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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 'digital' 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 'events in hardware' celebrated an exit from the captivity of the art market. Telling tho this gold rush runs mid-pandemic, when the gig economy that's fed tech art has been on pause
But I guess what'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'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-environmental-issues-with-cryptoart-1128ef72e6a3
Important to avoid shaming those minting their art - after all the scene'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're systems people, we think in topologies, think 'through' tech. Be great that artists considering minting would employ that here, asking 'What is the footprint of distributing my art this way? What systems are at work?'
It'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'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't have the perversion in me right now. That's a freebee btw
If the culture minting industry was a patient, 'narcissistic pervert' would be the diagnosis https://mobile.twitter.com/aaron_gillett/status/1370033429899788289
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're getting themselves into, that they'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'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're missing out on the fun, @bengrosser has kindly provided a site where you can walk away with 'Your own unique digital object', for exactly 0 moneys! https://tokenizethis.link This one's MINE
I think artists on the fence need to take a good look at this thread, too. The art's just packaging for a middleman take, and the 'market' will optimise around that as it saturates, in ever decreasing returns, for all but a few https://mobile.twitter.com/thatkimparker/status/1376273871620333568
It's worth adding too that this isn't 'art on the blockchain', something you hear a lot. Good to lose that story. It's art uploaded to someone's shop, linked to a number, in a block, by a bit of JSON. There's nothing 'crypto' about the art at all, in its distribution
