NFTs are one of the signature fads of this deeply odd late-pandemic moment. At the centre of all the buzz surrounding them is something exceedingly curious: a digital token, generated using a cryptographic protocol of the same sort that underwrites currencies such as bitcoin, certifying the uniqueness of some image or other digital file. Again, what’s being bought and sold on the NFT market isn’t the artwork itself, just a kind of pointer to it, with the buyer’s name inscribed upon it.
An artwork need have no other merit – neither historical resonance nor social relevance nor aesthetic refinement nor even skill in execution – to be valued in this way. You can’t do anything with Mars House, other than own it. What is valuable about the string of digits that makes up the token is that you as purchaser are the sole possessor of it. And, as the recent legal contretemps makes clear, even that most basic assertion rests on shifting sands. All of which makes Mars House, like all NFTs, an infinite zero, and a perfect representation of the meaningless churn so much of our economy is based on.
… But ultimately, this isn’t why it’s so depressing to see artists rushing to prop up the NFT market. The real problem has to do with a presently inescapable feature of the way NFTs work. Each transaction on the Ethereum blockchain, on which most NFTs are currently recorded, involves a set of calculations called proof-of-work. Those calculations are intentionally designed to be energy-intensive.
read more (guardian)
An artwork need have no other merit – neither historical resonance nor social relevance nor aesthetic refinement nor even skill in execution – to be valued in this way. You can’t do anything with Mars House, other than own it. What is valuable about the string of digits that makes up the token is that you as purchaser are the sole possessor of it. And, as the recent legal contretemps makes clear, even that most basic assertion rests on shifting sands. All of which makes Mars House, like all NFTs, an infinite zero, and a perfect representation of the meaningless churn so much of our economy is based on.
… But ultimately, this isn’t why it’s so depressing to see artists rushing to prop up the NFT market. The real problem has to do with a presently inescapable feature of the way NFTs work. Each transaction on the Ethereum blockchain, on which most NFTs are currently recorded, involves a set of calculations called proof-of-work. Those calculations are intentionally designed to be energy-intensive.
read more (guardian)
