Bonjour,
Hope everyone has had a great week. We wanted to share some product updates and some light reading recommendations as you head into your weekend.
But first, download the Chrome extension, like actually, you just gotta do it. People have literally told us that it changed their life… so do yourself a favor:
Update: Introducing Feeds
It’s now much, much easier to discover new ideas and knowledge from the Trove community. Trove now has feeds—infinite scroll timelines where you can see new blocks as they are added. There are three you can dive into now:
Discover Feed: new blocks from a curated list of endorsed Trove users
Your Following & Starred: new blocks added by people you follow / added to troves you’ve starred
Your Troves: new blocks added to your troves (either by you or collaborators)
Scroll away…
And some weekend reading, mostly around art this week…
This year, BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition invited talented photographers from around the world to submit images showcasing the Earth’s biodioversity. These photos are a breath-taking visual representation of the mounting threats to the natural world. Incredible stuff.
How Xerox and ‘One Hundred and One Dalmatians Saved Disney’
After producing a ‘jarring’ animated Sleeping Beauty film in 1959, Walt Disney contemplated shutting down his entire animation studio for good. Still, in 1961, Disney decided to give it one more shot using the Xerox machine to produce the animations for One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Rather than having artists hand-trace each drawing, Xeroxing allowed animators to copy their drawings onto slides. The film was a success and the franchise continues to this day.
In 1916, in St. Petersburg, Russia, goldsmith Peter Carl Fabergé was overseeing the production of two opulent, decorative eggs. The objects were destined to be the royal Easter gifts presented to Empress Maria Feodorovna and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna in April of 1917. But the imperial women would never see those eggs, nor would Fabergé see them finished.
As the Bolsheviks seized St. Petersburg, the three-century-long Romanov rule came to a violent and tumultuous end. The family was forced out of the city and left behind their 50 imperial Fabergé eggs, created between 1885 and 1916, small yet lavish reminders of the dynasty’s grand reign. Where are they now?
It’s really unusual to have a piece of decorative art (not a painting) that has as much cultural resonance as a Fabergé egg. It’s almost the Mona Lisa of the decorative art world.
It remains to be seen whether NFTs can actually ‘democratize’ art and allow artists to support themselves amidst a sea of crypto shills and Gary Vee’s doodle NFTs. Will there be an iconic egg in the NFT world or is the model fundamentally against such intricate works?
The financialization of everything may be the opposite of what it’s trying to fix, and may blind us to other possible solutions. The question may not be simply, “How do we build a better business model for the art world?”, but rather: “How do we build sustainable, humane economic systems that allow all people to thrive and create?” If we are reinventing monetary systems and value itself, it should align better with what we actually “value.”
Every weekday, the good folks at Flowstate send out two hours of music that’s perfect for working. A great way to discover new artists.
A quick shoutout to a friend of Trove, Krisztian, who’s building a pretty cool virtual try-on solution for glasses. If you need sunnies for the summers, check out InstaGlasses.
As always, please reach out with any feedback or questions, they’re always super helpful as we continue building.
All the best.