Jason Bailey on ArtNome discusses the use of blockchains by digital artists:
There are at least four major areas where blockchain will disrupt the art market:
1. Driving digital art sales through digital scarcity
2. Democratizing fine art investment
3. Improving provenance and reducing art forgery
4. Creating a more ethical way of paying artists…
A big problem with producing and selling digital art is how easily it can be duplicated and pirated. Once something is copied and replicated for free, the value drops and the prospect of a market disappears. For things to be of value they need to have scarcity. Blockchain helps solve this for digital artists by introducing the idea of “digital scarcity”: issuing a limited number of copies and tying them back to unique blocks proving ownership.
Some of what drives Jason’s enthusiasm are the reduction or elimination of transaction friction – i.e., fees paid to middlemen. But later in another post, he talks about the blockchain and how art native to it occurs:
CryptoArt are rare digital artworks, sometimes described as digital trading cards or “rares”, associated with unique and provably rare tokens that exist on the blockchain. The concept is based on the idea of digital scarcity, which allows you to buy, sell, and trade digital goods as if they were physical goods. This system works due to the fact that, like Bitcoins and other cryptocurrency, CryptoArt exist in limited quantity. Popular early examples include CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks, Rare Pepe, CurioCards, and Dada.nyc.
While no single CryptoArtist or CryptoArtwork adheres to a single definition, I believe it is helpful to look at a series of common factors that have shaped the aesthetic and community thus far.
1.Digitally Native: For the first time, artwork can be created, editioned, bought, and sold digitally.
2.Geographically Agnostic: Empowered by the internet, artists participate from all over the world. CryptoArt is the first truly global art movement.
…
4. Pro-Artist: Blockchain platforms often take little to no commission from artists. Artists are often remunerated for every future sale of a single work.
5. Dankness: Because CryptoArt is open to everyone, judging it by traditional artistic standards kills what is great about it. Instead, it is best to judge CryptoArt by “dankness” or potency of expression and creativity.
“Art” is one of my weakest areas of understanding in contemporary society, from individual motivations to create it, onwards to the motivations of collectors, to the role it plays in society – I do understand that historically it often played roles roughly equivalent to propaganda in some part, but whether it does now I’m not so certain. In my (fragmentary) reading so far, it appears that these artists come from technical or financial backgrounds, and I wonder if that colors how they see the future of CryptoArt. On FiveThirtyEight, Oliver Roeder has coverage of CryptoArt, ending with this somewhat cryptic conclusion:
A new order is emerging in the art world. But will it be any different than the old one? People like [John] Zettler make me think not. He and Rare Art Labs may be handling a new type of art, but what they’re doing with it is nothing new; in fact, it’s exactly what the critic Hughes warned us against: the fetishization of art’s prices and the emptying of its higher virtues. As a result, the relationship between art and the blockchain, which seems symbiotic for the moment, could soon become parasitic. Artists can only avoid the art establishment’s capitalistic maw for so long.
I can understand concern about losing the essence of art, and I also am well aware that motivations will wildly vary from individual to individual – did van Gogh hope to become rich on his art? How about Heinlein’s remark that If you ask a writer why he writes and he doesn’t say For money, he’s lying?
But artists do have to eat, too.
