Cellarius how high-quality narratives can emerge and evolve on a peer-to-peer platform, allowing a story to grow without a centralized ownership structure. Web 3.0 can enable reduced coordination cost, more reliable provenance of digitally native content and assets, and more permissive rights structures around derivative works to encourage more collaboration and robust idea circulation — while recognizing the contributions of individual creators.

The phenomenal recent success of “Black Panther” also shows that diverse, inventive content is not inherently risky to produce. With better ways to measure demand and solicit feedback, perhaps we can validate our assumptions about telling more inclusive stories. A Web 3.0 platform with a robust incentive flow not only can take better advantage of available capital and distribute it more fairly, but can offer a lower barrier to entry for participation to a broader base of people across the world. We can develop more flexible ways to measure attention and value and funnel those back into the system. New projects can form more locally and organically in a complex network rather than in the bottleneck of studios and big publishers. Blockchain technology offers a reliable, trustworthy means of complex coordination to make all of this possible and sustainable.

There are lots of other ways in which blockchain could improve the business of making media outside of the Cellarius platform, whether for major franchises or small indie projects. Remember double-entry accounting? More accurate bookkeeping means more efficient business. What if we could do the same for complex production pipelines? The ability to trace and manage assets across a wide array of vendors could lead to significant cost savings even for a major media house or franchise. Wouldn’t it be great if that money were freed up for better payment structures for creatives or investing in innovative new projects? We hope to test these assumptions and many others on Cellarius, and share the results. A rising tide lifts all boats.

The point is that major studios, franchises, and publishing houses can still do what they do — we aren’t trying to use Cellarius to dismantle or undermine the groups that made the books and movies and comics and games we all love, that inspired us to do this work in the first place. Cellarius doesn’t need to take money or power from these places in order to see our ambitions through. But a story also doesn’t necessarily need to be viral, to saturate and infect an entire pool of viewers, in order to be a “success,” insofar as success is defined by quality and impact over click rates, likes, and ad revenue. There is plenty of creativity and plenty of value to go around. In this new paradigm, the great stories that will change minds and hearts can reach us in new and more diverse ways. Stories, after all, are what this is all about.

In our current media environment, as collective trust in news and facts is crumbling and the lines between advertisers and publishers are blurring, to the point where our very perceptions of reality feel unstable, the signal seems clear: we need to reclaim the distinction between information and meaning. Stories are one of our most powerful tools for making meaning from information. We can use blockchain and Web 3.0 to figure out how to make stories, better, together, in the next digital age — the Decentralized Renaissance.

Cellarius is currently accepting applications for their Private Alpha at cellarius.network.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author above do not necessarily represent the views of Consensys AG. ConsenSys is a decentralized community with ConsenSys Media being a platform for members to freely express their diverse ideas and perspectives. To learn more about ConsenSys and Ethereum, please visit our website.

Cellarius and the Decentralized Renaissance was originally published in ConsenSys Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On May 11 and 12, our parent company ConsenSys hosted the third Ethereal Summit at the Knockdown Center in Queens, New York and invited Cellarius to participate, along with many other spokes from our Mesh. The creators of Ethereal wanted to build a different kind of crypto conference. Since this one explored the intersection of blockchain and the arts, we wanted to showcase that aspect of our project and spread the word in an unexpected way. We set up shop in “The Crypt,” a semi-outdoor concrete space with a distinctive patina that felt perfect for the Cellarius blockpunk aesthetic.

We teamed with some artists from a group called Drawn Together NYC: Boris Rasin, Michael Scarola, Derrick Dent, and Rosalind Bunting. Drawn Together’s talented roster of artists creates design concepts, multimedia experiences, and fine art solutions for a wide range of projects and businesses, and they understood what we are going for right away.

Boris, Michael, and Derrick created custom, in-universe faction portraits of Ethereal attendees. The CX Universe Guide imagines that nation-states and traditional economies will break down after the Cellarius AI seizes control of Earth’s energy sources and communication channels in 2084. In the absence of familiar institutions and technologies, people will begin to form factions according to their allegiance to Cellarius. We wanted to get attendees thinking about their own relationships to technology and start dreaming up characters to explore in the Cellarius universe. So we posed the question: which faction do you think you would be?

Boris drew background art for four different factions:

Bucolic: Bucolics are AI skeptics who reject technology and live on the peripheries of megacities, observing from the outside and farming small pockets of fertile soil. Though their process is completely manual and their harvests are meager, they feel a great satisfaction from working with their own hands, in stark contrast to the highly automated farming processes elsewhere.

Ad-Hoc: Ad-Hocs live off the Cellarius grid and make their own augmentations and tools with scrap pieces they scavenge and rework. Comprised of mostly poor and marginalized groups, they use ingenuity and what little tech they can access to get by.

