Last week, Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist better known as Beeple, sold his piece “Everydays – the first 5000 days” at auction for more than $ 69 million. That dizzying amount made him the third best-selling, living artist ever, just behind Jeff Koons and David Hockney.
The sale was remarkable for several reasons, but the most important was the fact that the art, a collage of 5,000 smaller digital works of art, exists only in the digital space. Moreover, the buyer, known only as MetaKovan, did not receive a physical copy of the piece. Instead, they received a media file, hundreds of megabytes in size, and an NFT – or non-fungible token -, a blockchain-backed contract, proving that they owned the original digital copy.
There was enough turn around to get around. Is there real value in NFTs, or was it simply the result of a market bubble? Do NFTs pose an existential ecological threat? Was the piece itself good?
It depends on who you ask – everyone seems to have an opinion on this young market.
The Beeple lineup sold for $ 69.3 million. (Christie’s / TNS)
Christie’s / TNSBut away from all the internet-breaking news, artists and designers from the Bay Area – many of whom worked in the digital drawing space for months or years before ‘NFT’ became a small household concept – seemed like the latest media. hype cycle (even if it increases the cost of hitting NFTs). Instead, they were focused on what they saw as a new future in form, both financially and artistically. As a San Francisco artist, Göksu Ilgaz Koçakcıgil (aka @skywaterr), states it, “When I realized that I could make money with my own digital art, I was completely thinking. I looked like my life was going to change. ”
Corbin Bell, of @PixelActivist, moved to San Francisco two years ago. He felt for a long time that he did not intend to get a single design work. “I literally never got an interview in two years,” he said. He ends up managing Postmates and Caviar to make rent. Then, last summer, he started hearing about NFT technology. He decided to try to forge his own work.
It took months of trial and error, but on February 6, he finally made his first sale. The piece ‘Enter the Chain’, a running video of a spiral parking lot with an MC Escher-like feel, went for .385 Ether, the currency backed by the Ethereum blockchain – something like $ 640 at the time. It was the first time he had sold a piece of his art. Since then, he has sold three other pieces. Two of them went for one Ethereum each – about $ 1,500 per doll.
“Enter the Chain” by PixelActivist
Thanks to Corbin Bell‘It’s a way to do what you really love. There is no compromise, ‘says Bell. In a short time, NFTs have become a path to financial stability for him and other artists he knows. “It just opened a way for the mismatches, as skinny as it sounds.”
When Bell talks about a new way of reporting, he is not just talking money. There is also a sense that this new technology can support communities. Danny Jones, a self-taught San Francisco graphic designer who also joins Yasly, sold his first NFT, ‘Super Wild’, on February 18, a day after listing it, for 1.99 Ether (or about $ 3,900 at the time) . The piece is a soothing, looping video of flowers frozen in a translucent rainbow block that spins forever.
Jones took the and other money he made from NFT sales and reinvested it in other artists. ‘I just bought an NFT from my friend … I won (their) auction and had to support her tangibly. Money is definitely not the only motivator in this for me. ”
Non-fungible signs are not strict; they have been around for about six years in one form or another.
They are backed by the same kind of blockchain technology that supports different cryptocurrencies. In this case, Ethereum is the currency of choice. But unlike individual Ether, which are interchangeable with each other, NFTs are unique in their kind. In essence, artists can go to a fair, auction their artwork as an NFT ‘coin’ and auction it off. (Sometimes it also contains a physical copy on sale.) Right now, most NFTs rely on visual arts, but it’s just as possible to make certificates for digital trading cards, music albums, video games, and even experiences. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, then signed and sold the first tweet he ever tweeted.
After gradually increasing last year – Beeple’s first auction for $ 6,666.66 – the technology transferred to the mainstream last month. It was then that celebrity culture came into play. Musician Grimes has sold $ 6 million worth of NFTs. The classic Nyan Cat meme – a cat with a poptart body, powered by the rainbow outlet – sells for just under $ 600,000.
Both Bell and Jones listed their pieces on Foundation, an NFT presentation site popular only with Bay Area artists. Website CEO Kayvon Tehranian says the foundation was launched with 50 artists in February, after a year of close experimentation with NFTs, and now lists thousands of artists. “I can give you a number, and the number will be out of date tomorrow.”
Mixed media artist Göksu Ilgaz Koçakcigill, also known as @skywaterr, looks through a stack of her work in her studio on Friday, March 12, 2021 in San Francisco, California.
Lea Suzuki / The ChronicleThe current surge in attention, Tehranian says, is undoubtedly part of the usual internet hype cycle, but that does not mean that NFTs are a short-lived trend. “You have artists who are completely reorienting their practices around this technology.” He describes NFTs as a ‘new layer’ on the Internet, which has the potential to fundamentally change the way things work. “People have trouble seeing it because … exponential growth is very difficult to understand.”
Barry Threw, executive director of Gray Area, the Mission District’s art and technology space, spoke in similar terms about the transformation potential of the blockchain. ‘We are in the CompuServe era of these things. Just like we haven’t even gone to AOL or MySpace, or, even Facebook, in terms of gender lines, about how technologies are evolving. ”
At the moment, however, Threw describes it in simple terms: ‘It’s an asset bubble, it’s a hype bubble and it offers the opportunity for artists to have a little traction. … (But) it’s a market that is just as interested in buying memes as it is in buying art. ‘
Heritage art institutions also keep an eye on the form. Representatives from both YBCA and the Fine Art Museums said they do not plan to start collecting NFTs, but are watching artists use the space.
A pulsating pink abstraction in an endless loop is quickly sold.
Thanks to Göksu Ilgaz Koçakcigil /Three years ago, while pursuing a degree in visual communication design in the state of San Francisco, Koçakcıgil looked around and ‘saw all this amazing digital work that no one pays for’ and suggested that one day she’s a digital art gallery, a true physical place with works of art on display.
Until recently, it felt more like a dream. She had files full of digital artwork that she “did not think anyone cared about”. Then, in November, she began joining crypto-art communities and finding out about NFTs, a paradigm-shifting discovery.
In January, she did her first drop of NFT-backed work, and earlier this month she unveiled a new collection about the foundation she calls ‘BLÖBS’. To create each piece, she uses a mix of physical and digital techniques and works with artificial intelligence. “BLÖB No1” is a pulsating pink abstraction that moves in an endless loop against a black screen.
It was sold on March 6 for 0.169 Ether – or about $ 310.
Ryan Kost is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @RyanKost