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By: Journal Record Staff August 17, 2022 0

According to all accounts, Elok, a 21-year-old orangutan, very much enjoyed his role in making art-world history recently at the Oklahoma City Zoo. (Courtesy photo)

He won’t be celebrated as the next Picasso, but Elok, an orangutan at the Oklahoma City Zoo, is about to make history nonetheless in the world of art.

On Friday – fittingly International Orangutan Day – artwork created by the 21-year-old relative of great apes native to rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia will be the focus of much attention at a worldwide auction.

According to OKC Zoo officials, Elok’s artwork inspired the design of a non-fungible token that, with luck, will draw strong bidding on the online NFT auction site OpenSea.io. All proceeds raised are to be used to help protect and conserve orangutans and other endangered species in the wild.

“The Oklahoma City Zoo is hopeful that the first digital NFT created by an animal will be received with global excitement,” the officials said.

According to all accounts, Elok very much enjoyed his role in making history. His novel creative endeavor was inspired by a design team at Megafauna Studios, Becky Scheel and Mathieu Kuhne, who reached out to OKC Zoo Director of Conservation Science Rebecca Snyder to propose a new form of animal enrichment. Creative activities often are employed to stimulate animal senses. For example, the zoo quite often provides animals like Elok with access to paint and canvas – often with the assistance of a human caretaker – and their resulting work is sold to zoo visitors and patrons.

This time around, however, instead of using traditional paint and canvas, Scheel and Kuhne wanted to find out how Elok, would engage with a 2-foot digital brush provided to him and a screen set up just outside his indoor habitat. When the orangutan moved the brush, a motion detecting device made from a modified Xbox captured its movement and projected Elok’s creation onto the digital screen.

While Elok earned a treat of animal crackers and prunes for his work, the zoo came up with colorful artwork used in the NFT design.

“This project is a dream for us, we are combining NFTs with animal enrichment, conservation and charity,” Scheel said. “Collections like these can make NFTs more than just collectibles. They create a community for good. This is the future we want to see and be a part of.”

According to Snyder, all three species of orangutans – Sumatran, Bornean and Tapanuli – are critically endangered.

“Thus, conservation fundraising efforts like this NFT auction are crucial,” she said. “Endangered means there is still time to help protect and raise awareness for these beloved species and their habitats, and our hope is these original NFTs created by an animal in human care and used to help wild animals has a global impact for inspiring conservation action.”

For more information about the digital venture, the zoo created a webpage at www.okczoo.org/nft featuring photos and videos.

Tagged with: Megafauna Studios Oklahoma City Zoo OpenSea.io

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