There's so much Ready Player One shit
October 3, 2021 12:45 AM Subscribe
Beeple and Mohrbacher and others in other words took their works and completely removed them from the one place in which they shine as the art of the present: completely unbounded meme distribution, aesthetic experiences without Aura, without original, without a set history or place. They made art designed for that sphere, and locked it behind a trading mechanism powered by burning rainforests.Why is all this nft art so, you know? Storming the Ivory Tower tries to explain.
"It's a TED talk understanding of the theory" is such a lovely vicious skewering phrase. Both articles are excellent. Weirdly enough the leading covid conspiracy person in my neck of the woods is an NFT art gallery styled person. Now that makes more sense after reading this!
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:09 AM on October 3, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:09 AM on October 3, 2021 [5 favorites]
Now that makes more sense after reading this!
Crank magnetism is the condition where people become attracted to multiple crank ideas at the same time. Crank magnetism also denotes the tendency — even for otherwise "lone issue" cranks — to accumulate more crank beliefs over time.
posted by acb at 4:29 AM on October 3, 2021 [19 favorites]
Crank magnetism is the condition where people become attracted to multiple crank ideas at the same time. Crank magnetism also denotes the tendency — even for otherwise "lone issue" cranks — to accumulate more crank beliefs over time.
posted by acb at 4:29 AM on October 3, 2021 [19 favorites]
It's actually very difficult to talk about NFT art as art because most of it is so god damn ugly, vapid, and amateurish.
Yeah, I don’t like modern art either.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:33 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I don’t like modern art either.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:33 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I don’t like modern art either.
OK, clever rejoinder, but, in this case, the article goes to lengths to defend the view that the three main examples were “ so god damn ugly, vapid, and amateurish.” You kind of need to show how that’s not true and there’s artistic merit in them. Which, as the article points out, even galleries that have exhibited them don’t bother to try, and the auction house only takes a weak stab at. (Amusingly, by appealing to Duchamp’s Ready Mades, forgetting that Duchamp deliberately limited his production of them because he thought over creation was a) hack and b) would erode the artistic impact.)
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:59 AM on October 3, 2021 [13 favorites]
OK, clever rejoinder, but, in this case, the article goes to lengths to defend the view that the three main examples were “ so god damn ugly, vapid, and amateurish.” You kind of need to show how that’s not true and there’s artistic merit in them. Which, as the article points out, even galleries that have exhibited them don’t bother to try, and the auction house only takes a weak stab at. (Amusingly, by appealing to Duchamp’s Ready Mades, forgetting that Duchamp deliberately limited his production of them because he thought over creation was a) hack and b) would erode the artistic impact.)
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:59 AM on October 3, 2021 [13 favorites]
I think it’s obvious that people aren’t buying NFTs for the aesthetic experience. They’re not even getting anything that could provide one. So I think critiquing the “artwork” that notionally underlies an NFT is missing the point: it’s basically a placeholder to save explaining that it’s really just a conceptual game.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:09 AM on October 3, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:09 AM on October 3, 2021 [5 favorites]
Ugh. Is this person going to make me defend Beeple? They... they are? Fuck. Fuuuck.
Look, the thing about Beeple that was interesting was not any individual piece; it was the sequence. This person made and posted a work every single day for over ten years. They've gone through a half dozen styles, including some really pretty looping gif stuff. I followed them on Tumblr back in the day because I enjoyed watching them build up and refine a style and then occasionally tear it all down and start over. I think their current muddy 3d work is awful, too, but that's not the point.
But it is grating to see someone play at art critic and show zero awareness of the context of the art. Art historians and critics love to talk about the development of an artist's style and how, say, Rothko became Rothko or Mondrian mondrianated or whatever. Here's a person who has explicitly made that process part of the work, and the critic doesn't even mention it. I don't think they're even aware of it. Criticize the work, fine, but at least do the most basic possible research. This is "skipping the wikipedia page" level laziness and I'm not here for it.
Also, NFTs are awful and deserve constant derision and should be launched into the sun, the end
posted by phooky at 5:10 AM on October 3, 2021 [28 favorites]
Look, the thing about Beeple that was interesting was not any individual piece; it was the sequence. This person made and posted a work every single day for over ten years. They've gone through a half dozen styles, including some really pretty looping gif stuff. I followed them on Tumblr back in the day because I enjoyed watching them build up and refine a style and then occasionally tear it all down and start over. I think their current muddy 3d work is awful, too, but that's not the point.
But it is grating to see someone play at art critic and show zero awareness of the context of the art. Art historians and critics love to talk about the development of an artist's style and how, say, Rothko became Rothko or Mondrian mondrianated or whatever. Here's a person who has explicitly made that process part of the work, and the critic doesn't even mention it. I don't think they're even aware of it. Criticize the work, fine, but at least do the most basic possible research. This is "skipping the wikipedia page" level laziness and I'm not here for it.
Also, NFTs are awful and deserve constant derision and should be launched into the sun, the end
posted by phooky at 5:10 AM on October 3, 2021 [28 favorites]
I don't think anyone would claim The Twilight Zone is great art.
!!
posted by mediareport at 5:52 AM on October 3, 2021 [25 favorites]
!!
posted by mediareport at 5:52 AM on October 3, 2021 [25 favorites]
The furry fandom has been a bit up in arms about the Canine Cartel, an NFT scheme which uses basically fursona drawings as their tokens. Lindsey Lohan got one, and of course that kind of celebrity drives up value, etc etc...
NFTs are evil and should be destroyed, for so many reasons.
posted by hippybear at 6:58 AM on October 3, 2021 [4 favorites]
NFTs are evil and should be destroyed, for so many reasons.
posted by hippybear at 6:58 AM on October 3, 2021 [4 favorites]
I don't think anyone would claim The Twilight Zone is great art.
!!
Oh, it's real good art Anthony, real good.
posted by Foosnark at 7:00 AM on October 3, 2021 [29 favorites]
!!
Oh, it's real good art Anthony, real good.
posted by Foosnark at 7:00 AM on October 3, 2021 [29 favorites]
Fascinating article and associated links, MartinWisse, thanks. There's so much casually savage truth there, and while phooky's point seems valid for that particular piece (haven't done the wikipedia-level research to verify yet but it's Sunday), the article does look at other pieces from the same artist in a different style, so it's not quite as uninformed as phooky's comment suggests. And the general point that there's not much aesthetic criticism of the most-hyped NFT art - beyond "how cool is this weird new tech and it's weird new prices?!" - still seems very much valid.
Anyway, I thought this page from David Gerard linked in the post's first link is great:
Why is an NFT?
