Many people have begun to call 2021 "NFT first year".
A few days ago, "NFT" officially became the vocabulary of the year for Collins Dictionary in 2021. According to Collins Dictionary, the use of "NFT" has increased by 11,000% in the past year, thus defeating a series of candidate words including "double-vaxxed", "hybrid working", "cheugy", and "metaverse", and topped the list.
Collins Dictionary defines NFT (the abbreviation of Non-fungible Token) as "the unique digital certificate registered in the blockchain, used to record ownership of assets such as artworks or collectibles." As a noun, the term describes "assets that record ownership through non-fungible tokens".
In the world of NFT, "everything can be tokenized", and these tokens can often be sold at jaw-dropping high prices. A Brooklyn film director sold his fart audio for $85. In March this year, American artist Mike Winkelmann ("Beeple") even sold his NFT at a high price of $69.3 million, far exceeding Monet 's " Water Lily ". The NFT fire has also been burned from abroad to China. According to Huxiu APP statistics, since June this year, seven Internet giants have successively entered NFT, and a new industry ecosystem is quietly forming.
As the price of NFTs rises step by step, many people fantasize about achieving financial freedom overnight by buying and selling NFTs. Many domestic articles have explained the risks that capital speculation behind NFTs may bring. This issue of "reading magazines" has a different perspective, combined with relevant discussions at home and abroad, and see what changes the birth of NFT has brought to art and artistic creation? What other prospects can be expected or hidden worries worth watching for the NFT's popularity?
Beeple" sold at a high price of approximately RMB 451 million, "Every Day: First 5,000 Days", NFT (jpg), 21069 x 21069 pixels, made on February 16, 2021, unique. This work is a giant collage work created over 5,000 days. Source: Christie's official website. What is
NFT?
A minimalist popular science
Since NFT became popular, quite a lot of professional or amateur people have tried to explain it. There are two keywords in almost all explanations: one is the full name of NFT (Non-Fungible) Token: non-fungible token), the other is blockchain technology , which NFT relies on. However, most people are not familiar with these two concepts and do not understand the relationship between them.
, we might as well start with "blockchain". In a common and popular way, blockchain is a decentralized "big book". Taking enterprises as an example, in the familiar enterprise operation model, each enterprise has its own accounting department. Every transaction will be recorded here. This is a "centralized" accounting model, and the accounting department acts as the "center" that all exchanges must go through. And " blockchain " means that this effect is achieved through technical means: first, everyone has an account book, which is visible to others. When conducting a transaction, the information of each transaction - the time of use of funds, the user, the amount of use, etc. will be recorded, and a specific sequence number will be generated as a mark. When a transaction reaches a certain amount, the transaction information will be packaged into " block " to broadcast to everyone, and stored after people check it, and enter their respective books. Therefore, the blockchain can fully ensure that the data is not tampered with, and thus provides a decentralized, reliable and low-cost cooperation mechanism.
value 59 NFT work Nyan Cat (original author: Chris Torres).
is based on blockchain, and people can use virtual currency - the well-known "bitcoin" and " ether " to trade. These virtual currencies are all "homogeneous tokens": in other words, Bitcoin can be swapped and there is no qualitative difference. In addition to homogeneous tokens, blockchain can also support the transaction of "non-homogeneous tokens".The difference between non-fungible tokens and virtual currencies is that the former cannot be interchanged. But this does not affect people's transactions of non-fungible tokens based on blockchain: when such transactions occur, transaction information will also be packaged as "blocks" and appear on the blockchain, forming a "visible" mark to all users.
"Vista Look at the World" once explained "non-fungible token" in an article (""Buy a WeChat avatar for $10 million", what is NFT?") in a popular way, as the "crab buckle" of Yangcheng Lake hairy crab . Each "crab buckle" has its own unique number, marking the "authentic" identity of this hairy crab "derived from Yangcheng Lake ". Each crab buckle is "non-homogeneous" because it has a unique number and cannot be interchanged with each other. The purpose of blockchain is that when you buy a crab with a crab buckle, the information of the transaction will be recorded in detail and entered into the "book" of all users. In this way, everyone will know that you bought the hairy crab with this crab buckle.
