YES, BUT IS IT ART? BETWEEN FASCINATION AND IRRITATION: NFTS IN THE ART WORLD Guest commentary by Alexander Brunner Digital art has become „socially acceptable.” 6 NFTs in art | PARTNERS‘ VIEW
„ Back in 2017, software developers Hall and Watkinson issued 10,000 NFTs: virtual certificates of ownership recorded on the blockchain and linked to algorithmically generated portraits of characters inspired by the London punk scene, for free. In February <strong>2022</strong>, Sotheby’s planned to sell 104 of these ‘CryptoPunks’ for a total of USD 30 million. A year earlier, in March 2021, Christie’s auctioned an NFT by artist Mike Winkelmann for USD 69 million. In 2019, Swiss artist Johannes Gees created 360 NFTs based on a laser platform. These too were valued in the millions in 2021. As a new form of digital art, NFTs have undeniably made it on the mainstream art scene – and have become a hotly sought-after investment. With NFTs, the traditional concept of art is reaching its limits.” The generally technology-averse and slow-to-change art world is now seeing rapid innovation driven by accelerating technological advances based on blockchain. It is a familiar phenomenon from the business world: Wherever new technologies disrupt the established way of doing things, they create momentum for rapid change. We only need to think here of how Amazon transformed the book trade or how Spotify revolutionised how we listen to music. DIGITAL WORLD MEETS THE ART WORLD An NFT is a non-fungible token – essentially a digital code that points to a digital or physical object, similar to a digital certificate of ownership. The token is stored, immutably and publicly, on the blockchain. For many years, ‘digital’ or ‘generative’ art – art generated via computer algorithms – eked out a niche existence. This was mainly because digital objects are easy, cheap, and quick to copy – and thus of little value to collectors or investors. Combining digital artworks with manipulation-proof digital certificates in the form of NFTs proved an immediate game changer, giving a huge uplift to digital art and propelling it into the realm of respectability. Auction houses and galleries are not the only ones to profit from the digital art gold-rush. For artists, too, it has opened up a completely new market. A NEW CONCEPT OF ART? When the first NFTs were pitched onto the art market, tempers flared: Can digital art be considered art? Can’t digital artworks simply be copied at will? Something that is digitally reproducible and consequently anything but unique surely can’t be valuable in the conventional sense – or can it? How does art define itself? And is art only ‘good’ art if it costs a lot of money? At what point does the physical (art) world transition to the digital world? Question upon question, but one thing is clear: with NFTs, the traditional concept of art is reaching its limits. At the same time, it has always been the task of art to critically reflect contemporary events and to play with traditional ideas. The connection between NFTs and art shows once again that wherever there is innovation, there are also breaks with tradition. In my view, the beauty of technological acceleration is that it generates a wealth of new ideas and projects in rapid succession. It promotes iteration as an intrinsic feature of creative work. At the same time, rapid reproduction raises the question of whether generative art is artistically substantial and of lasting value whatsoever. What constitutes quality in digital art? What will stand the test of time? PARTNERS‘ VIEW | NFTs in art 7
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