00:00.000 --> 00:29.640 Hello, hi everyone, welcome to the Open Metaverse, and welcome to week four of the University 00:29.640 --> 00:39.840 of Nicosia's free MOOC on NFTs and the metaverse with Punk 6529 and me. 00:39.840 --> 00:49.840 The topic of today's NFT art is going to be presented as always by 6529, but 00:49.840 --> 00:59.440 before he takes the stage, I would like to take a few minutes to discuss a little bit 00:59.440 --> 01:10.200 about the course logistics. So, okay, here we are, just to make sure that everyone understands 01:10.200 --> 01:15.200 what type of material we produce from this course and where they can find this material. 01:15.200 --> 01:21.280 So, each week we will be producing two main pieces of material. The first one will be 01:21.280 --> 01:28.360 a PDF file that will contain the main presentation of the week. So, we have 12 weeks, there are 01:28.360 --> 01:35.080 going to be 12 PDFs in total by the end of this course. And second, one or more than 01:35.080 --> 01:40.360 one video for each of the live sessions. So, there will be at least one live session 01:40.360 --> 01:48.800 each week, like today, but especially going forward, there will also be more than one 01:48.800 --> 01:55.960 live sessions as 6529 and I'm going to start interviewing guests, hosting panels, 01:55.960 --> 02:02.080 etc. So, we will be producing one video for each of these sessions and these videos are 02:02.080 --> 02:07.400 going to be part of the course material. Now, where can you access this material? There 02:07.400 --> 02:14.280 are four different places. First of all, in the course website, you can find both the 02:14.280 --> 02:21.840 PDFs and videos there, our GitHub account. You can find both the PDF and the videos there. 02:21.840 --> 02:27.200 The videos will also be available on YouTube, some of you are watching the video on YouTube 02:27.200 --> 02:34.480 now on live streaming, but they are also available as recordings afterward. And finally, both 02:34.480 --> 02:44.160 the PDFs and the videos can also be seen as NFTs in your Ethereum wallet or in OpenSea 02:44.160 --> 02:52.840 or other NFT marketplaces. Now, for this last part, let me clarify that for the first week, 02:52.840 --> 02:58.720 the material has already been air-dropped to everyone's wallet. All of you who have who 02:58.720 --> 03:05.600 had minted the course access token should have received the week one material in your 03:05.600 --> 03:12.480 wallet already. We wanted to air-drop this material to everyone because we think this 03:12.480 --> 03:18.920 has a historic sentimental and maybe in the future who knows some provenance value because 03:18.920 --> 03:27.840 it's the first material of the first on-chain course ever. But from week two onward, you 03:27.840 --> 03:33.920 will have to proactively go and access the material. So we will not be air-dropping the 03:33.920 --> 03:40.280 material as NFTs to everyone's wallets. We will be announcing this on Twitter and on Discord 03:40.280 --> 03:44.800 every time something is ready for you. But we also expect you to go and visit the course 03:44.800 --> 03:52.520 website, go and visit our YouTube channel and see what news is available there. We are 03:52.520 --> 03:59.960 also working to develop a claim website where you will be able to go and claim all the NFTs 03:59.960 --> 04:08.400 you want from the course. All the PDFs, and all the videos will be minted as NFTs. You will 04:08.400 --> 04:13.840 be able to claim them for free. You just pay the gas fees. But it will be up to you because 04:13.840 --> 04:21.000 we don't want to be flooding your wallet with material that you may not be interested in. 04:21.000 --> 04:26.280 Finally, I wanted to let you know that we're working on the process of reducing the cycle 04:26.280 --> 04:33.440 the time it takes for us to produce all this material. But it's not always easy. So there are too many 04:33.440 --> 04:41.960 things happening in parallel. The transcription of the videos always takes a while. NFT minting 04:41.960 --> 04:49.160 is an experimental process for us. We are minting very large video files and we have 04:49.160 --> 04:54.600 had to test the limits of platforms like Arweave or OpenSea in the process of doing that. 04:54.600 --> 05:01.520 So thank you for your patience with that. So that's all regarding access to the course 05:01.520 --> 05:09.800 material. The second thing I'd like to say has to do with the weekly breakdown. As you 05:09.800 --> 05:16.760 know, the course is 12 weeks long. Each week we cover one main topic. So last week it was 05:16.760 --> 05:24.600 PFPs. This week is crypto art. But especially from now on, as more and more guests will be 05:24.600 --> 05:30.360 joining us, please note that the educational coverage of each week's material would not 05:30.360 --> 05:37.000 be necessarily confined to that week only. So for example, we may be covering art in 05:37.000 --> 05:42.600 today's live session. But some of the discussions and the interviews with guests related to NFT 05:42.600 --> 05:48.560 art will be recorded and broadcast or will be live-streamed in the coming weeks. We will 05:48.560 --> 05:56.320 be using Discord, Twitter, and the course website for all the relevant announcements. 05:56.320 --> 06:01.440 And in the website, in the end, you will be able to find all the material organized per 06:01.440 --> 06:08.600 week, regardless of when it was live streamed or recorded. Finally, the third thing that 06:08.600 --> 06:15.520 I'd like to inform you is that, as you know, we have been very busy building our Metacampus. 06:15.520 --> 06:21.640 So soon we will be hosting our first live session there instead of sector zero where 06:21.640 --> 06:30.400 you are today. As you are facing the main OM screen where you see me now, I invite 06:30.400 --> 06:37.600 you to hit jump to just hit space on the keyboard. And while you're up in the air, turn to your 06:37.600 --> 06:45.000 right. You will see there is a vast open space with one open amphitheater in the middle. 06:45.000 --> 06:52.240 This is where the Metacampus is currently being built. I cannot say much today, but stay tuned 06:52.240 --> 06:58.240 for announcements in the coming days. If you want, after the end of today's session, you 06:58.240 --> 07:04.280 can walk towards the portal to the Metacampus. This is the door that you see on the right 07:04.280 --> 07:09.960 of the park. You can hit E on your keyboard when you reach it and you will enter the space. 07:09.960 --> 07:16.440 There's not much to see there apart from the open amphitheater, but we're going to be releasing 07:16.440 --> 07:24.400 new buildings and new functionalities in that space in the coming weeks. But do that after 07:24.400 --> 07:30.040 live session, because for now, we want you to stay here because we have none other than 07:30.040 --> 07:39.040 Punk 6529 to walk us through the exciting space of NFT art. So, 6529, the floor is yours. 07:39.040 --> 07:48.840 Thank you, as always, George and great to be here as always. Let me get the presentation 07:48.840 --> 07:51.640 up. 07:51.640 --> 08:00.760 Okay, today's session is going to be a little bit different and a little bit shorter than 08:00.760 --> 08:12.240 some of the prior ones. And the reason is, crypto art and one-of-one art is a vast topic 08:12.240 --> 08:21.280 area. One-of-one art is really just another way of saying art that happens to be an NFT. 08:21.280 --> 08:32.400 And the art of any type. So, it's not an easy area to box in, get a hold of, put in a handful 08:32.400 --> 08:39.320 of bullet points. And partially because of that, we have a lot of guests coming for this 08:39.320 --> 08:48.880 topic area. And so, similarly to what happened last week with PFPs, but I think specifically 08:48.880 --> 08:55.520 for this week's session more so, probably the most of any of the week sessions we're 08:55.520 --> 09:04.400 going to have. I think this is, by far, the broadest, least-defined session. What I'd 09:04.400 --> 09:11.520 like to do today, which I think will be particularly useful for those who are less experienced 09:11.520 --> 09:21.440 in this space, it provide some basic background, some basic frameworks, some context terminology 09:21.440 --> 09:27.920 that will help you in the sessions that we have with the artists, the collectors, and 09:27.920 --> 09:36.040 some of the other curators in this space. And then, as we do these sessions, I want to 09:36.040 --> 09:42.200 see what we absorb from these sessions and work it back into the presentation. So, I 09:42.200 --> 09:50.280 want to say this for now. This specific PDF for this specific week is going to come out 09:50.280 --> 09:54.440 later. It's not going to come out in a couple of days. I'd like to do the sessions. And 09:54.440 --> 10:00.880 I'd like, I'd like to do the sessions because we have just incredible people coming for 10:00.880 --> 10:09.920 the sessions. On the 28th, we have people. People are arguably the most famous NFT artist 10:09.920 --> 10:15.480 in the world. I think I'm going to learn a lot from the session. I think there will 10:15.480 --> 10:19.920 be interesting conclusions from that session. And I want to take those conclusions and 10:19.920 --> 10:26.080 feed them back into the document. So, it felt strange to me to write up all the document 10:26.080 --> 10:31.560 and finalize the document before we speak to some of the top people in the world on this 10:31.560 --> 10:40.600 exact topic. So, there will be a delay on this PDF. We'll do it after we've completed 10:40.600 --> 10:45.400 the sessions. And I think that's fine. So, what we're going to do today, a little bit 10:45.400 --> 10:49.320 of background, a little bit of background was coming. I think it's going to be one of 10:49.320 --> 10:57.280 our shorter sessions, which is okay. The last few sessions have run very low. And even 10:57.280 --> 11:02.400 though the quote unquote live session, the official session of the week is going to be 11:02.400 --> 11:08.160 short, the total number of sessions and the total hours for this topic is going to be 11:08.160 --> 11:17.600 very high. I think as we get into this week, next week, the week afterward, we also have 11:17.600 --> 11:23.240 a lot of guests for next week. We also have a lot of guests for the week afterwards. What 11:23.240 --> 11:32.000 I would like to suggest is the following. Of course, try and attend as many of the sessions 11:32.000 --> 11:40.840 as you can, both live or on-demand afterwards. But if you miss one, it's okay. There's going 11:40.840 --> 11:45.280 to be a lot of material. There are going to be a lot of sessions. You might not get 11:45.280 --> 11:52.320 the total number of hours of sessions of guest lectures. It's going to be significantly 11:52.320 --> 11:59.120 higher than a typical course. So, it's okay if you don't get told them. Of course, we'd 11:59.120 --> 12:04.640 love to have all of you see all of them. That's why we're doing them. But I think it's also 12:04.640 --> 12:11.520 okay if you don't see every single one. The other thing that's going to happen, and this 12:11.520 --> 12:21.960 is just a matter of logistics. Not all the sessions for week four, session four, will 12:21.960 --> 12:28.400 happen in the next five calendar days. That's simply because we have a lot of people in 12:28.400 --> 12:36.440 the next few weeks. So, we're going to stretch them out a bit over the course of the next 12:36.440 --> 12:44.520 few weeks, just so that the whole team can actually be there in time. And it's partially 12:44.520 --> 12:51.200 my availability, but also partially the availability of everyone that is helping with the course. 