It should be noted that NFT is not a work of art or the physical object itself, just like the "crab buckle" is not a hairy crab itself. NFT is just a set of “metadata” used to mark ownership of artworks or physical objects. Because of this, almost anything can be calibrated by NFT, and thus there are thousands of strange products on the NFT market: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (Jack Dorsey) "cast" his first tweet on Twitter as an NFT, and then sold it for $2.91 million. Some people even "marked" a drop of their blood with NFT. Through this "digital mark", some things that seemed completely impossible to be commodified in the past can be turned into commodities and entered the market for a price.
social platform Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey auctioned his first tweet on the social platform, which ended up selling for more than $2.91 million. The content of this message is: I just set up my Twitter. Doxi announced that the proceeds from the auction will be donated to charities.
NFT Attraction: How does
non-fungible tokens sweep into the cultural field?
However, the above explanation may deepen people's confusion. Even if NFT establishes the ownership of the buyer, what is the significance of this " right confirmation "? When buying hairy crabs, people can at least enjoy the deliciousness of hairy crabs, but buying a "melo picture" does not rule out the possibility of copying and using it by others. At the same time, many works of art are not just minted as "one" NFT token, in other words, it can have multiple buyers. In this case, why can NFT still sweep into fields such as culture and art?
In a comment from the New York Times , author Jason Farago pointed out that NFT provides something that it has always lacked in the field of digital art: limited quantity. As early as "Art in the Age of Mechanical Replication", Benjamin pointed out that art works are losing the difference between "authentic works" and "replicas". We can distinguish between "authentic works" and "copy" when talking about Van Gogh's works, but we cannot talk about which is more "real" movies from theaters and movies downloaded on the network disk. However, the emergence of NFT is complicating things. It has put a "true" mark on digital art that could have been homogeneously disseminated, and thus digital art can also become the object of collection, investment and even speculation.
" Coca-Cola " souvenir sold on the NFT platform. Source: The Guardian.
Compared with transactions that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, the most common ones in the NFT market are still "small" transactions of hundreds or thousands of dollars. Through this transaction, buyers try to obtain some "unique" exclusive item and use it to satisfy their "collection complex". The life column of " Guardian " points out that the field of NFT is unprecedentedly vast - images, videos, music, text, animations, tweets, and even souvenirs launched by sports teams and commercial brands.Compared to the items produced by mechanical replicas that can be purchased everywhere, NFTs are marked with the imprint of "originality" and "uniqueness" and are therefore different. Some people compare it to books signed by the author or limited edition memorials officially released.
is precisely in order to adapt to this trend. In September this year, British Museum also cooperated with the platform LaCollection to mint more than 200 Katsushika Hokusai works into NFT tokens that are allowed to be purchased online. In the British Museum's view, art collections were often regarded as "elite games" for a few people in the past, and this move helped make it more "down-to-earth" and explore more potential art collectors. Jean-Sébastien Beaucamps, co-founder and CEO of LaCollection, said: "It is an honor to work with the British Museum. We hope that LaCollection will attract new audiences and allow those who have never visited the British Museum or have been exposed to its vast collection to appreciate the charm of museum art; and provide people with the opportunity to appreciate its collection in new and exciting ways."
Katsushika Hokusai's work will be cast as NFT. Source: The Guardian.
And for producers of cultural works, NFT is equally exciting. On the one hand, through NFT, they are more likely to profit from their creations. For example, Zoe Ross, the "protagonist" of the meme picture "Disaster Girl", said that the circulation and spread of memes have had an impact on her life and are far beyond her control. Although NFT will not prevent the further circulation of the work, it is also a rare "remedy" in its opinion, which means that she has obtained income and thus gained a certain degree of "control" of this meme.
