Read on Twitter
nftart seems to be dividing the scene. I admit to being surprised at how many were quick to use nfts as a mechanism to simulate the artifact in an old world material market (as though the & #39;digital& #39; presides outside of the hardware it is metabolised within), seeing it as progress
I guess as tech artists I thought we were going beyond all that, and that software manifesting as & #39;events in hardware& #39; celebrated an exit from the captivity of the art market. Telling tho this gold rush runs mid-pandemic, when the gig economy that& #39;s fed tech art has been on pause
But I guess what& #39;s harder is that some of those diving wholesale into this rush have expressed over beer or browser how concerned they are about the state of this planet, their kids, & how they& #39;ve been looking at ways they can employ their skills to push back the night
So I sat down in earnest to write about all this, rather than posting a text chain on this site, but then found this fine piece by @everestpipkin, who basically took the wind out of my nft sails (sales?), and in all the right ways
https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-environmental-issues-with-cryptoart-1128ef72e6a3">https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-e...
https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-environmental-issues-with-cryptoart-1128ef72e6a3">https://everestpipkin.medium.com/but-the-e...
Important to avoid shaming those minting their art - after all the scene& #39;s cashflow has been on ice for 2+yrs - but there shld be no question this is a regressive turn. It retrofits an old world property market onto a vital & rigorous scene, & at old world cost to the environment
One of things defining of us tech artists is that we& #39;re systems people, we think in topologies, think & #39;through& #39; tech. Be great that artists considering minting would employ that here, asking & #39;What is the footprint of distributing my art this way? What systems are at work?& #39;
It& #39;d be rich of artists like myself however to double down on PoW nfts without confessing our own massive CO2e baggage, having flown all over for shows (I dialed that back ~4x). But the scene became productively self conscious about air miles, it can about computational miles too
In another self I& #39;d make a zero CO2e cryptoart automata piece drawn from a best guess calculation of its ETH PoW footprint, buys offsets with every sale or donates it to the David Suzuki Foundation etc, but I don& #39;t have the perversion in me right now. That& #39;s a freebee btw
If the culture minting industry was a patient, & #39;narcissistic pervert& #39; would be the diagnosis https://mobile.twitter.com/aaron_gillett/status/1370033429899788289">https://mobile.twitter.com/aaron_gil...
Again, important not to blame n shame artists getting tangled up in this old-world-new-sneakers game. Most are damn near broke. Get the feeling many have no idea what they& #39;re getting themselves into, that they& #39;re wheat under the harvester
There you have it, the "historic moment for digital art" is to be folded in with the sicko money laundering washing at Christie& #39;s. FFS we can do better than this ultra-consevative colonialist sellout. This is not progress
To take the heat off those without cryptocash feeling like they& #39;re missing out on the fun, @bengrosser has kindly provided a site where you can walk away with & #39;Your own unique digital object& #39;, for exactly 0 moneys! https://tokenizethis.link"> https://tokenizethis.link This one& #39;s MINE
I think artists on the fence need to take a good look at this thread, too. The art& #39;s just packaging for a middleman take, and the & #39;market& #39; will optimise around that as it saturates, in ever decreasing returns, for all but a few https://mobile.twitter.com/thatkimparker/status/1376273871620333568">https://mobile.twitter.com/thatkimpa...
It& #39;s worth adding too that this isn& #39;t & #39;art on the blockchain& #39;, something you hear a lot. Good to lose that story. It& #39;s art uploaded to someone& #39;s shop, linked to a number, in a block, by a bit of JSON. There& #39;s nothing & #39;crypto& #39; about the art at all, in its distribution
