Art has a couple of sticky points that allows it to be used as storage of value:
* It is impossible to copy and produce second original
* It is recognizable by trained and common people alike, it is useful a symbol of status
* New art inherits some of artist's prestige; say a newly discovered Picasso painting will be recognized as valuable just because it's a Picasso
* It is very difficult to produce enmasse - a computer-generated drawing in the style of Picasso will not be valued as an original Picasso
* Wealthy people agree it's a storage of value - when somebody needs liquidity they can be assured that somebody will buy their unique piece.
Do NFTs touch all of these points? 1, yes. 2. they're trying to build the fame of NFTs now. 3. they're trying to build it now, very unlikely it will succeed. 4. Are some NFTs esthetically pleasing ? I would guess this is why it's needed to be tied to an artwork. 5. Unlikely.
Do you understand art in general? It is valuable because there are people that believe it is valuable. The NFT advancement is that it proves some sort of proof of ownership. Yes, it can be copied, but someone can also take a picture of a famous painting, or buy a cheap print. But they can't claim ownership. Only one person can do that, and people attribute value to that.
Also there are a lot of crypto-millionaires that believe this is the future. So that's why they are going for large sums so soon. I am not one, but I do think they are right.
Physical artworks have cultural as well as financial value, as well as intrinsic rarity. There's a unique physical object. At the high end it's likely to be famous and instantly recognisable.
If you buy it you get full property rights. You can hide it, show it, sell images of it, or burn it. It's yours in an absolute sense, and you can do whatever you like with it.
NFTs sell the right to speculate. The works themselves are not rare or unusual, and NFT owners don't own the work itself. They can't sell copy/use rights in the way a stock photo or clipart library does.
All they have is a bet their NFT can be sold to someone else at a profit.
So while real art is often used for tax dodges, money laundering, and speculation, the artworks are not usually created for those ends. Nor are other collectibles.
NFTs are created solely for speculation. They have no other purpose. The art itself is a thin and not very convincing cover story.
I won't attempt to make a "realist" argument for the value of art, but I'll point something important out: as the owner of a "valuable" piece of physical art, you own a product of original physical labor. When you look at the pigments on the canvas, you're looking at the product of an artist physically transferring materials onto the medium. That itself is a rarity: people who (for whatever reason) value that artist's work realize that the artist can only perform that exact labor once.
It's difficult to say the same for NFTs: it's not clear where the original is, or why it should be emotionally/aesthetically rewarding to look at its digital attestation. I didn't frame the certificate of authenticity that came with the rug in my living room, after all.
> The reason, I claim, is that the significant thing we humans value when we value art is the expression of an original act of creation, comprised by individual acts of conception, production, and realization accomplished by some ingenious mind.
I completely agree with this, and I think the experiment with NFTs is that perhaps a significant portion of humans will come to consider an NFT issued by an artist as an expression of the the original act of creation of a work, particularly for works that are not inherently instantiated in a unique physical object the way a painting is. It really is that simple: just like monetary valuations of famous paintings, there's no "inherent" correct answer to whether a particular NFT "counts" as a unique representation of the original act of creation of a work. It's just up to people. Remember, even copies of physical works (like lithographs) can command high valuations based on their perceived originality, despite everyone agreeing that they are copies.
Your explanation only makes sense if you base the value of the art on the experience of viewing it, or the intrinsic value.
People like owning objects that have a history or story about them, like a ring worn by their great great grandmother, a medal earned by their grandfather for fighting in a war, or something their child made for them. These things have little to no intrinsic value, yet people can regard them as priceless because of the history surrounding the object.
The same can be true of paintings and other works of art. It's one thing to hang a thing on your wall that a world-famous master created and an entirely different thing for a copy made by a low-wage worker in Asia. Physically they could be identical but the history is different.
To get to NFTs specifically, I don't think an NFT as currently implemented captures this concept.
I talked to a guy a few weeks ago. He needed help with his art related NFT project. Basically he was looking for a CTO because he had no idea whether his developers were doing a good job (and, I'd also add, what he built wasn't necessarily what he needed to build).
I have a pretty good understanding of block chain technologies but didn't hear about NFTs before, so like you, I started to challenge his ideas. Partly to understand what he was building. Because at first I tried to find real and practical applications for the platform that somehow connect to physical things, works of art.
But what he said was pretty interesting. The guy had a background in art management and, I think, trade. He said that art collection has always been about being able to say that you have the original piece. And that it's not rational anyway, not even for physical works of art, like paintings. It's not that you like the actual picture on the actual canvas so much that you want to buy it for say $1M and if you just had a copy you'd notice the difference and that wouldn't give you as much pleasure. It's simply about having the original. And also collecting related originals.
Now it's easy to trace it back to real, actual scarcity, where indeed there weren't many e.g. paintings (or books, etc.) and there was a big difference between the paintings of different artists (both in style and quality) and you had no way of looking at these other than having the originals probably.
