Meta-works: The online cosmos transforms into a testing ground for real-world products.
New York (AP) —Ahead-of-the-curveof the metaverse vision for the future of the internet are already operating as workrooms for the development of items meant for real-world sale.
The line between digital and material is blurring, with sneakers designed in the virtual world but manufactured in the real one, and designers previewing garments on avatars before producing them.
“In real life, making any product is tremendously expensive, ” said French couture designer Julien Fournie, who operates his own eponymous fashion business.
He goes on to say that the internet is “a location of openness to test things digitally and reproduce an exceedingly exact relationship with the real-life experience.”
The craze for virtual products coincides with heated predictions that the metaverse, a virtual reality version of the internet, would soon replace the web as we know it.
In recent months, an increasing number of corporations have attempted to build a presence on buzzed-about platforms ranging from Roblox to Fortnite, fearful of losing out on a huge technological and sociological revolution.
How people engage with online goods, what they flock to and what they reject, provides enterprises with a relatively low-risk and low-cost chance to build items.
This is part of an underlying trend of utilising data acquired online “to generate better collections, to conduct better forecasting,” said Achim Berg, partner at McKinsey & Company consultancy.
This is part of a broader trend of using data collected online “to design better collections, to conduct better forecasting,” according to Achim Berg, a McKinsey & Company consulting partner.
The coronavirus epidemic has helped to close the gap between virtual and real by forcing many designers to work in three dimensions due to the inability to meet physically, according to the consultant.
Young designers have an opportunity.
RTFKT studio, in collaboration with Seattle artist FEWOCiOUS, created a limited edition of 621 pairs of virtual shoes via its NFT, digital products that can be purchased and sold via blockchain technology, at the end of February 2021.
One component of the programme was to match each digital pair sold that day with a physical pair that each customer could pick up six weeks later.