NFTs exist so that the crypto grifters can have a new kind of magic bean to sell for actual money, and pretend they’re not selling magic beans. The purpose of NFTs is to get you to give your money to crypto grifters. When the grifter has your money, the NFT has done its job, and none of the fabulous claims about NFTs need to work or be true past that point. NFTs are entirely for the benefit of the crypto grifters. The only purpose the artists serve is as aspiring suckers to pump the concept of crypto — and, of course, to buy cryptocurrency to pay for “minting” NFTs. Sometimes the artist gets some crumbs to keep them pumping the concept of crypto.
Re: Twilight Zone and Great Art: Oh, it's real good art Anthony, real good.
I get that reference! But I was thinking more along the lines of Robert-Redford-as-Death and episodes like that. I'm very curious what davidwitteveen's "Top Ten Great Art On Television 1959-1969" list looks like, and what keeps Twilight Zone off of it. (Unless there's nothing on TV in the 1960s that qualifies as "great art," of course, which would start a whole other derail so probably best not to go there.)
posted by mediareport at 7:42 AM on October 3, 2021 [8 favorites]
Anyway, I thought this page from David Gerard linked in the post's first link is great:
Why is an NFT?
NFTs exist so that the crypto grifters can have a new kind of magic bean to sell for actual money, and pretend they’re not selling magic beans. The purpose of NFTs is to get you to give your money to crypto grifters. When the grifter has your money, the NFT has done its job, and none of the fabulous claims about NFTs need to work or be true past that point. NFTs are entirely for the benefit of the crypto grifters. The only purpose the artists serve is as aspiring suckers to pump the concept of crypto — and, of course, to buy cryptocurrency to pay for “minting” NFTs. Sometimes the artist gets some crumbs to keep them pumping the concept of crypto.
Re: Twilight Zone and Great Art: Oh, it's real good art Anthony, real good.
I get that reference! But I was thinking more along the lines of Robert-Redford-as-Death and episodes like that. I'm very curious what davidwitteveen's "Top Ten Great Art On Television 1959-1969" list looks like, and what keeps Twilight Zone off of it. (Unless there's nothing on TV in the 1960s that qualifies as "great art," of course, which would start a whole other derail so probably best not to go there.)
posted by mediareport at 7:42 AM on October 3, 2021 [8 favorites]
Look, the thing about Beeple that was interesting was not any individual piece; it was the sequence. This person made and posted a work every single day for over ten years.
[ . . . ]
But it is grating to see someone play at art critic and show zero awareness of the context of the art.
Huh? This, I assume, is exactly what she's talking about when she goes on about endless scrolling or that NFT shines in a Twitter feed. Or when she says, the product being labored over for the contemporary artist of social media is not "the work of art" but "the gestalt experience of art-posting". I mean, you can disagree with her take on this but she clearly has more than zero awareness of this aspect.
posted by mark k at 7:47 AM on October 3, 2021 [15 favorites]
[ . . . ]
But it is grating to see someone play at art critic and show zero awareness of the context of the art.
Huh? This, I assume, is exactly what she's talking about when she goes on about endless scrolling or that NFT shines in a Twitter feed. Or when she says, the product being labored over for the contemporary artist of social media is not "the work of art" but "the gestalt experience of art-posting". I mean, you can disagree with her take on this but she clearly has more than zero awareness of this aspect.
posted by mark k at 7:47 AM on October 3, 2021 [15 favorites]
Not all NFT platforms use carbon burning currencies. So make sure your critique is properly placed.
Anyway, as an artist, if I can “sell” my art for “magic beans” and at the end of the day convert those beans into my local fiat currency, I don’t give a fuck what you think about the beans or the process.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:48 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
Anyway, as an artist, if I can “sell” my art for “magic beans” and at the end of the day convert those beans into my local fiat currency, I don’t give a fuck what you think about the beans or the process.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:48 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
Look, the thing about Beeple that was interesting was not any individual piece; it was the sequence. This person made and posted a work every single day for over ten years. They've gone through a half dozen styles, including some really pretty looping gif stuff. I followed them on Tumblr back in the day because I enjoyed watching them build up and refine a style and then occasionally tear it all down and start over.
I will give you that the fact Beeple has posted something new every day for well over a decade is an artistic achievement, but "This artist has consistently made a whole lot of art and some of it is better than this" is not a refutation of "This particular piece sucks hot shit." I understand that many artists create art meant to be seen in the context of surrounding pieces but that's not at all how Mayweather VS Logan Paul is presented, beyond perhaps an implicit expectation of social media to automatically aggregate it. That's not curation. There is no "sequence," just the narrative you've created in your mind.
I think their current muddy 3d work is awful, too, but that's not the point.
And you don't even disagree, so I feel like your argument seems a lot more like "I've followed this artist and have come to like them personally" than "This piece has artistic merit because it fits into a larger narrative about how this artist has changed over the years and eventually became King Shit of the NFT Shitpile."
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:50 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
I will give you that the fact Beeple has posted something new every day for well over a decade is an artistic achievement, but "This artist has consistently made a whole lot of art and some of it is better than this" is not a refutation of "This particular piece sucks hot shit." I understand that many artists create art meant to be seen in the context of surrounding pieces but that's not at all how Mayweather VS Logan Paul is presented, beyond perhaps an implicit expectation of social media to automatically aggregate it. That's not curation. There is no "sequence," just the narrative you've created in your mind.
I think their current muddy 3d work is awful, too, but that's not the point.
And you don't even disagree, so I feel like your argument seems a lot more like "I've followed this artist and have come to like them personally" than "This piece has artistic merit because it fits into a larger narrative about how this artist has changed over the years and eventually became King Shit of the NFT Shitpile."
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:50 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
as an artist, if I can “sell” my art for “magic beans” and at the end of the day convert those beans into my local fiat currency
Can you? Have you?
posted by mediareport at 7:51 AM on October 3, 2021 [5 favorites]
Can you? Have you?
posted by mediareport at 7:51 AM on October 3, 2021 [5 favorites]
To be less pithily snarky, there's a whole section in the David Gerard piece title "But what about artists? They need money too." A couple of later sections, "Banksying the unbanksied: fraudulent NFTs" and "What can artists and buyers do about fraudulent NFTs?" end with this piece of advice:
The most important thing for artists to do about NFT fraud is to work to make NFTs widely considered to be worthless, fraudulent magic beans, with massive CO2 generation per transaction. This shouldn’t be terribly difficult, given that NFTs are in fact worthless, fraudulent magic beans, with massive CO2 generation per transaction.
posted by mediareport at 8:03 AM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]
The most important thing for artists to do about NFT fraud is to work to make NFTs widely considered to be worthless, fraudulent magic beans, with massive CO2 generation per transaction. This shouldn’t be terribly difficult, given that NFTs are in fact worthless, fraudulent magic beans, with massive CO2 generation per transaction.
posted by mediareport at 8:03 AM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]
Anyway, as an artist, if I can “sell” my art for “magic beans” and at the end of the day convert those beans into my local fiat currency, I don’t give a fuck what you think about the beans or the process.
