A work by Banksy sold for $382 despite smoke coming out of it, while a cat cartoon fetched double that amount. All this thanks to NFT – a new form of cryptocurrency. But is it a bubble? Parts of the writing of the critic Stuart Jeffries, published in the “Guardian” newspaper, Telegrafi brings below.

Last week, a masked man set fire to the graphic “Morons (White)”, by the anonymous artist known as Banksy. The act of destruction was shown live on Twitter, via the @BurntBanksy account. This man worked for a company called Injective Protocol, which bought the work for $95, to destroy it and replace it with a unique digital facsimile. It’s called crypto-art, and if you want to know the level at which it’s thriving, the burnt work went for $382, four times its original price.

From artist Ai Weiwei destroying a 2000-year-old vase to the Chapman brothers defacing Goya’s prints, artists are no strangers to creative destruction. But this is something different. Graphics burning “Morons (White)” marks the first time a physical work of art has been replaced by a unique digital asset. “We see this burning event as an expression of art”, said Mirza Uddin – the executive director of Injective Protocol. “We deliberately chose a work by Banksy, since in a previous auction he had torn up one of his works.”

But who would pay that much for something intangible—a meme, a piece of video art, or a digital rendering of a graphic—when you can easily see them all online? The answer is this: many people, among them art collectors as well as quick profit speculators.

Last month, musician and artist Grimes made six million dollars in 20 minutes selling, as one headline said, “art that doesn’t exist” (in a Twitter auction). Indeed, art exists, but not in the real old world. WarNymph Collection Vol. 1 consists of 10 works, mostly short parts of videos that Grimes had made with her brother.

“No Longer Dead” by Jonathan Monaghan

“What we are seeing is a turning point for digital art”, says Rob Anders, CEO of Niio, a platform that has more than 15 works of digital art. As we chat through Zoom, the work is visible behind him “No Longer Dead” by Jonathan Monaghan, where the unicorn appears in a surreal landscape. “The pandemic has helped us”, says Anders. We are stuck from the inside, seeing our screens as the only place where digital art can be seen. And this is also where – thanks to the cryptographic innovations that made possible the digital currency Bitcoin – art is increasingly being bought and sold.

Edinburgh painter Trevor Jones recently made more than $3.2 million by selling 4,157 digital prints of Bitcoin Angel in an online auction that ended in seven minutes. What did buyers get for their money? “People are buying a token that, abstractly, represents the ownership of a digital image”, Jones explains. “So this is the first time in history that artists can create and materialize digital images, like Jpeg.”

“Bitcoin Angel” by Trevor Jones

In fact, “token” may be too specific a term for what is simply a purchase on an online “ledger”. But there is another possibility here: people with a lot of money and little knowledge will burn. If so, they will resemble the collectors that Banksy depicts in the graphic “Morons”, where a “painting” appears at auction with a luxurious frame, and in it are the words: “I can’t believe you morons are buying this piece of shit.” Jones objects. He thinks that the crypto-art market has a bright future. He recently tweeted: “I’ll say this just once and then shut up. Don’t sell #BitcoinAngel publication. If you sell it now, you just don’t win. You don’t see the future. Keep it for six months and thank me later. Feel free to save this tweet of mine.”

Even old-school art auctions are seeing the value of this new market. This week, Christie’s will hold its first auction of a digital work – a large collage by artist Beeple (real name Mike Winkelmann) called “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”. Beeple began making this collage on May 1, 2007, drawing a new work and posting it to Instagram every day for the next 13 years. Its creation was described by a journalist as “like a political cartoon set in a dystopian video game”. Winkelmann told him “New York Times“‘s: “The traditional art world is like, ‘Who is this guy?’ But I have 1.8 million followers on Instagram. Christie’s is confirming my validity. The world of fine art is finally starting to recognize digital artists.”