12:51.200 --> 12:56.560 So, we have a lot of things to cover. We're going to spread them out of it. I don't think 12:56.560 --> 13:06.040 it makes a big difference. We are talking about a maximum a couple of weeks up or down 13:06.040 --> 13:17.720 before we complete the sessions. And then we'll circle back. We'll circle back with 13:17.720 --> 13:26.280 the final presentation. That includes everything that we've learned and that I have also learned. 13:26.280 --> 13:33.000 So, as I said, a little bit different, but I think okay. Okay, this week, we said it's 13:33.000 --> 13:38.880 week four, it's art NFTs. We said we were going to discuss frameworks. So, we'll come back 13:38.880 --> 13:45.320 with the conclusions. This is the general disclaimer. These are the guests we have and 13:45.320 --> 13:52.040 I'll talk about the artists a little bit more at the end. But we have a great set of artists 13:52.040 --> 14:01.640 and also a great set of collectors who will discuss crypto art and NFT art both from the 14:01.640 --> 14:08.000 perspective of the artists and from the perspective of the folks who are collecting these artists. 14:08.000 --> 14:18.080 So, let's start with the general framework. And to me, this is a very useful slide. Again, 14:18.080 --> 14:24.920 for some of you, this is going to be a completely obvious slide. But for those who are newer 14:24.920 --> 14:34.680 to the space, I think this is a helpful way to think about NFTs that have an art association 14:34.680 --> 14:41.480 with them. And why do I say NFTs that have an art association with them? Metaverse land 14:41.480 --> 14:46.840 is also sometimes shown as a representative, represented as an NFT. Gaming objects are 14:46.840 --> 14:52.160 also sometimes represented as an NFT. Maybe someday our houses will also be represented 14:52.160 --> 15:01.040 as an NFT. But I think everyone agrees that none of these are art. So, the part of the 15:01.040 --> 15:11.200 NFT landscape that people look through the lens of art tends to be these three areas 15:11.200 --> 15:18.000 and let's go through them. The first is PFPs, which recovered last week and on the whole 15:18.000 --> 15:27.720 most people do not consider them art. But not 100%, right? So, like, you know, we discussed 15:27.720 --> 15:36.000 this when we were discussing the crypto punks last week. Are the crypto punks collectibles 15:36.000 --> 15:48.120 like baseball cards? Or are they a form of digital art? Are they both? Does it matter? 15:48.120 --> 15:56.720 I think most people consider the crypto punks to include both aspects. They are both, yes, 15:56.720 --> 16:02.960 a collectible, but they're also something like Andy Warhol's soup cans that they're 16:02.960 --> 16:07.840 a form of conceptual art. And, you know, the same questions existed back then about some 16:07.840 --> 16:14.360 of Andy Warhol's work. Do you really art? Or is it just some type of marketing thing? 16:14.360 --> 16:21.120 Well, what about the other PFP collections? Well, I think the reality is it depends. 16:21.120 --> 16:30.440 You know, the stereotypical case of someone went and found someone on Fiverr to make some 16:30.440 --> 16:36.680 cartoons and minted as a PFP collection. I think most people would think of that as 16:36.680 --> 16:43.840 collectible. But there are people who have made PFP collections and they are individually 16:43.840 --> 16:53.720 hand-drawn PFPs by an artist who drew them in their own style. Well, it's not obvious 16:53.720 --> 17:03.120 to me that those are not art. So I think where most people come out is that PFPs are primarily 17:03.120 --> 17:09.840 collectibles, sometimes art, and that might mean that some collections are 100% collectibles 17:09.840 --> 17:15.160 in some art, or it might mean that some collections have aspects of both. I think that's 17:15.160 --> 17:22.960 where we are with PFPs. Then next week, we'll discuss generative art, which is a form of 17:22.960 --> 17:33.160 digital art. It's a form of procedural art. But because it has been so successful in the 17:33.160 --> 17:43.960 NFT space, it is generally thought of separately as its own thing. And in particular, the type 17:43.960 --> 17:50.520 of generative art that is thought of as its own thing are long-form generative collections. 17:50.520 --> 17:54.800 And we'll talk about this more next week, what these are, but where they are one of 17:54.800 --> 18:03.320 ones of X. So there are a thousand Fidenzas. That's the X. But each Findenza is unique. 18:03.320 --> 18:11.720 That's the one of one. So this is viewed as a distinct category. The boundaries of this 18:11.720 --> 18:19.000 category of generative art are actually quite clear. Long form generative art in particular, 18:19.000 --> 18:24.160 is very clear if it's that and if it's not something else. So this tends to be thought 18:24.160 --> 18:36.480 of as its own category. And then people discuss the category of one of one art, which it's 18:36.480 --> 18:46.320 funny because it's not exactly a thing. It's not exactly one of one art is not a category. 18:46.320 --> 18:57.520 It's like a generic container. It's what in the non NFT world people would just call art. 18:57.520 --> 19:06.320 If you think about let's say the leading site for high end curated one of one art, which 19:06.320 --> 19:15.560 is super rare, I think today's fair to say that's still the case. Today in 2022, there's 19:15.560 --> 19:31.520 no obvious style that exists for this art. Some of it is glitchy animated dark art. Some 19:31.520 --> 19:42.200 of it is traditional oil like painting. Some of it is photography of various types. There's 19:42.200 --> 19:51.760 no specific definition. It's not a category of art. It's not like impressionism. It just 19:51.760 --> 20:00.520 means it's almost a way to think about it. It's not one of the other two categories. 