If the end is right, it justifies the beans?
posted by hippybear at 8:06 AM on October 3, 2021 [58 favorites]
If the end is right, it justifies the beans?
posted by hippybear at 8:06 AM on October 3, 2021 [58 favorites]
This is the kind of thing artists (say, someone who creates gorgeous scientific illustrations of prehistoric creatures and makes them available to the public through a Creative Commons license) are now dealing with regularly. Click through to the full image here to see how the abusive NFT auto-tokenizing works, and here to see a list of Twitter NFT tokenizing accounts for artists to block.
Seems to me there's very little about NFTs that is artist-friendly for the vast majority of artists who, rather than being enabled to sell their art for magic beans and convert that "into my local fiat currency," are seeing their art ripped off with no recompense to them at all. This is mentioned in the first link in the post that started this thread, which snarkily notes NFTs [or, most of them] don't actually pay artists. That's a key point here.
posted by mediareport at 8:23 AM on October 3, 2021 [15 favorites]
Seems to me there's very little about NFTs that is artist-friendly for the vast majority of artists who, rather than being enabled to sell their art for magic beans and convert that "into my local fiat currency," are seeing their art ripped off with no recompense to them at all. This is mentioned in the first link in the post that started this thread, which snarkily notes NFTs [or, most of them] don't actually pay artists. That's a key point here.
posted by mediareport at 8:23 AM on October 3, 2021 [15 favorites]
Read chunks of the OP links and although I found quite a bit interesting about the topic, I'm just glad I can choose not to read art critics' opinions.
posted by achrise at 8:25 AM on October 3, 2021
posted by achrise at 8:25 AM on October 3, 2021
I can choose not to read art critics' opinions.
Be happy in your choices. There is some terrible art criticism out there to be sure, just as there is really awful stuff created in any medium, but that doesn't stop people from picking up a new book or settling into a new film/series. Some art "criticism" is simply artists sharing their perspectives on others' (and their own) work, I guess I enjoy the endless conversation about art personally. That is all it really is for me: till we die, some of us choose to engage in this endless discussion and process of creation.. doesn't matter if it's "good" or "unoriginal" it just matters that it happens.
Also, I have yet to encounter a rationalization for NFTs that makes any sense. From what I can tell, it's just one more terrible idea out there, and some people are getting rich off it.
posted by elkevelvet at 8:57 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
Be happy in your choices. There is some terrible art criticism out there to be sure, just as there is really awful stuff created in any medium, but that doesn't stop people from picking up a new book or settling into a new film/series. Some art "criticism" is simply artists sharing their perspectives on others' (and their own) work, I guess I enjoy the endless conversation about art personally. That is all it really is for me: till we die, some of us choose to engage in this endless discussion and process of creation.. doesn't matter if it's "good" or "unoriginal" it just matters that it happens.
Also, I have yet to encounter a rationalization for NFTs that makes any sense. From what I can tell, it's just one more terrible idea out there, and some people are getting rich off it.
posted by elkevelvet at 8:57 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
Look, the thing about Beeple that was interesting was not any individual piece; it was the sequence. This person made and posted a work every single day for over ten years.
Interesting in that he did this every day for ten years and is still so fucking awful at it? Somebody call Malcolm Gladwell, seems that his book was wrong.
posted by sinfony at 9:47 AM on October 3, 2021 [13 favorites]
Interesting in that he did this every day for ten years and is still so fucking awful at it? Somebody call Malcolm Gladwell, seems that his book was wrong.
posted by sinfony at 9:47 AM on October 3, 2021 [13 favorites]
Just love when people with steady work from the man take a dump on those living precariously, doing what they need to to make a buck in this capitalist hellscape. We're all whores, you know. Don't be so proud that you don't get your own personal knees dirty in service that you forget that in this world, we're all sellouts. Or we fucking starve.
We all gotta make a buck. "Not like that!" [blows raspberry]
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:55 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
We all gotta make a buck. "Not like that!" [blows raspberry]
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:55 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
Also, I have yet to encounter a rationalization for NFTs that makes any sense.
They're the fabric softener of money laundering.
posted by mhoye at 10:01 AM on October 3, 2021 [28 favorites]
They're the fabric softener of money laundering.
posted by mhoye at 10:01 AM on October 3, 2021 [28 favorites]
This model of value in visual art, where there are limited copies and all the value lies in possessing the limited copy, is not an inevitability. Take music and literature, for example - they're reproduced infinitely and the value lies in the rights to reproduce it. The reason for this model is because of historical technological limitations; for all they claim to be "futuristic", NFTs are really retrograde.
posted by airmail at 10:02 AM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by airmail at 10:02 AM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]
Also, I have yet to encounter a rationalization for NFTs that makes any sense.
they make sense in some use cases like bureaucratic registration systems like car registration. it would also be useful for event tickets.
but there would need to be a lot of infrastructure for that to work.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 10:09 AM on October 3, 2021
they make sense in some use cases like bureaucratic registration systems like car registration. it would also be useful for event tickets.
but there would need to be a lot of infrastructure for that to work.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 10:09 AM on October 3, 2021
Just love when people with steady work from the man take a dump on those living precariously, doing what they need to to make a buck in this capitalist hellscape.
It's very hard for most artists to make any sort of living at all from their art. The question is whether NFTs actually help many artists make a living. Most of the articles linked suggest that a lot of the money being made is being made by people plagiarizing artist's work and (possibly) at the upper ends of the art market where financial shenanigans have been going on for at least a century.
As someone who makes at least some of their living via art, have you used NFTs? Have they worked for you? Are their benefits over other sources on monetization? I am genuinely curious. (let's leave aside the carbon question. I just want to know if this works for a non-celebrity artist.)
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:27 AM on October 3, 2021 [10 favorites]
It's very hard for most artists to make any sort of living at all from their art. The question is whether NFTs actually help many artists make a living. Most of the articles linked suggest that a lot of the money being made is being made by people plagiarizing artist's work and (possibly) at the upper ends of the art market where financial shenanigans have been going on for at least a century.
As someone who makes at least some of their living via art, have you used NFTs? Have they worked for you? Are their benefits over other sources on monetization? I am genuinely curious. (let's leave aside the carbon question. I just want to know if this works for a non-celebrity artist.)
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:27 AM on October 3, 2021 [10 favorites]
they make sense in some use cases like bureaucratic registration systems like car registration. it would also be useful for event tickets.
