Digital art in a digital world – a glimpse into the future

NFT – it’s an abbreviation that’s been on everyone’s lips recently. The digital art market has quickly caught up with its analog counterpart, and prices for NFTs have shot through the roof. Famous musicians on social media have traded out their profile pictures, substituting them with NFTs by the hottest artists. Take the «CryptoPunks», for example: depending on is scarcity, the price of one of their pixelated images can fetch prices into the millions. If you’ve got an NFT like that on display, it can only mean one thing: you’re a player in the premiere leagues. Madonna prefers appearing as her own avatar – one that’s a younger version of herself – when she pops up on our screens. Plenty of analog goods have their digital counterparts in the Metaverse. That’s the new digital parallel universe created by the company formerly known as Facebook, which now calls itself «Meta» and sees its future in that same Metaverse. Larger luxury goods dealers are starting to collaborate with digital artists to create digital goods that will appear in the Metaverse. Developments in the field are moving at breakneck speed, and are dizzyingly exciting. If you act fast now, you, too, can expand your horizons to include a new world.

NFT and Blockchain

NFT is short for «Non Fungible Token», and an NFT is a nonreplaceable digitally-produced object. Ownership of a work of digital artwork can be proven by using an NFT. To do so, a unique digital certificate belonging to a unique digital work is saved in a secure database. That database is called Blockchain, and it’s a cryptographically secured series (or chain) of individual blocks. I don’t have the faintest idea what that means on a technical level. But on a practical level, it means that Blockchain isn’t susceptible to manipulation, which in turn means it’s secure. There are a variety of different Blockchains; the Ethereum Blockchain is one of the more popular ones. NFTs aren’t only used for digital artwork: you’ll see them used for trading cards, game content, GIFs, music, videos, or tickets for digital events, and much more. The Swiss Post even issued «Swiss Crypto Stamps» in November.

Minting

When a digital file is converted into an NFT and uploaded to Blockchain, it’s called minting (you might hear it called «Prägung» if you’re speaking German). Minting is the process of converting a file into a digital asset that can be traded or purchased directly on a digital marketplace. This process is simple and requires no technical knowledge. During the minting process, the creator of the work can set royalties that earn them commissions when their work is resold and traded. This is mostly done in cryptocurrency, on Ethereum the internal currency is called Ether (ETH). To upload, buy, or sell a digital work of art on Ethereum, you need a digital wallet to hold your cryptocurrency. The most common of those is Metamask.

Drop

When an NFT project, collection, or single work is put on the market by the creator, it’s called a «drop». From that moment on, that project, collection, or single work can be purchased. Drops can be done by one or more artists at the same time, selling at a fixed price or through an auction process. The drops are announced on social media sites like Twitter, or on websites, in newsletters, or in insider-only circles, and are comparable to a vernissage.

Metaverse

The Metaverse is the digital world of the future. You use an avatar to move around in it, and while you’re there you can visit galleries, go shopping in stores, attend parties, events, and concerts, meet in groups, hold work meetings, buy land, or open up your own store – there are countless ways to be in the Metaverse. No personal data is taken from you, and you can appear as the individual you want to be in the Metaverse – which means your avatar could be a younger version of yourself or a made-up figure. To fully immerse yourself in the Metaverse you’ll need VR glasses. When you put them on, you can no longer hear or see your surroundings, leaving your senses perfectly deceived.

Title picture: CryptoPunks is one of the first NFT art projects and has heavily influenced the NFT art market. https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks