(In order of most captivating to least captivating)
https://foundation.app/PussyRiot/panic-attack-1-terrestrial-paradise-6824
Title: PANIC ATTACK 1. TERRESTRIAL PARADISE
Artist: Pussy Riot
I did a lot of digging into this group after seeing Golan scroll over one of their pieces in class and while I don’t think the artwork is necessarily my style – I feel like if NFT’s are to be used in some way right now – it should be for something like this –> the actual art should be inherently intertwined with new technology and digital forms of generating art that cannot be done physically, must be for a specific cause such as this group’s, artists are in some marginalized group(s) and are using NFT’s to gain power/voice. I feel like so far this is the only art I have found on Foundation that is really doing something. Also if you read their story, I feel like that is the truly captivating part.
https://foundation.app/ViktoriaModesta/spike-dance-5549
Title: Spike Dance
Artist: Viktoria Modesta (I’ve been following her work for a while and saw her post on Instagram about selling this project as her first NFT… there was some explanation about her justification but I’m just not sure how I feel about it)
https://superrare.co/artwork-v2/balancing-act-12792
Title: Balancing act
Artist: Jon Noorlander (I just really like some of this guy’s work visually speaking)
https://www.hicetnunc.xyz/objkt/10443
Luckily this one is not being sold for much and is not on a (more) wasteful NFT platform… because if it was I’d be really sad. Needless to say, I really do not like this type of art – and unfortunately, a lot of the art I’ve seen on these platforms falls within this category. To me, this artwork is very similar to those shirts that people get that say like “nerd” or some stupid live laugh love sh** like that. It’s just like, what is the point of this art?? It just makes absolutely no impact whatsoever. But like I said, this is a lot better because at least something this stupid is being sold with little consequences – but stuff like this being sold with Ether or Bitcoin? Such. A damn. Waste. Your art better be revolutionary if you are going to be selling it with those kinds of consequences (obviously not at all would be best).
Overall, I’m finding it very hard to find any NFT that I like. What goes through my mind when I look at all these pieces is: is it worth it? As in, is this piece so revolutionary that it is worth having such a great cost on the environment/the other negative impacts? The answer is almost always no. There just has to be another way to do this. I feel like we as a human race can be a lot smarter than this… but I’m also not sure about that because historically we have been very very unintelligent in more ways than not.
I feel like so much of the art I’m seeing just does not spark any sort of critical thinking whatsoever. It is mostly just, like we discussed in class, eye candy. However, I’m also struggling to determine if I should even be making these types of judgments. Who am I to say what is art and what isn’t? Who am I to say if art has to be deep or not? Isn’t this just feeding right back into the issue of high art/low art/valuing some art over others/gatekeeping in the art world? I don’t have any type of qualification to justify that and I don’t think anyone should be able to, (even though I’m basically doing this right now oops) because if I can, the same wealthy/greedy art collectors already doing this can too. I guess it is just hard to justify selling what I consider eye candy at the price of an entire country’s worth of carbon production…