20:00.520 --> 20:04.320 It's not a PFP collection. Those are obvious. You'll know a PFP of collection when you see 20:04.320 --> 20:10.920 it. It's not a long form generative art collection. That's also fairly obvious. You know them 20:10.920 --> 20:16.400 when you see them. It could include short form generative art, like people who have made 20:16.400 --> 20:21.320 a generative art piece they created procedurally and they published the individual piece. It 20:21.320 --> 20:27.200 could include photography. It could include animation. It could include video. It could 20:27.200 --> 20:38.120 include literally anything. It's just art. And even I think the one of one is a misnomer. 20:38.120 --> 20:52.080 You know the one of one in this context came in as a distinction between the PFPs because 20:52.080 --> 21:00.160 the PFPs are also a one of one of X type format. Your crypto punk is a one of one of 21:00.160 --> 21:08.680 10,000. So what people meant casually here was that it's not that. It's not part of 21:08.680 --> 21:15.120 a broader collection. It's an individual piece. Now it doesn't mean necessarily that the addition 21:15.120 --> 21:25.040 size needs to be one. You could have a photograph and instead of minting it as a literal one 21:25.040 --> 21:33.240 of one, you could mint it as a addition of 10. And I still think it falls into this category 21:33.240 --> 21:38.560 what people call one or one art even though it's actually an addition. I wouldn't break 21:38.560 --> 21:47.560 out additions as their own category. So and then I think an area that people get somehow 21:47.560 --> 21:57.720 confused or mixed thing about is what people call crypto art. Crypto art is not a horizontal 21:57.720 --> 22:05.720 definition like one of one art. It's a vertical definition. It is a definition of something 22:05.720 --> 22:15.480 like an art movement. It's a definition of a distinctive style. It overlaps with the early 22:15.480 --> 22:25.040 days of one of one art. In the early days of NFT based one of one art, most of that was 22:25.040 --> 22:32.160 crypto art. Today, that's not the case. Today, you can find art of different types that 22:32.160 --> 22:41.320 is linked to those are one of one NFT. And so I think the right way to think about it is 22:41.320 --> 22:50.360 crypto art tends to be one of one art, but not all one of one art is by definition crypto 22:50.360 --> 22:58.440 art. We'll talk a little bit more about this in the next section. But you can play around 22:58.440 --> 23:05.200 the margins of these four circles, but I think they're broadly helpful. They're broadly 23:05.200 --> 23:13.480 correct. It's broadly a useful way to think about art oriented NFTs. And again, I separate 23:13.480 --> 23:19.960 those from gaming oriented, metaverse oriented, utility oriented NFTs. Those are different 23:19.960 --> 23:27.680 things. So in these three buckets or four buckets, it's a useful framework for thinking 23:27.680 --> 23:32.920 about NFTs. It's interesting. I'm going to bring a topical point into this discussion. 23:32.920 --> 23:40.760 It's not in the slides, but I was treating about it this morning. A lot of people are 23:40.760 --> 23:51.280 saying that it's very good what happened with Reddit recently. Reddit, or the Reddit community 23:51.280 --> 24:01.960 historically was I think quite anti NFT. And then Reddit launched polygon based NFTs. 24:01.960 --> 24:09.720 But labeled them digital collectibles. They actually are NFTs. But they didn't use the 24:09.720 --> 24:21.400 term NFT. They use something friendlier. And it's been a success. And so it's very interesting 24:21.400 --> 24:30.800 to me to think about what that might mean. Because again, you have a similar overlap, 24:30.800 --> 24:38.560 you have overlapping circles, not every digital collectibles in NFT. Not every NFT is a digital 24:38.560 --> 24:46.320 collectible. Nobody is going to think that a refric and a doll will look at one of it 24:46.320 --> 24:53.960 as a digital collectible. It's a possible work. Not everyone is going to think that a 24:53.960 --> 25:01.920 unique access token is digital collectible. It's a utility NFT token. And so I have mixed 25:01.920 --> 25:07.600 feelings, not exactly my word, interesting feelings about this. I'm glad that now millions 25:07.600 --> 25:16.080 of people on Reddit are now using NFTs. And if what needed to be done is to call them 25:16.080 --> 25:25.200 digital collectibles. That's fine. It's a form of consumerization. But I also would say 25:25.200 --> 25:35.640 that it is everything about the token ultimately being hidden in the marketing and branding 25:35.640 --> 25:40.640 may or may not be right. Because a digital collectible could also be stored in database. 25:40.640 --> 25:47.560 It's fine. It doesn't require being on a blockchain. And I think we're not going to 25:47.560 --> 25:57.840 end up with one non NFT definition of NFTs. Because it's very common, this idea, we'll 25:57.840 --> 26:04.040 just call them digital collectibles. Well, sure, some NFTs are digital collectibles. 