Possibly in a bizarre, postapocalyptic zero-trust world where less circuitous systems such as centralised databases are not an option.
posted by acb at 10:29 AM on October 3, 2021 [14 favorites]
Possibly in a bizarre, postapocalyptic zero-trust world where less circuitous systems such as centralised databases are not an option.
posted by acb at 10:29 AM on October 3, 2021 [14 favorites]
Ready Player One ranks high among the most mediocre books I've read in the past decade. Fortunately, as with NFTs I know that anything favorably connected or compared to it is probably mediocre fan service by and for tech-world wannabe disruptors, so it functions as a helpful metric every so often.
On the other hand, maybe I don't read the right kind of literature. Has Bernie Madoff gotten the novelizing bug from behind bars yet?
posted by knucklebones at 10:31 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
On the other hand, maybe I don't read the right kind of literature. Has Bernie Madoff gotten the novelizing bug from behind bars yet?
posted by knucklebones at 10:31 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
With the art NFTs, the whole concept of "proof of authenticity" is pointless if you're buying directly from the artist and that's that. You really just need proof of who you're buying from. It only becomes a thing when you want to buy it and then turn around and sell it to someone else. So for event tickets, wouldn't they only be useful for scalpers?
posted by RobotHero at 10:38 AM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by RobotHero at 10:38 AM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]
they make sense in some use cases like bureaucratic registration systems like car registration. it would also be useful for event tickets.
actually not. for car registration you have a central authority that gives out license numbers. you dont want that to be decentralized. if you wanted digital license plate just have the dmv digitally sign a qr code or whatever.
same for tickets. digitally sign some file and boom thats your ticket now.
blockchain is a solution without a problem. i have yet to see a use case that isnt just a scam looking for more suckers to pay of early adopters.
posted by Megustalations at 10:38 AM on October 3, 2021 [19 favorites]
NFTs are appealing to some artists for the same reason cryptocurrency is appealing to certain people: it's perceived as a way around a system which is controlled by a small clique of gatekeepers. It doesn't need to be good or even not awful; it just has to be an alternative. It's very much like Bitcoin in this respect; while "Bitcoin is good" is obvious bullshit, "banks are bad" is pretty self evident. It's that for the big ticket art world.
From that perspective, turning up your nose at "NFT art" is counterproductive because it's playing into that narrative with surgical precision.
posted by phooky at 10:52 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
From that perspective, turning up your nose at "NFT art" is counterproductive because it's playing into that narrative with surgical precision.
posted by phooky at 10:52 AM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
Anyway, as an artist, if I can “sell” my art for “magic beans” and at the end of the day convert those beans into my local fiat currency, I don’t give a fuck what you think about the beans or the process.
And this is why it's important to hold the line on shunning anyone who goes into NFTs. There'll always be another "no wait, this one isn't technically carbon-sensitive, you just need to convert your foolish fiat cash *into* one of the forest-burning ones, then via a Uniswap leveraged loan you can get DolphinSafeBeans; and then the artist can just reverse the process if for some reason their landlord doesn't take DSB" dodge. In a better world I'd hope for regulatory pressure at the exchange level (since that's the weak point to all this), but since that's not in the cards I've got the tools I have.
I do appreciate what I've seen of the collective furry community's responses to the Lindsey Lohan thing. "We must double down on becoming unsafe for branding purposes".
But don't worry, I wasn't your audience anyhow.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:59 AM on October 3, 2021 [11 favorites]
And this is why it's important to hold the line on shunning anyone who goes into NFTs. There'll always be another "no wait, this one isn't technically carbon-sensitive, you just need to convert your foolish fiat cash *into* one of the forest-burning ones, then via a Uniswap leveraged loan you can get DolphinSafeBeans; and then the artist can just reverse the process if for some reason their landlord doesn't take DSB" dodge. In a better world I'd hope for regulatory pressure at the exchange level (since that's the weak point to all this), but since that's not in the cards I've got the tools I have.
I do appreciate what I've seen of the collective furry community's responses to the Lindsey Lohan thing. "We must double down on becoming unsafe for branding purposes".
But don't worry, I wasn't your audience anyhow.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:59 AM on October 3, 2021 [11 favorites]
turning up your nose at "NFT art"
What a ridiculously dismissive characterization of the many thoughtful concerns raised in the links and discussion of this post.
posted by mediareport at 11:04 AM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
What a ridiculously dismissive characterization of the many thoughtful concerns raised in the links and discussion of this post.
posted by mediareport at 11:04 AM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
I do appreciate what I've seen of the collective furry community's responses to the Lindsey Lohan thing.
This came around yesterday and I quite enjoyed it.
I mean, part of the insult is that Lohan's dog drawing is a shit piece of art. Every furry I've known who has seen it has said it just isn't even good, let alone all the other layers of bullshit attached to it. It'd be something different if people were like, "wow, great art, interesting fursona, etc".
posted by hippybear at 11:05 AM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
This came around yesterday and I quite enjoyed it.
I mean, part of the insult is that Lohan's dog drawing is a shit piece of art. Every furry I've known who has seen it has said it just isn't even good, let alone all the other layers of bullshit attached to it. It'd be something different if people were like, "wow, great art, interesting fursona, etc".
posted by hippybear at 11:05 AM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
Just love when people with steady work from the man take a dump on those living precariously, doing what they need to to make a buck in this capitalist hellscape. We're all whores, you know. Don't be so proud that you don't get your own personal knees dirty in service that you forget that in this world, we're all sellouts. Or we fucking starve.
We all gotta make a buck. "Not like that!" [blows raspberry]
So, here's a "fun" game: figure out who can't use this line of BS as a rationalization for their job. Poachers, pirates, drug lords, con artists, mobsters,Blackwater Constellis mercs? Nope, this one flimsy line of reasoning covers them all! So far all I've come up with is dictators and religious leaders. And probably even they can use this justification if they are sufficiently kleptocratic.
Just because we all live in a capitalist hellscape and all bear some degree of complicity doesn't mean morality ceases to exist and all ways of making a living are exactly equally valid. You want to justify scamming folks, abetting money laundering, and burning shit-tons of fossil fuels to do it, you're gonna hafta do better than that.
posted by mstokes650 at 11:31 AM on October 3, 2021 [27 favorites]
We all gotta make a buck. "Not like that!" [blows raspberry]
So, here's a "fun" game: figure out who can't use this line of BS as a rationalization for their job. Poachers, pirates, drug lords, con artists, mobsters,
Just because we all live in a capitalist hellscape and all bear some degree of complicity doesn't mean morality ceases to exist and all ways of making a living are exactly equally valid. You want to justify scamming folks, abetting money laundering, and burning shit-tons of fossil fuels to do it, you're gonna hafta do better than that.
posted by mstokes650 at 11:31 AM on October 3, 2021 [27 favorites]
I guess I haven't been critiquing the quality of the art itself because it seemed beside the point.