Elite: The crypto-Elites of the future are pro-Cellarius and experiment with AI and aesthetic enhancements. Living in the highest levels of the megacities, Elites have access to bleeding-edge technology. They are known for having lifespans beyond the normal range of humans, and enjoy the neural boost that comes with AI coupling.

Homotranscendus: During the Reformation, it wasn’t just the home habitat that was transformed forever, but also humankind itself. The campaign was more than just re-imagining the economic machinery of the planet Earth, but also a re-imagining of the of the human brain and body. Through Cellarius-engineered advancements, the next evolution of humanity was born: Homotranscendus. Homotranscendi are fully integrated with AI and no longer depend on their human forms to express consciousness and gather information.

We even got a portrait of ConsenSys’s own Joe Lubin, who wore a custom Cellarius Ethereal t-shirt design during his keynote address (thanks, Joe!). Something tells us that Joe would be a Homotranscendus.

Reimagining how familiar scenarios from your own life play out in a future setting or speculating about how you might react to a superintelligent AI’s takeover of the world is a great place to start inventing your own ideas in the world of Cellarius. We hope some attendees will be inspired to start making art and stories based on their portraits!

As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, we are also commissioning works from artists we admire to create the first round of content for the Cellarius universe. We decided to commission a mural that would take shape over the two days of the Summit and give attendees a behind-the-scenes look at the process of making a large-scale landscape painting. The design depicts what the Knockdown Center might look like a century from now, in 2118. Visitors to the Crypt got a chance to watch Rosalind transform the canvas from a faint pencil sketch into an impressive and detailed final product:

We hope that the Cellarius platform will allow experienced artists and creators to get directly in touch with their fan bases and share some glimpses of their artistic process, just as Rosalind did with her live painting.

The Drawn Together NYC artists got to learn more about the possibilities of blockchain and decentralization for creatives in the process of chatting with the attendees. Michael noted, “There were so many passionate and interesting people from all over the world that came through. And they had as much fun as we did learning about and playing in the Cellarius world.” Rosalind agreed: “Probably my favorite thing I learnt about over the Summit was how Cellarius involves the creative talents of so many more artists in their company, and loved seeing some of their amazing artwork. Can’t wait to see more!”

We were also excited that the long-term goals of the Cellarius project resonated with the Drawn Together NYC artists. Derrick said, “This was probably the coolest on-site portrait job I’ve ever worked on. I had a great time learning about the Cellarius project and the potential for a sprawling, community-shaped open sci-fi world. It was even cooler to have our portrait work used as an onboarding tool for visitors. People immediately took to creating their own story within this world, and that says a lot about how exciting this could be for folks who are creatively inclined.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

As Boris told us, “The more I spoke to the pop-up team and event attendees about the concept behind this project, the more it occurred to me that this is a game changer. Cellarius and the other projects from ConsenSys are sure to revolutionize our ecosystem in ways we can’t even begin to comprehend. It’s a challenge to explain exactly what this project is, because the underlying platform allows for limitless opportunities of invention, inspiration, and collaboration. Cellarius is whatever its contributors will it to be, and frankly, that’s a fundamentally crazy idea!”

That’s just the point: blockchain enthusiasts can become artists and use storytelling to push the conceptual limits of technology. Artists can use the platform to explore the possibilities of decentralization and blockchain for sharing and protecting their work. We can build it together. Cellarius is whatever our community of contributors wills it to be.

Cellarius is a collaborative storytelling platform where creators can explore the possibilities of the future.

If you feel inspired to explore what your life might look like in 2118 or create other art and stories of your own, please consider applying to our Alpha!

(Thanks to Boris Rasin for the GIFs and to Sean O’Connor for the photos.)

The Art of Ethereal: Bringing Cellarius to Life was originally published in Genesis Thought on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Cellarius team just wrapped up CELLCON Ø, our inaugural content jam. We couldn’t be happier with the way things emerged.

The event was inspired by DevCon, the Ethereum Developer Conference, which brings the community together for a few days of education, development, and work. In the spirit of the collaborative, open-source nature of the Ethereum project, those in-person meetings are important for relationship-building and aligning shared visions in a globally dispersed, digital community. We envisioned a similar gathering, but with the goal of producing original content for our universe.

We recruited a group of incredible artists to get on board with the Cellarius project and join us from far and wide for a long weekend in the rolling hills just outside Nashville, Tenn. We had complete faith in the abilities and imaginations of the creators we’d assembled, who do everything from writing and directing films, to publishing acclaimed novels, to storyboarding major video games, to painting book covers, to illustrating comics, to designing iconic characters we all know and love.