26:04.040 --> 26:09.920 Mostly a subset of one of these circles. But a lot of NFTs are not digital collectibles 26:09.920 --> 26:15.920 and they would, you know, certainly a lot of the artists in the second two buckets, 26:15.920 --> 26:20.160 I think would be quite unhappy or insulted if you said, oh, oh, look at this digital 26:20.160 --> 26:27.680 collectible you've made, right? But it has been helpful in these last few weeks of Reddit 26:27.680 --> 26:33.960 of getting an option. So we'll see how it plays out. So these definitions matter and 26:33.960 --> 26:40.040 don't matter. They're helpful. They're not complete. I think they help, but they're 26:40.040 --> 26:48.440 never perfect. And yet they are used and there's a bit of social construction happening on 26:48.440 --> 27:01.440 what they mean and where you use them. Now, most one of what PFTs didn't come from, you 27:01.440 --> 27:07.960 know, didn't come from the heavens brand new. There's a tradition of, there is an art tradition 27:07.960 --> 27:17.120 that from which they spray, that's the joy. Most one of one NFTs are not, in fact, they 27:17.120 --> 27:29.280 have a physical sculpture carved in marble visible in your courtyard. That's not likely 27:29.280 --> 27:33.960 to be a good one of one NFT, right? I mean, you can't represent it natively. It doesn't 27:33.960 --> 27:41.720 really have anything to do with a blockchain doesn't have any use computers. A useful way 27:41.720 --> 27:49.240 to think about, you know, where they came from in the history of art is the joy. We have 27:49.240 --> 27:57.120 had digital art before. We had cryptocurrencies and public blockchains. In fact, we have had 27:57.120 --> 28:06.800 digital art even before we had widespread use of personal computing. And Warhol famously 28:06.800 --> 28:16.360 made some digital art in the early 1980s when most people did not have a PC. And like with 28:16.360 --> 28:28.240 other categories, there is a fuzzy and emergent and evolving definition of digital art is. 28:28.240 --> 28:33.760 If you see what computer is going to say, that it says something like the first bullet 28:33.760 --> 28:40.920 point, but it incorporates digital technology in the creative process or in the presentation. 28:40.920 --> 28:55.440 Okay. I think in 1960, that would be a pretty hard boundary. And it would be useful for 28:55.440 --> 29:04.360 defining the piece of art because digital tools were not very widespread. And so you 29:04.360 --> 29:13.760 could say, again, if it involved digital art, a digital tool of some type, that's digital 29:13.760 --> 29:26.640 art. Well, today, there's digital tools everywhere. And even works of art that I don't think you 29:26.640 --> 29:33.440 would think of as digital art might have passed through digital tool. This is an example that 29:33.440 --> 29:38.160 I mentioned here. You could take a photograph, take it on film, because you want that certain 29:38.160 --> 29:45.680 grain or aesthetic or what have you, you could scan it, make some changes in photoshopping, 29:45.680 --> 29:53.000 print a piece of paper or piece of aluminum, what have you, you have a physical installation, 29:53.000 --> 29:58.000 here's the photo. It would not be obviously the case that someone say, Oh, this is digital 29:58.000 --> 30:06.760 art, but it did involve a digital tool along the way. It's hard to get away from digital tools 30:06.760 --> 30:15.840 in 2022, right? Like where we spend a lot of time using computers. And so the more advanced 30:15.840 --> 30:24.960 thinking, advanced, in quotes, more contemporary thinking, let's say on what digital art is 30:24.960 --> 30:32.920 that the digital art, the piece of art interrogates the digital medium in some way, right? There's 30:32.920 --> 30:40.040 some real meaningful interaction with the medium, not just somewhere you use the digital tool 30:40.040 --> 30:51.880 in the creation. But like everything else, everything else of this type, it's a fuzzy boundary. 30:51.880 --> 31:02.920 I think you cannot definitively classify every piece of art in the world into digital art and 31:02.920 --> 31:12.520 not digital art. Also, another thing to think about is this comes up a lot in one of these. 31:12.520 --> 31:22.760 Digital art, pre the internet, pre widespread PC usage, usually came with a physical installation, 31:22.760 --> 31:33.440 right? Because how do you actually, how do you actually display it? And so yes, there was the 31:33.440 --> 31:39.400 part that was digital that might be a piece of computer code or graphics. But then there would 31:39.400 --> 31:46.120 be a machine or a broader installation that embedded it. And of course, that still happens 31:46.120 --> 31:51.760 today. There are all types of interesting digital art installations that have a physical 31:51.760 --> 32:03.560 representation. And that's normal. And some of those will end up on NFT as we'll talk about one 32:03.560 --> 32:14.840 in the next slide. But where NFTs have found a very strong fit with digital art is an art 32:14.840 --> 32:22.840 that's 100% digital. That is not a digital, some digital code, plus a physical installation. 32:22.840 --> 32:35.200 But things that are 100% digital, where they can move around the internet at internet speed, 32:35.200 --> 32:47.640 without not at UPS or DHL or FedEx speed. And the NFT solves the problem of ownership and 32:47.640 --> 32:57.200 provenance and duplication. And that has been a very powerful combination, right? Because when 32:57.200 --> 33:07.640 you had a 100% digital pre NFT piece of art, it's very hard to handle provenance and ownership 33:07.640 --> 33:13.240 and deduplication. If there's a physical installation, you can, right? If someone says, I've made 33:13.240 --> 33:18.600 them digital art. And now this art plays on this specific screen and this specific sculpture. 33:18.600 --> 33:24.880 And now you have the sculpture in your house. It's very clear that the sculpture is in your house. 