I guess the big question here is whether this phenomenon is strong enough on its own to transfer to purely digital assets or whether this is really rooted and tied to that original scarcity that we kept changing the story around. (I.e. while it's not about being able to enjoy and look at the piece anymore, now it's tied to the knowledge that that specific piece of canvas was painted on by that specific very talented guy X hundred years ago, and he was standing in front, etc.)
One hint might be those 'limited edition' sport cards that some people seem to collect, as well as 'limited edition' e.g. CD or vinyl albums from the past millenium. (I never understood those, but I had a friend who did get a very obvious joy out of being able to buy those. For me, these were always just delivery mediums and I only cared about the music.)
Honestly, I have no idea, but that call was definitely interesting.
Think of the NFT not so much as the art itself but as the artist's signature on the art.
Much as a widely reproduced celebrity photograph can go from essentially valueless to thousands of dollars with the right signature, so too can digital art with the right digital signature.
I think the majority of the value in art nfts will be derived from being part of the provenance, or being part of the history of the beginning of 'owning' digital art, much like owning a famous painting. By extension it could be applied to digital culture, for example the tiktok guy riding his skateboard is selling that meme as an nft. So if collectors are good (and lucky), they are basically able to buy their way into a niche of history by being associated with works that represent periods of cultural significance.
Sure that may seem stupid to most people, but most people don't even get why regular art is significant or can be very expensive. Personally I would attribute it to my lack of understanding rather than dismiss it outright.
I answered a similar question here[1]. The economic value of art has historically been tied to the scarcity of access to its media. NFT presents an alternative paradigm that separates the signature (artist-signed token) from the artistic media (image, GIF, conceptual art project, etc), allowing the former to remain scarce & uniquely transferable while the latter remains abundant & widely accessible.
Before I get into my comment, I do want to thank you and note that you're trying to be helpful here. I just don't think you've hit the mark.
Regarding the analogy of NFTs to original art, that analogy breaks down almost immediately upon examination. You would compare the NFT to a certificate of ownership of a genuine original versus just copying the JPEG being like a reproduction. The thing is, a genuine original, physical artwork can't be exactly copied and distributed to practically the entire world, over and over again, just by issuing a command inside a computer.
I get that an original Picasso is valuable just because it's the only one, and Picasso was a well known and respected artist. I can certainly hang a print or other copy of one of his works on my wall, but, it won't be worth millions of dollars like an original would be.
I don't actually have any Picasso reproductions hanging on my wall, but I do own some original artwork, much by no-names, but some by well respected, listed artists [0]. I own these pieces because I have receipts of purchase, but, also, possession being metaphorically 9/10 of the law, because I physically have them in my possession. Because they're physical objects, me having them means nobody else can have them at the same time. Not so with the JPEG.
In this scenario, I believe the NFT actually corresponds to my purchase receipts. After all, if someone sent the police to my apartment and claimed my artworks didn't actually belong to me, that's how I'd prove it. And, that seems to be what an NFT is trying to establish: that the holder of the token in some sense owns something essential about the thing it's referencing.
Now, maybe I have this all wrong, and the NFT actually corresponds to a certificate of ownership of some kind of rights attached to the artwork. For instance, maybe the NFT is essentially a grant of the right of duplication. To which I say: well, okay... I guess if I don't hold the NFT, I can't duplicate the entirety of the work you own, because the NFT corresponds to ownership of something inherent to the work that can only initially be transferred by the creator of the work under the world's current copyright framework.
But, again, I can just copy the bits of the JPEG and do whatever with it. I can take the images and remix them into a mosaic image of a hand right clicking a mouse [1] if I want. But, I can't claim that the resulting work is made up of 10,000 NFTs by whatever artist; because I don't hold the NFTs themselves, I don't hold that right. So, it's not like I "own a JPEG," but, I own a right associated with the JPEG, which is the right to say "I own this NFT associated with this JPEG image," and I can sell or transfer that right.
That all to me seems like a distinction without a difference, given that the JPEG itself is, upon creation, a copyrighted work, and the original creator can sell or transfer that right without the associated crypto baggage.
TL;DR: ¯\_(?)\_/¯
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[0]: For those not familiar with the term, a "listed artist" is just an artist who has a large enough number of public auction records that those records can be used as a basis for valuing / appraising their work.
I feel like you're trying to find a more concrete reason than is necessary - the fact that it is unique can be valuable on its own. I can go buy a reproduction Picasso that looks identical to the original and from an art standpoint it's effective equivalent, but it's still worth nothing compared to a "real" one. The fact that the original was painted by Picasso is what provides it so much value, even though who painted a particular piece of art is not a physical part of the art itself. A unique NFT effectively provides value in the same way, it is valuable as long as people care about who/what issued it and thus want to be able to say they own that unique one.
And while it's notable that digital art can be duplicated perfectly and physical art cannot, I don't personally think that matters all that much. People who are buying a Picasso aren't doing so just for the art, they're doing it so they can say they own a Picasso. In the same way you're not buying an NFT for the art itself, you're buying it because it's uniquely identifiable in a way you and others care about.