Some domestic musicians are launching NFT records.
On the other hand, NFT is also promoting the "decentralization" trend in the field of cultural production. The main attraction of NFT to literary writing is its decentralized characteristics. (See Nelson Mandela 's grandson will auction novels in NFT form, and literature is "decentralized"?) Through NFT, authors can publish their works at any time and establish direct relationships with buyers and readers without any intermediate links. Using NFT, writers may have unexpected gains. For example, Black Butler's novel "Decade" has never been found, but after he minted his work as an NFT, some netizens directly purchased the novel at the price of 5 Ether.
Therefore, NFT's popularity is not entirely unreasonable. On the contrary, the logic behind it is very simple: on the one hand, it can allow ordinary people to access the "collection" field in a low-threshold and low-cost way; on the other hand, it can bring more production profits to producers in the cultural field. As the New Yorker quotes an artist, “If through NFT transactions, my friends can afford rent, support themselves and their families, and get some basic medical insurance, then I fully support NFT.”
“Meme”: Disaster Girl. In online communication, many people like to use "memes" (memes, memes). These pictures can express what users think with words. However, with the popularity of NFTs since 2021, many memes have been minted as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) - which means they can be occupied. This is similar to everyone who can use the pictures of " Mona Lisa ", but if someone buys "Mona Lisa", he has a unique "original", while others use "copy" or "replica". For meme, there is no difference between "original" and "copy", but with the introduction of NFT, its buyers can claim to own ownership of "original". According to the Guardian, in June this year, NFT auction website Zora sold "Doge" for £2.8 million, while another famous meme "Dao Girl" was also "cast" by the protagonist Zoë Roth in the photo and sold it for £3.41 million. After that, while others can still use these meme pictures, NFT buyers really "own" them.The future of
NFT:
Swing between "art" and "assets"
Voices of virtual currency tend to see NFT as a liberating force to achieve "decentralization" of art. There is no "gatekeeper" in the world of blockchain, and works of art are no longer monopolized by a few elites. But in fact, the possible prospects facing NFTs are far more complicated than this optimistic idea. Even though NFT's popularity in the field of culture and art has its own reasons, it also forces us to take the question seriously:
"Can we make an effective distinction between assets and art?"
commentators have pointed out that driven by speculative logic, the NFT market seems to be replicating the "level" and "threshold" in the art market in the real world: many artists are producing digital tokens, but only a few successful people, and most of their works are rarely interested in it. These successful people will have greater reputation, which makes their works worthy of being continuously "hyped". Therefore, the logic of "winner take all" still applies. If NFT breaks the elitism and "branch system" in artistic appreciation, then it is likely to be replaced by the logic of finance and speculation. In fact, even "Beeple", who made profits in NFT trading, admitted that he regarded buyers as "investors, not collectors." Therefore, the logic of investment will surely establish a "division" in the "decentralized" NFT market again, making it a new field for the mutual conversion of cultural capital and economic capital.
In the NFT market, the artistic attributes and capital value of cultural products are entangled with each other and cannot be clarified in a simple way. More importantly, whether NFT is regarded as an asset or a work of art, its future development also faces a series of hidden concerns.
NFT is for sale on the Open Sea platform. Source: The Guardian.
As an asset, the challenge facing NFT is whether it can fully protect the rights and interests of creators and buyers under the existing conditions. According to the Guardian, in September this year, a collector bought a fake NFT for £244,000, an incident suggesting there are still loopholes in the NFT transaction. Many artists say that their works are made into NFT tokens and sold without their knowledge; this is because on some platforms, people can easily "label" cultural products that are not created by themselves as their works.
At the same time, treating purchasing NFT as "investment" naturally means facing investment risks : " Nanfeng Window " reported: "On August 31, the NFT concept swept US stock . At its peak, the NFT trading volume reached US$397 million. After only 10 days, the NFT trading volume fell to US$97.57 million, and the transaction volume fell by 75%. "In this case, many people bought NFT avatars and ended up losing all their money.
