We are our own martyrs
The NFT scene as you could call it has developed into many things, many of which are far, far from the collectible cards of Spells of Genesis, far from the network effect and breakthrough of Rarepepe and into things like Avacado tokens or Nike patents. However far we are from the genesis of NFTs we are that much closer to many of the same conversations that have been had over many times. This is a good thing, from this passion and energy that people have for whatever we want to call all of this arises the truth (kek). It gives way to new movement, momentum and often a scorched path. The ashes are the fundament of a new forest, one that will yield new fruit and unknown wisdom. Let us have a look at some of the current discourse, reflect on it and history and what we might learn from it all.
All I wanted to do is NFT
Here is blockchain freak land we tend to forget how „technical“ we see things. Even if we do not consider ourself technical we might think that we are an economics professor and go around preaching how bitcoin is sound money and the legacy system will collapse (oh wait, isn’t it doing that now?) or maybe we daily pray to the #DeFi gods and know that ETH 2.0 will be better than the second coming of Jesus and Proof of Stake will work that is why it is kicked down the road at every difficulty bomb. Were those sentences about art and creativity? Not only are we technical and armchair economic professors we are for the most have very strong opinions, und das ist gut so. Now, let’s take all that technical and economical and mix it with art, which is highly subjective.
My tools are better than yours
Of course, people use tools, of which require technical know-how, and maybe even technical merit or maybe you could discuss which tool has the most technical merit. Hey, what paint brush did you use? Bro, you only used this paintbrush, bro, that artwork is SHIT, because you used the fucking Walmart brush, fucking A do you want to do art with a fucking Walmart brush? All your art is shit because you used that brush! I have invented the best new remix brush, with it you can only paint using my patented colours, but it is the best brush ever made! Hey, you are playing blues? Still today you are playing the fucking blues, you know it is 2020 we have more than your guitar solos and complaining about bad relationships in your lyrics right? Oh, you mean that art and music are good even though they used Walmart paint brushes and are playing the blues!? How? We have advanced so far but people refuse to advance, the tragedy of technical merit and nobody understands! I am going to yell at the art community until they use the correct paint brushes!
Remix of the Remix of the Merited Remix
Mixing the concept of technical merit with artistic merit while sometimes related is a mistake that many make. While often good technical skills or tools help artists and musicians to make nice things, you could have the best tools ever made and make something that looks or sounds like, crap. Of course, we need to have better more liberating tools in the NFT world. Why are we even doing all this blockchain shit if it is not about changing the way we do things, but the technical discussion around smart contracts, tokens, blockchains, block explorers and twitter blocks is at least a somewhat separate discussion to the subjective value of art. I might find the newest flashing gif 3d metaverse thing the best thing since gluten-free bread, but what if it was made with a Kmart laptop running windows and is „only“an ERC721 non customized smart contract (I mean guys come on, get with it why are you using the cookie-cutter contract bro).
selfdestruct" or "function pause() external onlyCLevel whenNotPaused {paused = true;
}” but it is all on chain bro!
NFTs are bearer assets. If they are not bearer assets then they have some kind of string attached and are a hybrid, for example, an automatic royalty payment, freeze or kill function in a smart contract that could limit the future functionality of the NFT (and in many cases violate the terms and conditions of founders sales with no terms and conditions) or partial custody are examples of hybrid forms of bearer assets. Why should anyone care? Because that is one of the main reasons we are using blockchain technology. We could achieve transparent provenance with minimal trust without NFTs being bearer assets, but who wants that? Some might say „no Theo it is all about the provenance“ while you might think that, until we solve the issue of a decentralized identity then no, that is not the breakthrough and due to the nature of blockchains being pseudonymous, no provenance is not the breakthrough characteristic, NFT as a digital bearer asset is.
Got any more of that Betamax?