Artists whose work I have otherwise admired have ended up vaccine conspiracists or sex pests, so I'm not inclined to make the caliber of artist that's signed on my primary basis for judging the concept of NFTs.
I also mostly encounter these people in game dev spaces, where the tokens are supposed to be in-game items. So in terms of aesthetic critique, "Magic the Gathering artist" is splendid, but "build your game entirely around about buying and selling items" is not.
posted by RobotHero at 11:55 AM on October 3, 2021 [4 favorites]
Artists whose work I have otherwise admired have ended up vaccine conspiracists or sex pests, so I'm not inclined to make the caliber of artist that's signed on my primary basis for judging the concept of NFTs.
I also mostly encounter these people in game dev spaces, where the tokens are supposed to be in-game items. So in terms of aesthetic critique, "Magic the Gathering artist" is splendid, but "build your game entirely around about buying and selling items" is not.
posted by RobotHero at 11:55 AM on October 3, 2021 [4 favorites]
Mod note: A couple deleted. Let's take the anger directed at each other down a notch, okay?
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 1:27 PM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 1:27 PM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]
This should be one of the best things to happen to art, but because we live in capitalism, instead it sucks. It fucking sucks!
This is definitely the station most of my trains of thought end at nowadays.
posted by snerson at 1:31 PM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
This is definitely the station most of my trains of thought end at nowadays.
posted by snerson at 1:31 PM on October 3, 2021 [2 favorites]
I really don't get the defense of nfts as a means to benefit artists in general. It's like saying MLM schemes are actually good because some people on the top end make a bunch of cash while ignoring the things that make their profit possible.
posted by Ferreous at 1:59 PM on October 3, 2021 [19 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 1:59 PM on October 3, 2021 [19 favorites]
"this is a thread of n.f.t.s currently for sale that also belong on 2009 deviantart" [twitter thread]
posted by Pyry at 2:55 PM on October 3, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by Pyry at 2:55 PM on October 3, 2021 [5 favorites]
We're all whores, you know. Don't be so proud that you don't get your own personal knees dirty in service that you forget that in this world, we're all sellouts. Or we fucking starve.
WOW the misogyny and whorephobia and sex-negativity in this statement is something else.
I'm reminded of why I generally hide out in dark corners of the internet where virtually everyone has either written pornography or commented approvingly on the work of someone who has.
The discourse about art and climate change is, sincerely, far more thoughtful in there.
posted by All Might Be Well at 3:50 PM on October 3, 2021 [20 favorites]
WOW the misogyny and whorephobia and sex-negativity in this statement is something else.
I'm reminded of why I generally hide out in dark corners of the internet where virtually everyone has either written pornography or commented approvingly on the work of someone who has.
The discourse about art and climate change is, sincerely, far more thoughtful in there.
posted by All Might Be Well at 3:50 PM on October 3, 2021 [20 favorites]
Or, shorter: comparing participation in the NFT market to sex work offends me, as someone who thinks that solidarity with sex workers is important.
posted by All Might Be Well at 3:51 PM on October 3, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by All Might Be Well at 3:51 PM on October 3, 2021 [16 favorites]
I'm concerned someone reading this might get the impression that NFT's would be even a tiny bit more legitimate if they were attached to better artwork.
posted by straight at 4:03 PM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by straight at 4:03 PM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
They wouldn't [be more legitimate], of course, but I still find it shocking and worthy of derision every time I end up seeing a piece valued and held up as an exemplar of this new style medium movement distribution method way of enforcing scarcity way of suggesting scarcity and it turns out to look like a Stuckist changed a line of code in a Blender tutorial.
Like yes, the key point is that NFTs and cryptocurrencies are significantly contributing to our failure to halt global warming, but also they claim to have aesthetic worth and there's nothing wrong with remarking on their bankruptcy from that perspective as well.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 5:41 PM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
Like yes, the key point is that NFTs and cryptocurrencies are significantly contributing to our failure to halt global warming, but also they claim to have aesthetic worth and there's nothing wrong with remarking on their bankruptcy from that perspective as well.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 5:41 PM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
NFTs are as legitimate as lithographs signed by artists.
posted by ryoshu at 7:46 PM on October 3, 2021
posted by ryoshu at 7:46 PM on October 3, 2021
I’ve read (I don’t recall the source) that one reason for the explosion in art valuations is that art is a traceable asset that can be kept and traded outside taxable jurisdictions. That is, it’s not like gold or gems, which can be stolen, or like land, transactions in which are controlled by governments. The present value of high-ticket art mostly reflects its utility as a means of evading tax and laundering money. I suppose NFTs might serve the same purpose but, even if they don’t, there are possibly people who are buying them because they think they’ll be useful, and will therefore increase in value.
Under this theory a potential buyer isn’t concerned with how much some art is worth as an object to be possessed: the only thing that matters is how much it could be sold for. It’s the artist’s job to convince purchasers that a market exists and that the artist isn’t going to flood it with, e.g., thousands of cheap reproductions. Banksy has managed this really well, even though I understand most pieces are basically stencils and could be easily reproduced. So by the same logic, an artist cranking out hundreds of gorgeous pieces attached to NFTs will not be successful; an anonymous dauber with a single landscape won’t be successful; success lies in getting some recognition and then severely throttling down the supply. Any thoughts?
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:46 PM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]
Under this theory a potential buyer isn’t concerned with how much some art is worth as an object to be possessed: the only thing that matters is how much it could be sold for. It’s the artist’s job to convince purchasers that a market exists and that the artist isn’t going to flood it with, e.g., thousands of cheap reproductions. Banksy has managed this really well, even though I understand most pieces are basically stencils and could be easily reproduced. So by the same logic, an artist cranking out hundreds of gorgeous pieces attached to NFTs will not be successful; an anonymous dauber with a single landscape won’t be successful; success lies in getting some recognition and then severely throttling down the supply. Any thoughts?
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:46 PM on October 3, 2021 [3 favorites]
Calling useful currency fiat kind of gives away the game doesn't it?
posted by Ferreous at 7:47 PM on October 3, 2021
posted by Ferreous at 7:47 PM on October 3, 2021
Just love when people with steady work from the man take a dump on those living precariously, doing what they need to to make a buck in this capitalist hellscape.