There is an art market, people (dont ask me why) pay a lot of money for art and 'invest' in it, hoping things will go up. Originals have value - e.g. the original Mona Lisa will always be worth more than any copy, even if that copy was accurate down to the atomic level. Or an original banksy spray painted on a wall is worth lots of money ... if you took the exact same stencil he used, and sprayed your own version, it would be worth much less.
NFTs are an attempt to translate that into digital form. An artist will 'mint' an NFT (I think its based on a hash of the actual digital image/video whatever?) and then that 'minted' NFT is embedded in a blockchain and can be bought and sold. It is perceived to have value because its endorsed by the original artist.
Yes NFTs are weird but so is a lot of the real world art market, decades ago Yves Klein could paint a canvas pure uniform blue and people paid crazy money for that stuff.
We don't value a copy because machines (or humans acting like machines) can do that for dirt cheap without thought or creative breakthrough.
We value the original.
We value the thing that represents that initial spark of something brand new in the world that latched itself in our collective consciousness. We value that because everyone else values it. It gives people a sense of awe to learn that you own an ORIGINAL Picasso. It's a display of wealth and power, but also tickles something deep and almost spiritual in the human mind.
I wouldn't be surprised if we learn to treat original NFTs the same way for digital art. Maybe first we need good ways of displaying our ownership of them.
We can't all be Rockefeller or Carnagies! I get your point - most NFT does not have great prestige and is probably more a question of speculation. My example was more to explain why formal ownership of a piece of art could be valuable even if it didn't mean ownership of any physical object or even ownership of the copyright. For people paying hundreds of millions for a van Gogh, the purpose is probably not the physical access to the thing (I assume it is just in some safe vault anyway, when not on loan to a museum) and it is not because they expect great returns on selling reproductions either. It is just the prestige of ownership and probably the hope that the piece sell for even more in the future.
This is hilariously ludicrous. NFT artwork is valuable for the same reasons that physical artwork is valuable. And that is that there is a consensus that something is the "original" and that that "original" piece of art has some value to people who into art.
Consider this thought experiment. I make a drawing. It's famous. Everyone wants it. It sells at auction for $5 million. I next invent a machine that makes identical copies in identical style. Absolutely indistinguishable from the original. However, the original has a certificate of authenticity that it is indeed the original.
Has the original gone up in value, or down in value?
There is nothing stopping me, or anyone else, from making a copy of an NFT. It's trivially easy, and free. The copies are worth nothing without the COA, which is what the blockchain attempts to provide. I find the whole thing hilariously stupid, but I find that to be true of art collection in general. To each their own on what things you want to collect.
But with a book who gives a shit whether it's the original book or a copy of the original book? No one. No one is going to pay extra to have an authentic copy of a textbook. No one will care.
Art is a really weird market in general. The problem with NFT is that people are buying it as an investment rather than a work of art with its own merit of which appreciation might be one benefit.
There's likely no museum backstop for most NFTs. (By which I mean that rich people buy art, sell it amongst themselves/have inflated art appraisals to raise the price, and donate to museums and claim as a tax writeoff.) See https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-irs2mar02-story.html
NFT as a concept will live - I can see them as placed alongside offline art as an online component that doubles as proof of ownership and lineage, and in the long run could be a major anti-counterfitting strategy.
Sticking specifically to art, NFTs solve a problem with digital art (non fungiblility) and some platforms provide artists with new benifits (tracking ownership, price and commission on sales, etc).
I think it's an especially crypto centric mindset to not see their value but if we take crypto aside do you appreciate works of art, collectable cards or limited edition runs as having value above their fungible copies (copy of art, copy of card, same product but regular edition)?
The thing is, with a painting, the copies can never be the authentic original. Andy Warhol in particular explored this (art as a mechanical process), possibly inadvertently, as well.
With a digital asset there is no such thing as an original. Even the original file isn't original after the OS moves things around or it's loaded into RAM, etc. Does originality matter? Possibly it always was just bragging rights after replication became reasonably accessible and of high quality?
I'm not completely dismissing NFT's conceptually (this is as hyper modern as we've even seen) even though I don't get it entirely (and I DO get crypto). And I'm happy to see a somewhat practical use for crypto and smart contracts here. I feel like we can conceptualize it enough to trick ourselves into something profound.
Art has a couple of sticky points that allows it to be used as storage of value:
* It is impossible to copy and produce second original
* It is recognizable by trained and common people alike, it is useful a symbol of status
* New art inherits some of artist's prestige; say a newly discovered Picasso painting will be recognized as valuable just because it's a Picasso
* It is very difficult to produce enmasse - a computer-generated drawing in the style of Picasso will not be valued as an original Picasso
* Wealthy people agree it's a storage of value - when somebody needs liquidity they can be assured that somebody will buy their unique piece.
Do NFTs touch all of these points? 1, yes. 2. they're trying to build the fame of NFTs now. 3. they're trying to build it now, very unlikely it will succeed. 4. Are some NFTs esthetically pleasing ? I would guess this is why it's needed to be tied to an artwork. 5. Unlikely.
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