Do you know what created the Detriot techno sound? Was it the most technologically advanced tool available? Hell no! Was it tools that most people thought were TRASH and threw them out to the pawnshops. A Roland TB 303 was supposed to sound like a Bass Guitar and it can get somewhat close but when it came out, it landed at the pawnshop along with the TR 808. Should your token regardless of which blockchain it is on have some minimal viable characteristics? Sure! Do you need to use the most technologically advanced, with the most features or loudest yelled about smart contracts? No. In fact „just“ using the one at a minting service is, for the most part, fine, if you have custody of the token itself. There could be extra fees on sale or at minting but besides that, I hope that we can concentrate on the ART part of the NFTs at some point.
“Any serious collector” is the new “pump my bags”
You might disagree with a technical argumentation about which smart contract to use or if it is ok to use a minting service, that is great. However, that is another discussion to „what is art“ (boring) or „I do not like this art and I think it lowers the value of the whole NFT market“. While that is great and all, we also have to look at some of the motivation behind such argumentations. The „I do not like this art and I think it lowers the value of the entire NFT market“ can also be summed up by „I do not buy all these art NFTs out of the goodness of my heart and if you inflate the supply of total NFTs out there with art that I do not approve of then my bags are at risk of losing value“ Which could be a legit argument, however, let’s be real, the second one is closer to reality. In the meatspace it would be said over wine and cheese to the gallery „hey could you kindly remove this trash art, I do not want it near my investments“. Not that this argument is wrong or right, just that let’s be clear about what is going on. Of course, it has NOTHING to do with projects that you might be involved in, or founded yourself, NEVER!
RRRRRREMIX
Collage, Musique Concrete, sampling, pop art, the list goes on and on about remix art. The amen break taught us that just one small part of a song can be used throughout many genres of music without getting old (yes that is my subjective opinion). In the blockchain world as centralized and freeze command ridden as they are crypto kitties was a form of remix art in that you could breed them, and thus „remix“ the cats (breeding as a remix). Now there is even this new project Avastars, which allows the remix of a set number of characteristics of which the basic characteristics are stored on-chain and then remixed with an in-browser (not on-chain) RNG. Great, nice technical thing you did there and the smart contract documentation is very clean, dope. Does this mean that the things made with this on-chain remix tool are good art? No. Does it mean that we should all stop what we are doing and make remix on-chain SVG NFTs and that is the future? No. Does it mean that all other NFTs that do not use this type of smart contract is not legit? No. Regardless of how advanced the smart contract is, it doesn’t make what it spits out worthy of anything. Just as a golden paintbrush can be used to make, gasp, trash art.
The letter C can sound like “K” or “S”
The tragedy of the commons the tragedy of the walled gardens
Curation and platforms, damned if you do, dammed if you don’t
When a platform does not accept an artist for whatever reason or decides that an artist is no longer welcome on their platform, that is curation and not censorship. This is always going to happen and there will always be a good reason, shady AF reasons and plenty of butthurt to go around. So is the nature of having any kind of gallery, record label or NFT platform. Is it questionable for an informal buyers cartel to try and strong-arm the platforms into a particular action? Maybe, perhaps, slightly, a little. If someone really wants to go through all that trouble maybe open up your own platform and gallery. Is it putting the platform owners in a tough place, since they are legally responsible, to upload unoriginal, not even slightly remixed work? Yes, it really is. We need curation, we need remixing and sometimes we all need a little butthurt to remind ourselves that even our shit stinks.
Who Cares?
Apparently, a lot of people care and that is good. There are strong opinions to be had and if these opinions are motivated by greed, speculation or attitudes such as but not limited to subjective art snobbery, technical nerd do you even code bro or an „I’ve studied art obviously you have not“ want to be professor, it does not matter. It matters that we can speak about our opinions to each other and agree or agree not to agree and make ourselves stronger through this discussion. If we fight each other with a high level of respect and fight hard because we respect each other we make our tribe stronger. If we fight to break the other person, we make our tribe weaker and another tribe will come and destroy us forever.
To the Freedom of Transaction, To Blockchain eternity….and Beyondddddd……..
You can unlock an audio recording of Theo Goodman reading the first paragraph of this article here: https://app.rarible.com/token/0x827356e31bd2504bbc3883147cc99f9269178b71:4673
