What is the difference between a Picasso and an NFT? The first has value because it’s a physical work with a physical certification of authenticity; the second has value because it’s a digital work that has a digital certification of authenticity. The problem is that the latter has never been easy to verify and opens up a real topic: the authenticity of online content. We Don’t Do Art
This is where we need to start to understand NFTs and certifications on Blockchain that promise a change in the concept of authenticity.
Whether it is a revolution or a bubble is not yet known, but it could very well be the tool that digital art has been waiting for.
According to a report by Nonfungible and L’Atelier BNP Paribas, in 2020, the NFT market moved $250 million. This is a small amount by comparison to the beginning of 2021, where the amount being moved has rapidly reached $400 million in less than three months.
Elon Musk sold the NFT of a song he created and released earlier this year. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for $2.9 million, with the proceeds going to charity. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise, plans to open a digital art gallery exhibiting NFTs.
It must be said that we have seen far too many similar NFTs lately, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish what will have historical relevance or not. We are likely still in the typical crypto euphoria that we’ve all gotten used to for some time now, but there are certainly some projects that try to take digital art to the next level, trying to do something unique.
For example, a project that was launched very recently tries to combine art, speculation, and psychology in a single digital work.
It was created by a group of anonymous crypto artists called We Don’t Do Art who have listed a canvas for sale composed of 17,600 pixels in which each pixel is an independent NFT.
In this case, the uniqueness of the project lies in the fact that it is not the single NFT that is the work of art, but, as they say, the resulting emergent property: that is, the painting as a whole.
In fact, by buying a pixel, not only would you own part of the digital work itself, but you also automatically become the artist of the work since you can change the color of your pixel, thus influencing the work as a whole. We can certainly say that, in this case, trying to recreate a similar dynamic in traditional art is much more difficult, perhaps practically impossible.
So “Bubble or Revolution?”
The answer, as always, will be given by the only judge who never fails: time.
