The non-fungible token (NFT) phenomenon, by its nature, feels more like a financial and technological innovation, whose impact on visual culture is still unclear. However, the art community is becoming increasingly more acknowledged, as many continue to board the NFT hype train to share and purchase artwork.
Any object can be transformed into a digital asset and become an NFT, whether it’s a song, an image, a three-dimensional model, or in-game items. Even a tweet can be converted into an NFT. Even the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, sold his first tweet for $2.5 million as NFT.
In the first half of 2021 alone, NFT sales have surged to $2.5 billion in value. Is the current NFT hype going to revolutionize the art world? How can new technologies change the ecosystem?
The rightful ownership and authenticity
In the digital world, where everything can be copied, the success of NFTs lies in authenticity and blockchain technology preserves that. A single piece of artwork, when converted into an NFT, is unique and can’t be copied. The smart contracts governing the data of the NFTs make it impossible to destroy, modify or copy them.
During an exclusive interview with DailyCoin, Etan Genini, co-founder of ValuArt, shared his optimistic outlook on the revolutionary power of NFTs in the art world.
ValuArt is a new NFT art platform that onboards aspiring artists and art collectors. Through a curated and crafted approach, ValuArt helps artists to bring the best of their artwork into the digital space. Gemini believes that new technology is the core:
NFTs can certify the authenticity, the provenance, and these are the two solid pillars that should be certified when you think about an artwork. Technically, NFTs are solving that.
NFTs could be compared to physical paintings. Anyone can download, print, and hang Van Gogh’s Sunflowers on their wall, but the original could only be found in a museum.
An NFT representing the original digital version of the artwork can just as easily be displayed as can any digital file, but there is still only one, true original, just like Van Gogh’s masterpiece, hanging in the museum.
Whoever buys a given artwork becomes its rightful owner. Ownership can be easily proven and verified, so intellectual property in the digital sphere becomes more secure. The provenance and authenticity of the painting could also be verified instantly, essentially making the art market fraud-proof.
A New Way to Store Art
Special storage is needed to properly preserve valuable artwork, keeping in mind special lightning, humidity, and temperature. As fine art is an investment, proper storage is a mandatory, but, at times, challenging task. This is seen most prominently in museums saving pieces of fine art.
Having a digital asset, which holds the value of artwork with worldwide digital access, is an innovative solution to this problem.
Genini sees NFTs as an evolution of fine art, which changes the way artwork is collected. These changes will lead to the rise of digital museums, or physical ones with virtual work.
ValuArt has recently opened an NFT gallery in Paradiso, Switzerland, which projects the future of art galleries, bringing the best of both worlds.
ValuArt is striving to help new aspiring artists, and facilitate the digitization of some of the most famous artwork in the world. This digital rebirth would breathe new life into a classic medium and give NFT collectors a chance to acquire a piece of creative history. By tokenizing classic masterworks, Valuart is trying to bring the art world into the Digital Era.
Genini expressed:
To the art and design, we should really think a little bit ahead of this moment. All this is going to be as standard. What we are trying to understand and visualize is what can happen to those masterpieces that we are looking at in the museum, and how they should be represented online in the meta world.
More Economic Power to Artists
Smart contracts can enhance the economic power of artists in a more lasting and systemic way. Digital art NFTs allow artists to monetize the digital version of their artwork, but mainly, for the first time ever, to protect their ownership online and allow them to receive royalties in a secondary market.
Smart contracts could also provide a transparent, and fool-proof mechanism for profit-sharing and collective decision-making, which could eventually address the inequity and economic precarity of art patronage, shifting the power dynamic within the culture defining industry.
Digitalization opens up a vast new market for artists to sell their artwork worldwide, as NFTs can be easily traded, purchased, or sold using a decentralized bridge, or centralized custodial services.
Genini notes that, even though the worldwide digital market has a positive effect, at the same time, it might be overwhelming without prior knowledge of the market. The ValuArt team approaches this by providing support directly to the artist during the entire process, from NFT creation, to finding a unique voice and the right audience for a given piece of art. He explains:
Anything needs a platform to be sold. In such a momentum, in such an era where everything is so digital, sometimes it's so digital it seems to have disappeared, even if it's there. I think that NFTs gave a platform to the art to be a huge presence in a digital world.
The Future of NFTs
Currently, NFT markets are booming. However, ValuArt stands behind the idea that investing in NFTs is not about a quick and easy way to make money, but rather about participating in the creation of the future of art and collecting.
The company aims to create a vibrant community of art and crypto enthusiasts. There will be a time when it will be natural for NFT artwork to be displayed in museums as collectibles and new masterpieces of modern art, alongside their physical counterparts.
NFTs could undoubtedly establish and provide freedom for each creator, who can make art and be confident that they will be credited, and paid, by those interested in their work.
Genini thinks that NFTs are the next big thing in the art world, and that they speak the language of the digital generation. He further believes that working with NFTs will eventually bridge the gap between the digital and analog worlds.
On The Flipside
- The price of minting should be considered here, as there is no guarantee of sizable returns via sale, due to the prevalence of minted NFTs going unsold. This creates an economic gap, separating artists of privilege from the rest.
- Not every artist might be as tech-savvy so as to be able to put their artwork in the market as an NFT.
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