33:24.880 --> 33:33.280 It's not in someone else's house. It can't just be copied. But if you were making as X copy was 33:33.280 --> 33:45.840 interesting illustrations on Tumblr, and they're 100% digital, well, there's no particularly 33:45.840 --> 33:53.760 obvious way to protect them. There's not particularly an obvious way to say these belong to 6529 or 33:53.760 --> 34:05.280 these belong to George. And so NFTs by solving this issue for digital art, 100% digital art, 34:05.280 --> 34:14.960 are going to, are going to, I think, be extremely supportive of digital art. I think they're going 34:14.960 --> 34:24.240 to lead to an explosion of digital art. And this, to me, is super interesting, right? I think this 34:24.240 --> 34:38.800 is what's happening anyway. And I just don't see how that stops because it allows all the benefits 34:38.800 --> 34:48.080 of being digitally native without the pre NFT downsides of it. Now, having said that, and for 34:48.080 --> 34:56.360 everything I just said, there's always a counter example slightly to show it. This is a piece of 34:56.360 --> 35:05.840 art by Raffa Ganadol, who's an incredible artist. We bought this in one of the NFT 6529 funds. And this 35:05.840 --> 35:12.320 is a very complex hybrid piece. And I'm going to describe this not because it's a wonderful piece, 35:12.320 --> 35:19.680 it is a wonderful piece. But I'm describing it in order to think about the types of things that can 35:19.680 --> 35:29.200 be done. So this is the Gaudy House. Raffa made an incredible light show on the Gaudy House, 35:29.200 --> 35:37.600 where the light show itself holds information from environmental sensors in the Gaudy House in 35:37.600 --> 35:45.280 Barcelona to UNESCO site. And then in a physical installation, that's a Rockefeller Center, 35:46.080 --> 35:52.720 or as the screen and that screen shows what is happening from the environmental sensors and 35:52.720 --> 36:03.680 the light show. And further, the code and the models are linked to an NFT and this was all sold 36:03.680 --> 36:14.720 as an NFT. And so this is hybrid, this is obviously digital art, but in its digital art that was 36:14.720 --> 36:25.520 minted and collected as an NFT, but with a huge amount of hybridization and touchpoints to the 36:25.520 --> 36:35.920 digital world. As we get further into the evolution of NFTs, we'll see more of this. I still think 36:35.920 --> 36:41.920 most NFTs will be 100% digital for the reasons that you're older, but I think you will also see 36:41.920 --> 36:49.760 innovators like Raffic do innovative things like this piece. And I can't tell you what it's going 36:49.760 --> 36:55.280 to be. That's why we need people like Raffic now. I would have never thought of this before I saw 36:55.280 --> 37:06.960 it once I saw it as it was incredible. And so even when we're in the NFT world in the area of one 37:06.960 --> 37:16.320 of one art, you still might have a hybrid aspect, both in the creation here, in the creation of 37:16.320 --> 37:22.560 the environmental sensors are hybrid. And in the presentation where it can be presented, 37:23.520 --> 37:31.840 yes 100% digitally, but also into the physical world. Again, this is for background knowledge, 37:31.840 --> 37:43.200 most of you know this. Unlike PFPs, and most generative art collections that tend to 37:44.480 --> 37:51.200 primarily be bought and sold on generalized platforms, like open-sear literature, 37:51.200 --> 38:02.480 one of one art has historically invented and collected on specialized platforms for one of 38:02.480 --> 38:09.840 one art at the very high end super rare is the most famous today. But the auction houses, 38:09.840 --> 38:14.320 the traditional auction houses are making their own platforms. Foundation is quite popular, 38:14.320 --> 38:20.880 the one in the right. And there's been a variety of them, but there is a somehow specialized 38:20.880 --> 38:28.720 ecosystem that supports this. So this was used, I think hopefully useful, background for this. 38:28.720 --> 38:35.680 Let's talk a little bit about crypto art, which is that is a subset of one of one art. And 38:37.680 --> 38:49.040 here I am going to absolutely liberally borrow from Artnome, who I think has been the best 38:49.040 --> 38:57.440 writer on this topic. And later in the semester, even though Artnome is not an official guest of 38:57.440 --> 39:04.480 week four, I think is week six, perhaps officially, we're going to talk to Artnom and really dig into 39:04.480 --> 39:14.320 this topic because Artnome has just been early and excellent to this topic. And his view is that 39:14.320 --> 39:21.840 the first crypto art started with the Rare Pepes. Like the punks, the Rare Pepes 39:23.840 --> 39:33.200 probably sit on a bridge between collectibles and art. But I like the crypto punks that was a 39:33.200 --> 39:40.480 unified project. The rare peppers were more like a platform. So there were many, many artists 39:40.480 --> 39:50.400 who made Rare Pepes and all in different styles, but with the Pepe being the unifying team. 39:52.240 --> 40:04.240 And I think he says, he says, but he thinks it's the beginning of crypto art. We'll discuss this 40:04.240 --> 40:11.680 with him. And is it okay with crypto art? What's some type of framework to think about? This is 40:11.680 --> 40:17.600 Artnom's definition. I think we're going to hear other definitions as well. But I think it's a good 40:17.600 --> 40:27.600 starting point. And he has eight parameters. I think some of them are definitely true. I think 40:27.600 --> 40:35.280 some of them are a little bit aspirational. But let's go through them. So these first five, 40:36.000 --> 40:42.960 I would say, are more about the medium itself, but it's digitally native. It is a geographic 40:42.960 --> 40:51.120 agnostic that is democratic and permissionless. And I think this is quite a big difference from 40:51.120 --> 40:57.680 the traditional fine art scene. The traditional fine art scene is highly permissioned. You do 40:57.680 --> 41:08.240 have to pass through, for better or for worse, quite strict tradition. And I think the people 41:08.240 --> 41:12.720 who are the creators as in all pre-internet businesses think they're playing a very important 41:12.720 --> 41:21.440 role in curation, it's how they preserve quality, supply, and things like that. But the 41:27.040 --> 41:34.560 NFTs aren't like that, right? Anyone can mint. And then some combination of the audience, 41:34.560 --> 41:40.160 the market, the artist will retrospectively decide if they value it or not. 41:40.160 --> 41:49.040 Decentralization, we've discussed this at length. I do think blockchains are a more decentralized 41:49.040 --> 42:00.000 way to create transport art in the off-chain system. And anonymity, pseudo-nimity, which of course 42:00.000 --> 42:06.560 has existed in the traditional art world as well. Nobody really knows who Banksy is to take a recent 42:06.560 --> 42:12.880 example, but it is more common in this space as we discussed. And so these are, let's say, 42:14.080 --> 42:23.920 platform-y type concepts. And then when we get into the substance of the world, the substance of the 42:23.920 --> 42:35.440 world, it does tend to be highly memetic. And I think this comes from its roots on the internet. 