On the first night, the CX team shared an overview of our vision for the Cellarius Universe, Blockpunk style, and an introduction to blockchain and decentralization. (Bringing creatives and non-technologists to the ideas and possibilities of blockchain technology is at the core of the CX mission.)

Many of the CellCon artists are used to working in legacy media organizations, where they receive a lot of top-down guidance about the stories they’re commissioned to create. Our working model is all about freedom, opting in, following one’s passions, and working together, so we invited the creators to self-organize into small groups and spend the next two days making the stories they wanted to make.

To our delight, the artists ran with our free-form encouragement and immediately started exchanging sketches and ideas. After a few hours of conversation, four groups formed almost effortlessly and began building four unique stories inspired by the CX Universe Guide. They spent the rest of the weekend bringing them to life.

Somewhere between the big group breakfasts and the 4 a.m. conversations about everything from childhood, to quantum entanglement, to religion, to martial arts, to board games, four inspiring, impressive, and incredibly different stories emerged. They center around distinct time periods in the CX universe, entirely different factions and geographical locations, and wonderfully diverse heroines and heroes. From the Cellarius team’s perspective, it is impossible to overstate how much we already love these stories and how excited we are that the CX universe resonated with experienced and talented artists, who are already making it their own.

We were also excited that the team of creators understood deeply the ethos of the community and the platform we hope to build together. They took the freedom to ideate and collaborate and ran with it. They self-organized beautifully, and great work emerged without hierarchical controls or rigid parameters. The artists also shared with us their insights on the occasional challenges of doing creative work for big media franchises. They expressed enthusiasm for the promise of shaping new models for artist credit, copyright, content remixing, and open-source education. We couldn’t have asked for a better first event, nor a better response from artists we respect and admire.

We look forward to sharing the CELLCON stories and more details about their collaborative creation in the coming weeks. But first, meet the amazing contributors.

Creators

We were fortunate to host the following creators at CELLCON Ø. In no particular order:

