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SM3809_A12

Final Projects & NFTs

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HERE IS THE ARTICLE YOU CAN SEND TO PEOPLE WHEN THEY SAY “BUT THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES WITH CRYPTOART WILL BE SOLVED SOON, RIGHT?” by Everest Pipkin:
It reminds me of the news that I read some days ago, which says that Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in Mainland had banned mining cryptocurrency because those miners consumed too much energy. In recent months with the price rising of ETH and Bitcoins, mining became popular again. From time to time you might see a picture of those miners showing off their 100-3090s machine online. The TDP of an RTX3090 is 350W, so the power of a small size mining machine (which might have around 100 graphic cards)would be around 36000W, and that is a lot.
I think an interesting point made in this article is "All that cryptocurrency does is abstract resources into a market by making those resources unavailable to the future." And that somehow explain what's the "value" of the high price of ETH and Bitcoin (in value-price theory): the market place is not "creating" money(price) out of nowhere (i.e. something has been used/created/consumed for the extra money in the marketplace), but rather, in a sense, is "sucking" money from the energy industry (as the thing being used/created/consumed is electricity).
It is also interesting that how things are marked as "original" in digital space. In the physical world, we can claim that a copy is "not the same" as the original one because no matter how we try to accurately reproduce something, there are some things we cannot control in this physical word (and I will say time is one of them). But in a digital world, an image can be 100% copy since we can control the copy process to make sure that every basic element(pixel) in the copy is the same as the element in the original one. So at this point, the "ownership" over a digital thing, or the "authenticity" of it is more social concepts than technical ones. And as the author says in the article, one of the values of digital/web-based art is that it ensures that everyone has the first-hand experience, and thus, it creates a kind of equality: no matter you are rich or poor, no matter you are in Africa or Europe, everyone has the access to the "original" and everyone has the access to the same experience. (Have to say, this equality still has limits as many still can't afford computers and the Internet.)
Also, as mentioned in the essay, the social/structural aspect of NFTs and cryptocurrencies is very questionable. In the system, no matter PoW or PoS, the ones who came first are the absolute winner, and the ones who joined later are harder to get paid. Someone might say that it is hard to say if this is "fair" or not, at least for now. (For example, an argument is that it's like lining in a queue, the ones who come later need to wait for a longer time.) But think about that, this kind of systems, somehow, requires people to keep going in, in a Chinese word, to "take over"(接盤). So what will happen when no new miner is entering the system? Will it collapse (like what happened to the Japanese stock market in the 1990s)? And if so, what will very likely happen is just like what happened in Japan, the first comer already got out with tons of gold, but the ones who join later have to bear the loss. And at that point, it is obviously not fair.
Not another JPEG by M Plummer-Fernández:
This article, compared to the above one, proposes different arguments. I think one good point mentioned in this article is that NFT markets based on PoS provided a green and cheap way for digital artists (or anyone) in non-developed countries like Brazil to sell their works and obtain a better life (especially under the pandemic). This is a very positive social impact, however, as analyzed above, PoS might have unfairness produced by the structure that is hidden and unnoticeable when the market is in the beginning stage, and become a problem when more and more people join. Although in short term this seems to be good for everyone, I am not really sure if this should be the future of digital art.
But I highly agree that NFT makes conceptual artworks more accessible and generally, somehow, makes the process of making art easier. (I got rich first-hand experience of how hard it is to not fuck up things in making physical, tangible things. 😂) It's potentially another beginning of a new period of art, in which non-material become a common feature. And that, in a sense, also helps to save the environment. (I have lots of first-hand experience of how much waste and pollution is produced in the process of making tangible things too. 😂)
NFTs Weren’t Supposed to End Like This by Anil Dash:
If you visit Foundation, one of the most popular NFT markets, you will find that their home page is exactly an auction page. As also mentioned in the articles above, the systems of NFTs are becoming questionable, as attempts to get rid of the existing capitalized art market, it is ironic that the systems are built on similar, or another kind of capitalist structures. But I think the further questions are: Is it inevitable? If not, how can we build up a system that is free from the corruption of capitalism?
Another point mentioned in this article is, people buying NFTs are actually not buying the artworks, but links, sometimes even links that are not working. It's kind of hilarious, it's like the futures market, people trade "things", but not really "things" (in the futures market, many of the traded "products" are not even produced). Somehow the actions themselves look like conceptual performance art.
Toward a New Ecology of Crypto Art on Flash Art:

Research

Interesting NFTs

Coolest NFTs by the artist whose TzKT wallet id is tz1Pw...sB4H4
Editions:13/15 Price: 1 tez (~5.4 USD)

Scan the QR code before continue reading.
A QR code that leads you to a non-exist account on where it's sold, which means in a sense the one who brought this NFT actually brought a link to a link(the QRcode is a link) to a non-exist page. For me, this action is. kind of, mocking at the structure of the market (and the whole cryptoart/cryptocurrency/cryptowhatever system): "things" get traded back and forth, but somehow they are non-exist, and at some point, people don't even have an idea of what they are.
i-see-plans-within-plans by Alexandre Rangel
Editions:9/10 Price: 10 tez (~53.8 USD)

Brick ▣▣▣ [9999-in-1 ▪ Racing] by pixelamiri
Editions:1/1 Price: 0.1 ETH (~242 USD)

I like how this work compares the NFT market to a simple, not exciting, used-to-kill-time racing game. Although it probably is not the intention of the artist, I think it somehow shows how boring (and time/energy wasting) the PoW system (that ETH, with which it is traded, is based on) is.
THE SNAP by mightyraccoon!
Editions:1 Price: o.75 ETH (~1,845 USD)

Final Project Ideas

NFT Inflation: An NFT that is linked to a picture of a QR code (hidden information embedded), when the NFT is sold and the QR code is scanned, a new QR code derived from it (new information, i.e. the info of this trade embedded) will be generated and minted in the market. When the new NFT is sold and the new QR code is scanned, the same process will be triggered.
Pedestrian Friendly CCTV: Improve this sketch I have done a year ago: making walking people disappear in CCTVs. Maybe actually create such a system and put it at the entrance of CMC.
Really hacking (hijacking) wifis with a deauther, replacing most visit-pages (e.g Youtube and Twitter) with other pages or change the destination (e.g Youtube -> Youku, Twitter -> Weibo). Disclaimer: DON'T DO ILLEGAL THINGS WITH IT, this info is just for academic purposes!

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