42:36.720 --> 42:45.600 And it's funny, it's like evolution. It's not exactly that you have to make memetic work to 42:45.600 --> 42:56.240 make a crypto art. It's that if something is memetic, it spreads more, it becomes more well-known, 42:56.240 --> 43:01.280 it gains more attention, it gains more social construction and say, oh, this is crypto art. 43:02.720 --> 43:07.360 And there is, it's like evolution. It's not like the way evolution works isn't that 43:08.560 --> 43:13.840 animals and plants wake up one day and say, oh, I need to evolve into a better version of myself. 43:13.840 --> 43:21.040 The way evolution works is that there's a variety of different things being tested 43:21.040 --> 43:27.120 in the environment. And some evolutionary changes are more fit for the environment and they spread 43:27.120 --> 43:35.600 further. I think this is what happens with the memetic nature of 43:35.600 --> 43:49.520 crypto art, because it is internet native. And one way to, probably the main way to get attention 43:50.080 --> 43:55.840 in an audience is this, which is somehow different than the main way to get attention. 43:55.840 --> 44:01.760 So the audience is, I don't know, the Gaussian picture, a great artist, and holds a cocktail party. 44:01.760 --> 44:07.360 And then through a variety of steps, someday you're in a museum and the art history books. 44:07.360 --> 44:10.400 And that's, of course, another way. And there's nothing wrong with that way. 44:12.400 --> 44:17.840 But it's not an internet native approach. So I think that does tend to be a memetic aspect, 44:17.840 --> 44:24.880 please. Self-referential, here he means within the crypto industry, which makes sense. I mean, 44:24.880 --> 44:35.600 these are the early works of a community that lives on blockchains, that thinks blockchains 44:35.600 --> 44:40.400 are important, that things, crypto assets are important. So it's logical that a lot of the 44:40.400 --> 44:47.920 early works touch upon that and don't touch upon, I don't know, the episode in reinforced. 44:47.920 --> 44:57.200 I say that for a reason, I'll come back to it. It's often collected by the crypto patrons, 44:57.200 --> 45:03.360 which again, makes sense to people who are most likely in the beginning to buy a token to find 45:03.360 --> 45:09.040 an NFT potentially valuable or people who previously found a Bitcoin or Ether valuable. 45:09.040 --> 45:20.080 Prioritist is more a general platform point that the intermediaries do tend to take lower 45:20.080 --> 45:26.640 take rates than in traditional art, for better or for worse. And then dankness, which is a hard 45:26.640 --> 45:37.760 concept. I'll go with Artnome's definition as a potency of expression and creativity 45:37.760 --> 45:46.160 is a good way to say it. I was thinking when I was looking at the slide, if I could think of 45:46.160 --> 45:52.240 a better way to say it, then I don't think I can't think of a better way to say it. So is this a 45:52.240 --> 46:00.080 reasonable starting point? I think Art Nome wrote this in 2018, so we're going to come back and 46:00.080 --> 46:06.320 speak to him in 2022. And a lot of these things have now changed in the broader one-to-one space. 46:06.320 --> 46:17.360 The Solgado, a fantastic photographer, minted a collection of several thousand photographs 46:17.360 --> 46:24.240 of the Amazon rainforest. That has nothing to do with this. It's not self-referential to crypto, 46:25.360 --> 46:33.200 it's not particularly pneumatic, but it's an amazing collection of work. And it's now an NFT, 46:33.200 --> 46:41.600 so that's a one-of-one with not crypto art. And it will be interesting to me to see how much 46:41.600 --> 46:52.240 crypto art can continue to hold coherency as a lot of digital art rolls in to 46:52.240 --> 47:06.160 NFTs. Because I'm of two minds of this, right? Like one version just might be as 47:07.840 --> 47:14.400 individual artists and all different artistic genres, minted NFTs. The initial 47:16.720 --> 47:21.520 approach of crypto art will get better. I mean, it's not a matter of certain to happen in 47:21.520 --> 47:29.280 any case. But the alternative point of view is that there will remain a tradition of crypto art 47:29.280 --> 47:34.720 within the broader context of one-of-one art. And we will continue to see it and it will speak to a 47:36.240 --> 47:41.760 community of collectors who are more crypto-native, which might be different than a community of 47:41.760 --> 47:48.400 collectors who are just not necessarily, their values don't necessarily align with crypto assets 47:48.400 --> 47:53.600 and that principles per se. But they do see a nice piece of digital art and they'd like to 47:53.600 --> 47:57.280 buy and it happens to be an NFT. And that's fine, but it's almost 47:58.880 --> 48:07.200 parenthetical to the underlying piece of art. So we just have to see how this evolves and we'll 48:07.200 --> 48:13.760 have to see how art did feels about this in 2022, because things have definitely changed since 2018. 