As a work of art, a considerable number of commentators believe that speculative behaviors in NFT transactions do not conform to the logic of artistic creation itself. Of course, when making this judgment, they did not blame the fundamental cause of speculation on NFT, but pointed out that artistic speculation has a long history in reality. Jason Farrago, a commentator of the New York Times, believes: "For decades, the price of art has been speculative. The incredibly high prices that appear in the NFT market are just a continuation of reality in the digital world."
But the real problem is that NFT seems to have formed a "conspiracy" relationship with the cultural industry. As early as the 20th century, the Frankfurt School Scholar Theodore Adorno believed that the cultural industry is good at producing cultural products with "pseudo-personalization" characteristics in the form of assembly lines. These products seem to have their own characteristics and can satisfy people's different personalities, but in fact they are all kitsch-made and mass-produced cultural commodities in an industrialized manner. NFT can label these products as "unique", which makes the "pseudo-personalization" of the cultural industry more "realistic" and has a greater appeal to "buyers".
"Cultural Industry" is a concept proposed by Frankfurt School scholars Theodore Adorno and Max Hawkheim, etc., to criticize the commodification and standardization of popular culture under capitalist society . It first appeared in the book "Dialectics of Enlightenment".
Finally, the emergence of NFT may also change the value system and ethical norms of the digital world. When the Internet was just released, many scholars regarded "sharing" and "linking" as the "ethical new trend" brought by the Internet: at the beginning of the development of the Internet, for example, in the Internet ecology of the "blog era", people spontaneously and freely contributed their high-quality content and shared it with others. For example, Tiziana Tranova believes that Internet users are willing to conduct free and voluntary online behavior and provide "free labor". But NFTs incorporate things that were originally unable to be commodified, or things that people did not think of incorporating them into the commodity structure. Through NFT, the commodity structure has achieved its own diffusion and reproduction. This is indeed a victory of "ownership", but its long-term impact on Internet ethics is still unknown.
Tiziana Terranova, Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age, Pluto Press, 2004.
At present, what NFT leaves people with shock is also a series of questions that need to be considered. The Guardian's summary of these questions is concluded:
"Perhaps the most important legacy left by NFT is that it forces us to ask about the nature of art and think about what we want from art: how should we trade and view art? Who is qualified to give art worthy? ...The biggest question is: Can we divide a meaningful difference between art and assets? The answer may not always be a yes-but if we want art to be more than just a tool to beautify finance and promote goods, then this may be an ideal worth trying."
References:
[1]Collector buysfake Banksy NFT for £244,000:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/01/collector-buys-fake-banksy-nft-for-244000
[2] Why You Need to Pay Attention to NFTs: https://guardian.ng/life/why-you-need-to-pay-attention-to-nfts/
[3] NFTs are helping artists solve a vital problem: who owns digital artwork?
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/apr/03/non-fungible-tokens-digital-art-artists
[4] NFTs and me: meet the people trying to sell their memes for millions:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/23/nfts-and-me-meet-the-people-trying-to-sell-their-memes-for-millions
[5] British Museum enters world of NFTs with digital Hokusai postcards:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/24/british-museum-nfts-digital-hokusai-postcards-lacollection
[6]Beeple Has Won. Here’s What We’ve Lost:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/arts/design/beeple-nonfungible-nft-review.html
[7] How Beeple Crashed the Art World: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-beeple-crashed-the-art-world
[8] "Buy a WeChat avatar for $10 million", what is NFT? "Vista Look at the World" official account, September 14, 2021: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/m6eC07VnxTh8HMCSPfkg4g
[9] Nelson Mandela's grandson will auction novels in NFT form, and literature is "decentralized"? "Beijing News Book Review Weekly" official account, August 12, 2021: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/18DrqdNQkoKj2ceXUGE0_g
Author | Xie Tingyu
Edited by | Li Yongbo Qingqingzi
Proofreading | Weizhuo