Digital artwork by Beeple to be sold by Christie’s auction house

Beeple has already created a million dollar fortune for one collector. Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile, who lives in Miami, bought one work in October for $67: the 10-second video depicting what appears to be the naked corpse of Donald Trump, with the word “Loser” tattooed on it. Last month, Rodriguez-Fraile sold it for $6.6 million.

To understand what Injective Protocoë, Grimes, Trevor Jones, Beeple and Christie’s are dealing with, are the three letters NFT which until last week were thought of as an acronym for National Film Theatre. In fact, it is about Non-Fungible Tokens (since it is a technological innovation, translations into Albanian will use more of the original terms). Calling something “fungible” means that it is replaceable with something else. If I offered the Louvre a towel with the Mona Lisa in exchange for the original, they would direct me to the souvenir shop. The original Mona Lisa is “non-fungible”. It is the unique carrier of value. And, tea towels with Mona Lisa are very “fungible”.

Rob Anders explains that although digital art has been around since the 1960s and is increasingly appearing in major collections and biennials, it has always faced a problem: how to create “non-fungible” objects and then money. “Digital Art”, he says, “is accompanied by dilemmas about commercial value, authenticity, ownership and rarity”. The struggle is to find the means by which these works can be carriers of unique value. “NFT”, Anders says, “you are doing this”.

How does NFT work? To answer that we need to consider basketball icon LeBron James and an animated cat. Last month, a single clip of the NBA star sold for $208. But why would a video that can be viewed on Twitter or YouTube be worth that much? The answer is because this clip uses blockchain technology that interfaces with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to authenticate the source. To put it simply: this technology creates a digital product that can only be controlled by one person – to make it, in the eyes of collectors, as original.

The system was conceived in 2008 by the inventor of Bitcoin, known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, who had the utopian goal of creating a currency free from the control of banks. The data for all transactions will be shared through an updated and distributed database in a network of computers known as “blockchain”. In theory it is maintained by each user of a “distributive ledger” that avoids the need for a central authority as a third party. Unfortunately, in practice, Bitcoin was captured by what one economist called “charlatans and frauds” — that is, speculators with the massive computing power needed to create new Bitcoins.

The most expensive “cat” in the world!

The spread of this technology for products such as video clips has created new markets and economic entities. One is called NBA Top Shots, which has generated a valuable revenue stream for America’s National Basketball Association by selling NFTs of video clips featuring stars LeBron James and Maxi Kleber. When it comes to Nyan Cat – an animated cat that has 185 million views on YouTube – an NFT of a mutant cat gif sold for $600. And, this month, the rockers of the band Kings of Leon released the new album as NFT, “When You See Yourself”. While the album is available on Spotify and other retailers, the NFT versions have a little more — including digital cover art and a vinyl version, all for $50. But the NFT versions launched last Friday will only be around for two weeks, thus limiting supply and increasing their value. As a result, these NFTs will be collectibles from which the group hopes to generate revenue through resales. This new revenue stream is welcome as music has devalued in the last 20 years. NFT is therefore offering another model of digital art in which creators are properly paid.

This boom raises many dilemmas. The bottom line is this: what would Greta Thunberg think? Like Bitcoin, NFTs are not carbon neutral. An artwork sold by Grimes, which had 303 editions, produced about 70 tons of carbon dioxide emissions when it was returned to NFT. Then there are the odd questions, like: what is art? Surprisingly, many of the NFTs being bought and sold for tens of thousands of dollars are gifs, memes or video clips. Rob Anders asks whether AI-generated art is collectible and, if so, what that means for human artists. The momentum is fueling speculation as to whether the NFT boom will be followed by a bust. Anders doesn’t think so. “Remember what Lenin said: ‘There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen.’ This describes very well where we are today.”

Lenin was talking about the Russian Revolution. Perhaps we are witnessing the digital equivalent of the attack on the Winter Palace, with the old guard overthrown by crypto-rebels caught up in dreams that the art world can change for the better. Perhaps, too, we should not forget how that revolution took place. /Telegraph/





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