digital art, attribution, NFTs, and value
I’m browsing SuperRare and it’s amazing to see artists paid for this kind of digital work. This is one of the top artists at the moment on the site, so by no means the norm, but it’s still cool to see.
From the site: SuperRare is a marketplace to collect and trade unique, single-edition digital artworks. Each artwork is authentically created by an artist in the network, and tokenized as a crypto-collectible digital item that you can own and trade.
I’m so used to seeing digital animations copied and pasted around often without attribution. If there is attribution it’s kind of overlooked. I’m thinking back to tumblr days. I found an audience for these kinds of art gifs I was making. It felt good. But sadly, it’s easy to find beautiful art works in an ocean, all for free. Instagram feels similar too. There’s better norms for attribution (sort of), but it’s almost like that platform is like hey give it to us for free and we’ll give you e x p o s u r e (maybe).
This whole NFT art space has been going wild the past few weeks. Beeple, an artist well known in the cinema4D (and digital art space in general) had an auction in December that “grossed $3.5 million in a single weekend.” There’s a great profile on Beeple in Esquire:
At the moment Christie’s is auctioning off a collection of his dailies. It’s at $3M.
I spoke to a buddy in the graphics space about this. He mentioned how Beeple’s been working at this for years — like these dailies are over a decade, and just shared out there for free. He gave away videos to artists to use however they wanted, and my buddy used these video loops in his VJ sets.
A few years ago I was invited to give a talk at FITC. It was there that I first saw him speak and saw his work. At the time it felt like the only way to actually earn in this space was to make flashy things for ad agencies. This auction is a big moment, solidifying the value of NFTs and digital art. I’m excited about the new opportunities emerging for digital artists. From Scott Belsky:
Much like Uber did for transportation and Airbnb did for hospitality, the blockchain is transforming and expanding the market of art and digital experiences of all kinds. The only distinct difference about this digital transformation from many that came before: it is empowering the careers of creators themselves more than everyone in the middle.
