[ad_1]
In the letter
- Now every SNL viewer knows what an NFT is.
- NFTs are a verifiable digital rarity… Handy for artists!
- The craze for symbolized digital art is only growing.
Saturday Night Live did a skit on non-fungible tokens last night, proving that the latest craze for digital art and collectibles has indeed entered the pantheon of pop culture.
The sketch begins with a sunny photo of a prestigious building on an American campus. Cut to a classroom where US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (not really) finishes speaking to a class of bored economics students and opens the floor for questions. A hand goes up. He’s a student dressed as Batman’s sidekick, Robin. A beat falls, sounding strangely like Eminem’s “Without Me”.
“Now what a mess NFT?! Robin raps, played by SNL cast member Pete Davidson. Then, three minutes of NFT-related gags ensue. “Everyone is do like GronkowskiDavidson raps, referring to the $ 1.6 million digital collectible card sale hit by the tight end of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
At one point, a pseudo-Morpheus (yes, of The matrix) jump on the beat and start describing some hilarious and utterly believable NFTs. But don’t take our word for it. You can watch the video now on YouTube.
What the hell is an NFT?
There have been decent digital distribution models in the arts for some time. Streaming giants like Netflix and its competitors cover the film industry, Spotify and Apple Music are fighting tooth and nail for your money in the music industry, and Kindle occupies the relatively undisputed space of digital literature. But how did visual art, something that is traditionally not a mass product, navigate the new digital market?
This is not the case … Well, until the advent of NFTs. The value of art comes from its non-fungibility. You can exchange a copy of a music album for another copy of that music album. Music albums are therefore fungible. But you cannot exchange the Mona Lisa for another copy. If you did, someone would surely get ripped off.
Enter the NFTs. Thanks to Ethereum blockchain, which allows the drafting of smart contracts, anyone can symbolize their work of art and make its sale non-fungible. Everything is articulated around blockchain distributed ledger system, which allows artists to specify the scarcity of their work in token terms, to be securely logged in Ethereum secure cryptographic register.
If Da Vinci were alive today, he would no doubt be eager to explore the NFT craze.
Decrypt recommended…
We’ve been covering NFTs for a long time here on Decrypt. There is a new generation of digital artists who operate almost exclusively in this digital economy, but it’s a strange economy.
The SNL sketch satirizes a craze where anything can be symbolized, including, according to Chris Redd’s Morpheus: “GIFs of Ron Funches eating Lunchables. Or pictures of Colin Jost’s face, very punchy.” The world of NFT looks a lot like this. $ 2.9 million from sale.
But right now there are some truly cutting edge artists who are creating digital assets. Digital artist Beeple, real name Mike Winkelmann, created an image every day for 5,000 days and sold the token collection as EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5,000 DAYS. At historic auction for NFTs and Christie’s auction house, EVERYDAYS sold to NFT Metakovan collector for $ 69.3 million.
And not far behind Beeple are some exciting new artists, foremost among them is Seattle artist FEWOCiOUS, 18, who made $ 370,000 on their birthday this year at the NFT Nifty Gateway auction house.
There’s also Los Angeles artist Refik Anadol, who wowed audiences around the world with his thrilling paintings of machine-generated data. In an interview with Decrypt, he swore to tokenize each future coin working as NFT.
So there you have it: NFTs are really taking off. And it’s a confusing, often overwhelming world of heroes and anti-heroes… But then, has art ever been different?
[ad_2]
Source link