Profile
Taihei Shii is a contemporary artist and entrepreneur. After graduating from Tama Art University in 2001, Taihei started creating works of art about the Internet Age. Taihei then went on to formulate the original idea and filed patents for an artist royalty fee management system in Japan and US in 2006. In 2014, while still a graduate student at the University of Tokyo, he founded Startbahn, a company that provides infrastructure to ensure the reliability of artworks and support the inheritance of their value. The core of Startbahn is "Startrail," a novel smart contract for protecting works that received a grant from the Ethereum Foundation in recognition of its benefit to the public good. More recently, he has been a lecturer at Tokyo University of the Arts, and a member of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Study Group on Art and Economic Society. Currently he continues to lead Startbahn, serves as a director of Eastern Culture Foundation, and also serves as a director at the Open Art Consortium. As an artist, Taihei has participated in many solo and group exhibitions, including Fujisanten (2017 - 2020), SIZELESS TWIN (2022), Moon Art Night (2022). In the summer of 2022, Taihei published his first book, entitled New Form of Art: What does NFT Art Change?, with Japanese publisher Heibonsha.
- 1977
- Born in Tokyo
- 2001
- Bachelor of Oil Painting, Department of Painting, Tama Art University
- 2007-2011
- Lecturer at Tokyo University of the Arts
- 2014
- Founded Startbahn, Inc. and became CEO
- 2016
- Master Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo
- 2018
- Co-founded Open Art Consortium
- 2021
- Became CEO of Art Beat, Inc