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Guest Talk with Ian Cheng | Neuro Gym

Talk Ian Cheng

Ian Cheng is introduced as a leading contemporary artist exploring new media and generative worlds through game engines and NFTs. The speaker illustrates Cheng's influence through the narrative of how their collaboration—sparked by Cheng's book 'The Emissaries Guide to Whirling' and subsequent NFT experiments together—ultimately catalyzed the founding of the Summer of Protocols program, drawing a parallel to Rachmaninoff's patronage of Sikorsky's helicopter invention.

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