• Iain McCaig divides his energies between a lifelong love of storytelling, and a passionate belief that everyone in the world can learn to draw. Originally a Sesame Street animator and the artist behind Jethro Tull’s “Broadsword and the Beast” cover, Iain has now spent almost three decades in the entertainment industry, helping create movie icons like Darth Maul, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, the Hulk, “Mad-Eye” Moody, Mowgli, and more. He has several other lives as a screenwriter, author, producer, director, teacher, mentor, husband, and father. In 2014, he received the Spectrum Fantastic Art Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement, even though he’s pretty sure he’s just getting started. For a mostly full list of film work, visit his IMDB page.
• Alex de Campi is an Eisner- and Bram Stoker-award nominated writer of comic books and novels. Her next book is the noir Bad Girls, coming from Simon & Schuster in July, and then the Ghost in the Shell anthology from Kodansha in the autumn. Currently in shops, she has Twisted Romance from Image Comics, Judge Dredd from 2000AD, Taarna from Heavy Metal, and Astonisher from Lion Forge. She also occasionally directs music videos. She lives in New York City with her daughter and a dog.
• Christian Gossett was one of the first designers hired by Lucasfilm Licensing to retro-design the Star Wars galaxy in 1993. His concept drawing of a double-bladed lightsaber was later made famous as Darth Maul’s signature weapon in “The Phantom Menace.” Gossett’s character and concept designs have been sought by such visionaries as George Lucas, Peter Jackson, and Tim Burton. He has drawn books for Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image Comics, and directed animation in video games for Sega, Namco, Microsoft, Activision, and others. His ongoing project, The Red Star, is playable on Playstation and Xbox networks, has sold over a million units worldwide, and was voted one of the top 100 graphic novels of all time by Wizard magazine. Since 2009, he has been directing live action. His first film, “Only Child,” won the prestigious Emerging Cinematographer Award from the International Cinematographer’s Guild (Local 600). His most recent short film, “Prelude to Axanar,” is a must for any fan of classic Star Trek, and is approaching 3.5 million views on YouTube.
• Dan dos Santos Known for his colorful paintings, most often depicting strong women, Dan dos Santos’ work spans a variety of genres including novels, comics, and film. With hundreds of book covers to his credit, Dan has worked for every major publishing house in the United States and abroad. His clients include Disney, Universal Studios, Saatchi & Saatchi, Boeing Aircraft, GE, Scholastic Books, The Greenwich Workshop, Penguin Random House, Tor books, UpperDeck, Wizards of the Coast, Dark Horse Comics, and DC Comics, among many others. Dan has received the Jack Gaughan Award for Best Emerging Artist, the Chesley Award winner for Best Paperback Cover, Gold and Silver Medals from Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, and is a five-time Hugo Award Nominee. His illustrations have graced the cover of #1 New York Times Bestsellers numerous times.
• Steven Barnes is a New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of more than 20 novels, a screenwriter, and the creator of the Lifewriting™ writing course, which he has taught nationwide. He recently won an NAACP Image Award as co-author of the Tennyson Hardwick mystery series with actor Blair Underwood and his wife, Tananarive Due. But Steve’s true love is teaching balance and enhancing human performance in all forms: emotional, professional and physical. Steve is also a life coach, CST coach, and certified hypnotist. He has more than 30 years’ experience in the self-development arts, including hypnosis certification with Transformative Arts Institute, training as a yoga and Tai Chi instructor, and fourth-degree black belt.
• Karla Ortiz is an internationally recognized and award-winning artist. With her exceptional design sense, realistic renders, and character-driven narratives, Karla has contributed to many big budget films, including “Jurassic World,” “World of Warcraft,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” Marvel’s “Thor 3,” “Black Panther,” and most notably, her design of Doctor Strange for Marvel’s “Doctor Strange.” Karla’s work is also recognized in the fine art world, showcasing her figurative and mysterious art in notable galleries such as Spoke Art, Hashimoto Contemporary, Nucleus Gallery, Thinkspace and Arludik in Paris. She lives in San Francisco with her cat, Bady.
• Joshua Jon Herbert is a veteran video game designer currently working as a Senior Level Designer on Psychonauts 2 at Double Fine in San Francisco. He has worked in AAA, mobile, VR, and indie games, and has shipped titles such as Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and several indie games. He is also currently building VR escape-the-room events. His professional skillset includes most flavors of design and user experience, as well as content and technical writing, puzzle creation, graphic design, and video editing. Joshua’s interests and hobbies include blockchain tech and applications, VR/AR, philosophy, political science, travel, motorcycles, modular synthesizers, the study of tryptamine-based analogues, and psychology.
• Michael Bierek is an artist currently residing in California. After getting his first break as a professional artist at Massive Black Inc. in 2008, he’s since worked on a variety of projects including Middle Earth: Shadow of War, based on the The Lord of the Rings universe; with Ubisoft on the Far Cry franchise, for Wizards of the Coast’s Magic: The Gathering, and the Elder Scrolls game series. He’s currently freelancing and spends his free time drawing, studying, writing fiction, and learning to program for the development of compelling stories and games.
• Mishi McCaig is a story and concept artist who has worked on such projects as “Ironman” (Marvel Studios), “John Carter” (Disney), and “Lego Movie 2” (Warner Bros). She’s also worked as a writer/script doctor on numerous film and TV projects and is currently teaching “The Art of Storytelling” in Washington, DC.
• Chase Conley is an artist, illustrator, and inker. He became involved in comic books in 2006 when he illustrated the Planetary Brigade miniseries for Boom!. After a break of about two years he did some artwork and inking for BloodRayne: Prime Cuts. He started working for Dynamite in 2009, adapting prose novels to comics, including Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, illustrating The Wheel of Time: Dragonmount and The Wheel of Time: Eye of the World. Chase next worked on adapting Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files: Fool Moon and the ongoing Wheel of Time: The Eye of the World. In 2011 he joined Titmouse as a supervising character designer for Black Dynamite, the Animated Series. He is also working on his own graphic novel, The Kinetic Kartel.
• Jay Baker is an animation and storyboard artist who started his career at Walt Disney Feature Animation in 1996. He has worked for Warner Brothers Animation, Cartoon Network, Jim Henson Studios, Universal, Hubris Studios, and others.
• Chase Toole has been a professional artist for ten years and a working games Concept Artist for eight. His art and design are about pushing into unknown territory, both conceptually and personally. Chase draws with ink, graphite, digital, watercolor, marker, or whatever he can find; it’s not a matter of how, but why he makes things. His clients include Gamesworkshop, Fantasy flight games, THQ, VIGIL, Ubisoft, Square Enix/Eidos, 343 industries, Microsoft, Applibot, and others. He was born and raised in Canada and now lives in Seattle, Washington with his dog, Bones.
• Thomas Denman (Remote) is a composer, producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist based in New York City. Versatile and imaginative, he is comfortable composing evocative music in a variety of genres, including sci-fi, electronic, hybrid, epic, orchestral, rock, and trap.

Next Steps:

We’ll share more content from the event in the coming weeks.

CX is a collaborative storytelling platform where creators can explore the possibilities of the future.

We are currently accepting applications for our Private Alpha — learn more at cellarius.network and apply for the Alpha here!

CELLCON ZERO — Our First Content Jam was originally published in Genesis Thought on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.