Just so we're absolutely clear, NFTs are literally a Ponzi scheme. If you manage to make money off NFTs I hope you're thanking all the folks who will never see anything in return for their "investment" because that's where your money came from. I bet Bernie Madoff also said he was just doing what he needed to do to make a buck.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:33 PM on October 3, 2021 [5 favorites]
Just so we're absolutely clear, NFTs are literally a Ponzi scheme. If you manage to make money off NFTs I hope you're thanking all the folks who will never see anything in return for their "investment" because that's where your money came from. I bet Bernie Madoff also said he was just doing what he needed to do to make a buck.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:33 PM on October 3, 2021 [5 favorites]
Someone on a discord was going on about crypto and smart contracts today, in relation to the concept of the "complete contract."
The "complete contract" would be one where every possibility and eventuality has been accounted for in the contract. We often resort to courts and judges to determine cases involving contracts, because the contracts we have are, by a matter of practicality, incomplete.
Crypto proposes the "smart contract" which does not ever need to be externally adjudicated, because it is an algorithm which will be impersonally applied.
In the games stuff, they often seem to be bothered by the prospect that their ownership of items in a game is just kept track of by the game company that made the game. (There's a lot I could get into in terms of what little it would mean to own a game item without the game that you own it in.)
The "fiat currency" is currency whose value is supported by some government. An aspect they emphasize, I guess, out of a fear that the government could withdraw that support.
What's common to these is a distrust of human institutions and a (vastly overconfident, in my opinion) belief that those institutions can be replaced by some kind of algorithm without any human intervention. That the concept of ownership, value, money, contracts, can all be technologically actualized without all the messy human cultural elements that normally support them.
posted by RobotHero at 8:43 PM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
The "complete contract" would be one where every possibility and eventuality has been accounted for in the contract. We often resort to courts and judges to determine cases involving contracts, because the contracts we have are, by a matter of practicality, incomplete.
Crypto proposes the "smart contract" which does not ever need to be externally adjudicated, because it is an algorithm which will be impersonally applied.
In the games stuff, they often seem to be bothered by the prospect that their ownership of items in a game is just kept track of by the game company that made the game. (There's a lot I could get into in terms of what little it would mean to own a game item without the game that you own it in.)
The "fiat currency" is currency whose value is supported by some government. An aspect they emphasize, I guess, out of a fear that the government could withdraw that support.
What's common to these is a distrust of human institutions and a (vastly overconfident, in my opinion) belief that those institutions can be replaced by some kind of algorithm without any human intervention. That the concept of ownership, value, money, contracts, can all be technologically actualized without all the messy human cultural elements that normally support them.
posted by RobotHero at 8:43 PM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]
I think they emphasize fiat currency for more straightforward gold-bug reasons: governments typically try to manage their money supplies to maintain a modest amount of inflation, whereas the crypto enthusiasts want a "currency" that's deflationary, perpetually increasing in value.
posted by Pyry at 9:07 PM on October 3, 2021
posted by Pyry at 9:07 PM on October 3, 2021
Has Bernie Madoff gotten the novelizing bug from behind bars yet?
He died earlier this year, so, maybe imitating some of Damien Hurst's more organic works?
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:12 PM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
He died earlier this year, so, maybe imitating some of Damien Hurst's more organic works?
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:12 PM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
no wait, this one isn't technically carbon-sensitive, you just need to convert your foolish fiat cash *into* one of the forest-burning ones, then via a Uniswap leveraged loan you can get DolphinSafeBeans
I have bought lots ofDolphinSafeBeans Stellar Lumens directly with Australian dollars through Independent Reserve without any of the proof-of-wastage currencies being involved in any step of that process.
And if I were ever to want to buy or sell NFTs (not that this is likely) I'd be doing that on StellarNFT, again without involving any of the old-school planet-trashing cryptocurrencies in any step of the process.
As for NFTs being a Ponzi scheme: the same critique can be levelled with equal validity at any speculative investment, which is any investment where the buyer chooses to have minimal involvement with the day-to-day workings of what's being invested in, which at the end of the day is almost all investments. And this will remain the case until we devise a global economic system whose fundamental workings are not predicated on endless "growth".
That the concept of ownership, value, money, contracts, can all be technologically actualized without all the messy human cultural elements that normally support them
Smart contracts and cryptocurrencies and NFTs are defining new forms of ownership. It's important not to mistake those for ownership as is generally understood outside the crypto bubble, even though quite a lot of conceptual overlap obviously does exist.
Outside-the-bubble ownership is a strong thing that rests ultimately on the availability of State-sanctioned violence against those who seek to break its rules. Inside the bubble, ownership is a much weaker idea that's enforced only by the continued willingness of market participants to recognize it. Unless and until we start to see stuff like land titles and car registration being tracked on blockchains (which I personally don't see as even slightly likely for the foreseeable future) these two kinds of ownership are going to remain quite easily distinguishable.
posted by flabdablet at 1:16 AM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
I have bought lots of
And if I were ever to want to buy or sell NFTs (not that this is likely) I'd be doing that on StellarNFT, again without involving any of the old-school planet-trashing cryptocurrencies in any step of the process.
As for NFTs being a Ponzi scheme: the same critique can be levelled with equal validity at any speculative investment, which is any investment where the buyer chooses to have minimal involvement with the day-to-day workings of what's being invested in, which at the end of the day is almost all investments. And this will remain the case until we devise a global economic system whose fundamental workings are not predicated on endless "growth".
That the concept of ownership, value, money, contracts, can all be technologically actualized without all the messy human cultural elements that normally support them
Smart contracts and cryptocurrencies and NFTs are defining new forms of ownership. It's important not to mistake those for ownership as is generally understood outside the crypto bubble, even though quite a lot of conceptual overlap obviously does exist.
Outside-the-bubble ownership is a strong thing that rests ultimately on the availability of State-sanctioned violence against those who seek to break its rules. Inside the bubble, ownership is a much weaker idea that's enforced only by the continued willingness of market participants to recognize it. Unless and until we start to see stuff like land titles and car registration being tracked on blockchains (which I personally don't see as even slightly likely for the foreseeable future) these two kinds of ownership are going to remain quite easily distinguishable.
posted by flabdablet at 1:16 AM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm concerned someone reading this might get the impression that NFT's would be even a tiny bit more legitimate if they were attached to better artwork.This is also explained by applying the law of conservative projection: from the originators' perspective, using a real economic term as an epithet distracts the reader from the realization that what they're trying to sell you is the purest form of a fiat currency with a weak community, no intrinsic demand, and unlimited competition. By now they've recruited plenty of people who've never even learned what the term means and will act as if the original argument had been made in good faith all along.
