Carolina Melis is an Italian-Danish artist, designer, and animation director. Born in Italy, she graduated from Dartington College of Arts and the University of the Arts Central Saint Martins in London. Specialising in choreography and animation, she has been directing music videos and short films for almost two decades, attracting notable appreciation from the world of fashion. Infused with a keen sense of composition and design, Melis' creative repertoire encompasses a variety of mediums, ranging from grand-scale intricate textiles to computer-generated patterns. Her work has been featured in major publications and exhibited in prestigious venues such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. We discussed Mikino her latest and brilliant generative collection.
Where did the idea for Mikino come from?
This year marks the anniversary of the release of the early Mickey Mouse sketch (known as Steamboat Willie). The sketch entered the public domain in 2024 after Disney's copyright expired. This marks a very important event that links discussions around copyright as well as the history of character design.
Inspired by early Mickey Mouse and with the idea of inscribing the character forever on-chain as an NFT, I created my own character, Mikino. As the name suggests, this character is a pop reinterpretation of the themes explored in my earlier generative art collection, the Kubikino collection. Mikino presents itself in the classic style of the Italian school of design—embodying the simplicity, humour, and pop qualities of artists such as Enzo Mari, Bruno Munari, Fortunato Depero, and the Memphis Movement.
What excites you about working with blockchain?
I love the fact that the art I create as this character will exist forever and may swap hands naturally. I also love the traceability of the design. Artists are often in fear of their work being ephemeral, that it may get lost over time or modified by others. NFTs prevent all that and give artists the possibility of being in control.
The characters are inscribed on-chain, though they should not be perceived as a final destination. With this collection in particular, my idea is to create many physical assets to be commercialised. I can see the characters are very versatile and can be applied to a variety of surfaces. Coming from animated film, I can also see them developing into animated characters, which could be a very new proposition in the NFT world. The collectors may be pleasantly surprised.
This collection was deliberately released as free-mint on Ordinals. In the proper POP spirit, the idea was to create a body of collectors in the most democratic way, making the work available for the truly passionate rather than just an elite of major collectors. For this reason, I’ve chosen Gamma.io with the idea of being part of a broader and more diverse crowd of artists and working with Gamma.io was great.
How did Kubikino inform this collection?
Since Kubikino, I’ve started working on my own visual language. The idea was to create a set of shapes, rules, and colours that could be rearranged in infinite combinations. While Kubikino is a generative collection and is based on the ability of the code to generate compositions, this is a design exercise based on my design and consists of preset compositions inscribed on the blockchain.
Do you have any other ideas for other generative collections?
I have, and I’m extremely excited about this. I’m just waiting for the right moment and context to release it. The coming collection is about an extensive research on music and colours, something that my mother, a Danish conceptual artist, started in the 80s on paper and installation. It’s fascinating research, and we are working on creating a generative art collection from that.
