A sort ofJust when the whole world is holding on to locked computers, tablets or smartphones and trying to continue digital development, whatever may happen, things happen: Christie’s sold $60.25 million online this spring. One piece was auctioned, and the buyer’s premium was 69.3 million. Thousands of digital photos of Beeple alias Mike Winkelmann-and a collective japsen seized the art business.Not just a graphic designer from the pop music industry, after the garbage memes Jeff Koons David Hockney rose to third place in his list of living artists with the highest selling prices. At the New York auction, the auction house allowed the use of cryptocurrency as a means of payment, but instead of selling pictures or documents, it sold NFTs. What?
Before that, the term “irreplaceable tokens” behind the acronym was at best just inadvertently spoken from the mouths of crypto disciples, who took them for granted Blockchain And deal with Bitcoin. Now artists, critics, dealers, collectors, and museums quickly understand: NFT may be a solution to a huge problem in digital age art-it is also a money printing machine. Why? NFT is a certificate of authenticity of digital works stored on the blockchain. It makes things that can be copied infinitely in principle are often unique. Like a signature, it marks the original authorized by the author and identifies its owner.
Is this the answer to cryptography Walter Benjamins Thesis “Technology can replicate the works of art in the era”? In 1935, in photos, movies, and audio recordings, he saw the disappearance of the “halo” of works of art established in “here and now”. The halo in the sense of Benjamin, its light still hints at the cult origin of art, of course there is no NFT. Beeple’s small pictures, sticking to the original example, have been posted as daily comments for many years, and are freely available on Tumblr and Instagram; they are part of the traditional background of social media. The retrospective compilation and collage of these comics are out of context. This is a kind of ownership contract that ignited a speculative frenzy of customers who are proficient in cryptocurrency outside of the traditional art business. This is not about the halo, but about the manageability of digital commodities as collectibles and trading commodities, which is made possible through the technological integration of the world of art and finance. It can’t be less romantic.
Fabian Müller-Nittel is next to Markus Reindl and Jesse Damiani. He was one of the curators of the first museum NFT exhibition “Proof of Art”, which can be seen at the Francisco Caroline Museum in Linz, suitably adapted The title of Benjamin’s article: NFT is a “art work in the age of digital reproduction”. What the show organizers are not interested in is obvious: they ignore Beeple’s hype and von’s auction. Tim Berners-Lee The Internet source code is written as Sotheby’s NFT, or the efforts of world-class museums to encrypt their souvenir shops. If the Uffizi Gallery sells scans of Michelangelo’s “Tondo Doni”, including a certificate signed by the museum curator as an NFT, this may alleviate the financial difficulties of the house raging by the epidemic. For Mueller, however, it is also an insult to Michelangelo and NFT technology.
Does this help digital artists?
It was originally developed by Anil Dash and Kevin McCoy so that digital artists can better protect their works and trade with them in a collective virtual space without intermediaries. It sounds very democratic, and it quickly became a suitable tool for turbo capitalization. In turn, blockchain artists use this in cold-blooded self-deprecation and subvert it. They always consider the logic of platforms and algorithms.