As for NFTs being a Ponzi scheme: the same critique can be levelled with equal validity at any speculative investment, which is any investment where the buyer chooses to have minimal involvement with the day-to-day workings of what's being invested in, which at the end of the day is almost all investments. And this will remain the case until we devise a global economic system whose fundamental workings are not predicated on endless "growth".I don't think this is right and that comes down to the attempts to redefine ownership which you raised later. Most NFTs do not convey ownership of the thing they're marketed as — some artists do sign over copyright but most do not (and then there are the cases where coinbros are simply linking to someone else's work hoping you won't know the difference). The massive valuations in the news would be dubious for the artwork in many cases but they almost always don't even include the actual work, just the ability to control one token linking to it. Any further use of that token requires payment to support a massive always-on network which you otherwise would have no need for. The intrinsic inefficiency of blockchains also means that you need to continue to pay for the continued hosting of the referenced artwork since it can't be stored in the blockchain itself.
Contrast that with traditional speculative investments: you certainly may still lose money but you almost always have something tangible underlying the value whether that's the land for a failed real-estate project, artwork which didn't appreciate the way you hoped for, the assets and intellectual property rights of a failed company, etc. An expensive link-shortener doesn't have any of that which seems like a huge waste relative to the massive amounts of energy going in to the system, which makes a lot more sense when you realize how the NFT concept was popularized by people who had already made extensive gambles on blockchains like Ethereum and were trying to give new people reasons to pay them for otherwise useless random hashes.
posted by adamsc at 4:50 AM on October 4, 2021 [5 favorites]
The “complete contract” idea seems to belong to the world of perfectly spherical cows of uniform density.
posted by acb at 7:57 AM on October 4, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by acb at 7:57 AM on October 4, 2021 [5 favorites]
I just want to share my contribution to the furry scene's general circling of the wagons in response to Ms. Lohan's NFTsona.
It is not safe for work. It is very very not safe for work. It is the work of someone who has been in the furry fandom since the eighties deliberately choosing some of the most extreme and weird fantasy cartoon kinks and non-consensually applying them to the badly-designed fursona of a rich-ass celebrity, under the principle that any "furry" material created for a profit is fair game for whatever insane cartoon perversion you desire. It also involves Krystal, a minor character from one of Nintendo's games who has become an exemplar of that principle.
https://twitter.com/egypturnash/status/1443970559986081800
posted by egypturnash at 9:40 AM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
It is not safe for work. It is very very not safe for work. It is the work of someone who has been in the furry fandom since the eighties deliberately choosing some of the most extreme and weird fantasy cartoon kinks and non-consensually applying them to the badly-designed fursona of a rich-ass celebrity, under the principle that any "furry" material created for a profit is fair game for whatever insane cartoon perversion you desire. It also involves Krystal, a minor character from one of Nintendo's games who has become an exemplar of that principle.
https://twitter.com/egypturnash/status/1443970559986081800
posted by egypturnash at 9:40 AM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
Just so we're absolutely clear, NFTs are literally a Ponzi scheme. If you manage to make money off NFTs I hope you're thanking all the folks who will never see anything in return for their "investment" because that's where your money came from. I bet Bernie Madoff also said he was just doing what he needed to do to make a buck.
Yeah, that's not a Ponzi scheme, literally or figuratively.
Most NFTs do not convey ownership of the thing they're marketed as
If this were true it might make them fraud, but it's not a Ponzi scheme. But it's understood by at least the high end purchasers.
I think it makes NFTs silly, but I think stamp collecting or comic book collecting is silly too.
Contrast that with traditional speculative investments, you certainly may still lose money but you almost always have something tangible
Options, puts, calls, insurance policy, counterparty agreements, rights of first refusal, etc., etc. have been around for ages now. You don't even get a token once they expire. The problem with NFTs is not that they are outliers, it's that they are too similar to all the other crap out there.
I'm not defending NFTs. If you want to support an artist donate to their Patreon. But they aren't fraud in any traditional sense.
posted by mark k at 10:19 AM on October 4, 2021 [4 favorites]
Yeah, that's not a Ponzi scheme, literally or figuratively.
Most NFTs do not convey ownership of the thing they're marketed as
If this were true it might make them fraud, but it's not a Ponzi scheme. But it's understood by at least the high end purchasers.
I think it makes NFTs silly, but I think stamp collecting or comic book collecting is silly too.
Contrast that with traditional speculative investments, you certainly may still lose money but you almost always have something tangible
Options, puts, calls, insurance policy, counterparty agreements, rights of first refusal, etc., etc. have been around for ages now. You don't even get a token once they expire. The problem with NFTs is not that they are outliers, it's that they are too similar to all the other crap out there.
I'm not defending NFTs. If you want to support an artist donate to their Patreon. But they aren't fraud in any traditional sense.
posted by mark k at 10:19 AM on October 4, 2021 [4 favorites]
I have really struggled to make sense of NFTs, even as fellow artists of my acquaintance have dipped their toes in that particular pond to greater or lesser degrees.
The biggest negative for me is their dependency on climate-destroying proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. I guess there are now platforms like Hic Et Nunc that use proof-of-stake currency instead... but one artist I'm currently in a show with told me that this platform has a poor interface. I don't know enough about the subject to have an opinion.
Then there's what I perceive to be the general absurdity of the whole concept. An NFT is really just a fancy digital receipt. Buying an NFT generally won't give you a physical artwork, copyright in an artwork, or even exclusive reproduction rights to an artwork. So what are you buying?
Essentially, it seems you're buying a completely abstract form of "ownership" of ... something ... that is somehow associated with an artwork. It doesn't give you anything that isn't available to anyone else -- except, basically, bragging rights.
But I've seen it argued that NFTs, in that respect, resemble the kinds of digital goods that you can buy in multiplayer video games. You get nothing tangible, just the ability to showcase or associate yourself with something within the confines of a particular online platform.
In that sense, NFTs are basically performative or social. You can look at them as a form of patronage, occurring within a community of like-minded individuals, and thus conveying a certain sense of pride and status. And while I still think NFTs are surrounded by a miasma of hype and ignorance -- and in many cases, enabled by environmentally devastating technological platforms -- I can at least understand them to some extent when I look at them this way.
As has already been mentioned above, there's an inherent subjectivity in the valuation of many things that we accept as valuable: not just more traditional forms of artwork, but other stores of value like fiat currency or precious metals. These things have value because lots of people believe they have value.
There's one more significant argument against NFTs, from what I can see, which is that they are just an arm of the cryptocurrency promotion machine. They induce lots of artists to invest in crypto just to get in the door. And they arguably lend legitimacy to the whole crypto enterprise. This seems plausible to me. But of course, the traditional art world is infected with similar capitalist dysfunction, where art and its market value are continually manipulated by various parties for shady purposes, in all kinds of incredibly devious ways.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:06 PM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
The biggest negative for me is their dependency on climate-destroying proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. I guess there are now platforms like Hic Et Nunc that use proof-of-stake currency instead... but one artist I'm currently in a show with told me that this platform has a poor interface. I don't know enough about the subject to have an opinion.
