NFT collectors look at stats like floor price and the ratio of owner volume to supply volume to gather insights on circulation and potential resale value. Of course, artist credibility and previous success also go a long way. To be clear, none of these things are wrong and neither are they purely restricted to the digital art realm. The fact that I have more than one investment banker friend who spends their weekends trading JPEGs is a case in point. If they can make as much money flipping an NFT as they can working “for the man,” who can blame them?From artist patrons to auction houses, the intermingling of the worlds of finance and art is nothing new, and is in many ways a relationship that is necessary.
Digital art doesn’t have to be made into an NFT, and doing so may actually detract from the art itself (I will get to exceptions to this at the end). For one, they can represent a physical property being purchased. While much of this will be contingent on legal prerequisites being met in an evolving industry, the technology is already being primed to make this a reality, and with reason. Another use case in real estate is tokenizing properties for shared investment via fractional ownership. Fractionalizing real estate and selling tokens enables investors to easily be able to enter and exit an investment, and rules can be codified via smart contracts to determine how many weeks a year investors would have access to the property. I’m not even going to get into the metaverse and gaming, but my point is that NFTs offer a wide array of applications beyond that of digital art, and my prediction is that we will soon start associating NFTs with a form of technology (they are ‘non-fungible tokens’, after all) instead of primarily with art.
To bring this full circle and because I can’t not play devil’s advocate, I still do think that digital art can be a fantastic use case for NFTs… in some instances. Programming these codes requires skill and intentionality. Generative art is a perfect use-case for NFTs. Modern successful generative NFT collections often involve a set amount of mintable art pieces, strong communities, and a roadmap for the future. Which takes me to the second reason NFTs can be a great use case for digital art: community.
While I ultimately think NFTs should be dissociated from digital art, this is primarily because there are a myriad of use cases the technology can be used for, as well as because of some of the negative associations the space has unfortunately gathered. Digital art will always remain as one of those use cases, as it should. One thing is sure, David Hockney will be fine either way. In the unlikely event he changes his mind about NFTs, I have no doubt that more than one NFT studio would be beyond happy to help transform his series of iPad flower paintings into a generative NFT art collection. But that just might be taking it a step too far…
Read Full Article: https://decrypt.co/109423/its-time-to-separate-nfts-from-digital-art