Then there's what I perceive to be the general absurdity of the whole concept. An NFT is really just a fancy digital receipt. Buying an NFT generally won't give you a physical artwork, copyright in an artwork, or even exclusive reproduction rights to an artwork. So what are you buying?
Essentially, it seems you're buying a completely abstract form of "ownership" of ... something ... that is somehow associated with an artwork. It doesn't give you anything that isn't available to anyone else -- except, basically, bragging rights.
But I've seen it argued that NFTs, in that respect, resemble the kinds of digital goods that you can buy in multiplayer video games. You get nothing tangible, just the ability to showcase or associate yourself with something within the confines of a particular online platform.
In that sense, NFTs are basically performative or social. You can look at them as a form of patronage, occurring within a community of like-minded individuals, and thus conveying a certain sense of pride and status. And while I still think NFTs are surrounded by a miasma of hype and ignorance -- and in many cases, enabled by environmentally devastating technological platforms -- I can at least understand them to some extent when I look at them this way.
As has already been mentioned above, there's an inherent subjectivity in the valuation of many things that we accept as valuable: not just more traditional forms of artwork, but other stores of value like fiat currency or precious metals. These things have value because lots of people believe they have value.
There's one more significant argument against NFTs, from what I can see, which is that they are just an arm of the cryptocurrency promotion machine. They induce lots of artists to invest in crypto just to get in the door. And they arguably lend legitimacy to the whole crypto enterprise. This seems plausible to me. But of course, the traditional art world is infected with similar capitalist dysfunction, where art and its market value are continually manipulated by various parties for shady purposes, in all kinds of incredibly devious ways.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:06 PM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
You can look at them as a form of patronage
Except that the patron's largesse goes not to the artist but to some self-declared middle man.
posted by acb at 1:50 PM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
Except that the patron's largesse goes not to the artist but to some self-declared middle man.
posted by acb at 1:50 PM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
Except that the patron's largesse goes not to the artist but to some self-declared middle man.
Well, not if the artist can cash in their cryptocurrency for "real" money. Granted, the middleman takes a generous cut.
I don't know how the transaction costs of getting paid in crypto for an NFT compare with, say, getting paid on Patreon, or Etsy, or wherever. It probably depends on a lot of factors.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:47 PM on October 4, 2021
Well, not if the artist can cash in their cryptocurrency for "real" money. Granted, the middleman takes a generous cut.
I don't know how the transaction costs of getting paid in crypto for an NFT compare with, say, getting paid on Patreon, or Etsy, or wherever. It probably depends on a lot of factors.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:47 PM on October 4, 2021
I think stamp collecting or comic book collecting is silly too.
I know it's not what you're saying here, but I keep seeing the pro-NFT crowd make these comparisons as though they're favourable to their position. The trouble is, NFTs aren't Amazing Fantasy #15, they're the endless boxes of unsellable 1990s hologram variant covers that companies produced when they re-oriented themselves towards speculators (which didn't turn out so well).
posted by quizzical at 4:30 PM on October 4, 2021 [8 favorites]
I know it's not what you're saying here, but I keep seeing the pro-NFT crowd make these comparisons as though they're favourable to their position. The trouble is, NFTs aren't Amazing Fantasy #15, they're the endless boxes of unsellable 1990s hologram variant covers that companies produced when they re-oriented themselves towards speculators (which didn't turn out so well).
posted by quizzical at 4:30 PM on October 4, 2021 [8 favorites]
not if the artist can cash in their cryptocurrency for "real" money. Granted, the middleman takes a generous cut.
Independent Reserve charges 0.5% brokerage on cryptocurrency purchases and sales, and nothing to move AUD from my account there to my bank. It's not bad at all.
posted by flabdablet at 11:23 PM on October 4, 2021
Independent Reserve charges 0.5% brokerage on cryptocurrency purchases and sales, and nothing to move AUD from my account there to my bank. It's not bad at all.
posted by flabdablet at 11:23 PM on October 4, 2021
Investors Spent Millions on 'Evolved Apes' NFTs. Then They Got Scammed (Vice)
The developer behind the NFT project, 'Evil Ape,' suddenly disappeared along with its Twitter account, website, and $2.7 million.
The developer behind the NFT project, 'Evil Ape,' suddenly disappeared along with its Twitter account, website, and $2.7 million.
taking away the wallet with all the ETH from minting that was to be used for everything, from paying the artistposted by CrystalDave at 12:37 PM on October 5, 2021 [4 favorites]
[...]
He added that “there were multiple red flags” in Evolved Apes early on, “but 99% of us were just blinded by the art and the promises and the potential profits we assumed would come.”
Like, okay, those apes and a lot of the ones Pyry linked above all have that Picrew-but-really-garish thing going on. I guess if you want to look at what artistic trends seem to go with NFTs, this is one of them.
They want a way of cranking out thousands of variants, so you get these things where this one is special because it has sunglasses and a pipe or whatever. And you can randomly change the colours each time, too, and now they're more unique.
Does the "having variations on one theme" thing also play up the idea of it being a collection? Like, rather than approach from the direction of fine art, they're approaching from the direction of Beanie Babies or Magic cards? If there's only 200 of this thing, and 4000 of another, the former is rarer. And why, the rarest of all is if there's only one of them. But they must simultaneously be one-of-a-kind and also be part of a set of collectibles to provide a context for that one-of-a-kindness.
posted by RobotHero at 7:42 PM on October 5, 2021 [2 favorites]
They want a way of cranking out thousands of variants, so you get these things where this one is special because it has sunglasses and a pipe or whatever. And you can randomly change the colours each time, too, and now they're more unique.
Does the "having variations on one theme" thing also play up the idea of it being a collection? Like, rather than approach from the direction of fine art, they're approaching from the direction of Beanie Babies or Magic cards? If there's only 200 of this thing, and 4000 of another, the former is rarer. And why, the rarest of all is if there's only one of them. But they must simultaneously be one-of-a-kind and also be part of a set of collectibles to provide a context for that one-of-a-kindness.
posted by RobotHero at 7:42 PM on October 5, 2021 [2 favorites]
If you look up "NFT game" on reddit, a very common thing you'll see in adverts is "fully doxxed team", which was wiiiiild to see because of what it implies about the subculture
posted by RobotHero at 7:50 PM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by RobotHero at 7:50 PM on October 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
"The writer’s role is to menace the public’s conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus the issues of his time.”
I don't think anyone would claim The Twilight Zone is great art. But it's lasted a lot longer than any Beeple or Cryptopunk piece will.
Which is the exact point made by these articles: Beeple and Cryptopunk aren't making art for the ages, they're making a fast buck.
posted by davidwitteveen at 2:58 AM on October 3, 2021 [7 favorites]