48:13.760 --> 48:23.360 Yeah, so these are examples, right? Like everyone would definitely say that 48:25.040 --> 48:31.840 X-copy is crypto art oriented and Matt Caine will talk about this. We'll talk about X-copy in a bit. 48:31.840 --> 48:37.200 Hold the iPhone so too. For most, this is an amazing artist. It makes amazing NFTs 48:37.200 --> 48:52.960 about more their personal emotional journey. And are they incredible and important one-of-ones 48:52.960 --> 49:02.000 in the NFT space? Yes. Are they particularly obviously crypto art that they have to do with 49:02.000 --> 49:16.000 self-referential mimetics to crypto assets? Not really, right? So it's going to be a fuzzy border, 49:16.000 --> 49:22.320 I think in many ways. I want to take a moment to mention the Last 49:22.320 --> 49:35.040 Robbies. It's an interesting piece of NFT lore. And for those, I was very confused about these at first, 49:35.040 --> 49:41.120 when I first claimed this place. And so I'm going to use this to share some insider knowledge for 49:41.120 --> 49:54.320 people who weren't that deep in that space. And Robbie Barrat was asked, I think I have a type of 49:54.320 --> 50:03.840 there, it's an H, was asked in 2018 to, he had made a portrait that had AI generated, 50:03.840 --> 50:12.160 in part 7, it was divided into 300 frames. And it was at a Christie's summit and the participants 50:13.360 --> 50:21.040 thought like a scratch card, but if they scratched the card, they'd get the key that would allow you 50:21.040 --> 50:33.680 to claim the artwork. And the reason these became incredibly famous is most people threw them away. 50:33.840 --> 50:40.720 Most people came to this art plus tech conference, it's 2018, and NFTs hadn't done very much by that point, 50:41.360 --> 50:46.960 they're okay, I can't be bothered. They throw them through them away, that's why they're the 50:46.960 --> 50:57.520 lost Robies. And initially, 12 were claimed, I think now we're close to 40, we're in the mid-30s, 50:58.560 --> 51:03.760 and it's believed there might be another five or 10 floating out there where the participants 51:03.760 --> 51:07.440 still, know where they are, they might have not scratched them and claimed them yet they 51:07.440 --> 51:19.520 have them. But most of them are lost. And it's a story that has taken on symbolic meaning, 51:20.960 --> 51:26.320 symbolic meaning from the perspective that the traditional artwork didn't initially 51:28.240 --> 51:34.960 recognize NFTs, recognize this type of work, and literally threw them away. And the funny part is 51:34.960 --> 51:45.520 these now trade for 1 to 200, 250 ETH, so anyone who did throw them away is probably kicking themselves 51:46.080 --> 51:55.200 because it's 200,000, 300,000, 200,000, 250,000, they trade for these types of prices. Now of 51:55.200 --> 52:02.160 course if everyone had claimed all 300, well the supply would be much larger plus the story 52:02.160 --> 52:06.880 wouldn't have this type of resonance, and so they wouldn't be worth that amount of money, 52:06.880 --> 52:13.120 so it's one of those. The ideal scenario is as a participant of the conference and everyone else 52:13.120 --> 52:20.720 throws their ways, and you keep yours. And I note this because this is an interesting and 52:20.720 --> 52:26.880 seminal event in the lore of NFTs, of one of one NFTs in particular. Now Robie actually stopped 52:26.880 --> 52:33.440 minting NFT shortly afterwards for a variety of reasons, but the story has taken on a 52:35.840 --> 52:46.160 power of its own, let's say. People, now most people who don't know much about NFTs 52:46.160 --> 52:55.200 have still heard of people, and I'm very excited and honored that people will join the course later 52:55.200 --> 53:07.760 in the week. People very famously has had the largest NFT sale by a wide margin, and it's interesting 53:07.760 --> 53:17.280 because it was that NFT sale was largely because there became a competition in that option between 53:17.280 --> 53:29.440 two very rich crypto folks, which drove the price up to $69 million, but also it's important to 53:29.440 --> 53:40.400 know that like that work called Every Days was that one piece of art people every day has been 53:40.400 --> 53:49.280 making a new piece of art since 2007, which is rather incredible accomplishment. A lot of people 53:49.280 --> 53:54.160 say, oh, I don't like his art or I do like his art regardless, I use some glittery colors you like 53:54.160 --> 54:01.840 over that level of commitment every single day to come up with a new piece. And I would say 54:02.640 --> 54:08.960 these pieces do have some level of, you know, for sure they have social commentary, some of the 54:08.960 --> 54:14.320 later ones do have crypto commentary, and they obviously started before Bitcoin existed, so they're 54:14.320 --> 54:21.280 not all crypto commentary. And they were all brought together into one piece called Every Days, 54:22.240 --> 54:29.680 which is 5,000 pieces of art. So, yes, 69 million a lot of money, and it is the highest NFT sale 54:31.920 --> 54:36.080 by a wide margin. I actually think the second highest is also people's as in the 20-something 54:36.080 --> 54:43.840 million range, which was an individual piece, not like Every Days was. But it is also 5,000 54:44.480 --> 54:50.800 individual pieces of work. So, I'm going to plot my pocket calculator here. 54:50.800 --> 55:05.680 If you divide 69 million by 5,000, you get to 13,800, which is arguably not an unreasonable 55:06.880 --> 55:13.760 amount for a successful artist to have one of their pieces so far. It's just that people 55:13.760 --> 55:21.440 turned out to be a very successful artist and really worked very hard over a long period of time 55:21.440 --> 55:28.480 to create this. So, we've talked to people about this and many other things in the coming days. 55:32.560 --> 55:40.320 This caused a lot of consternation in the non-crypto world that both, oh, is this really art? Is the 55:40.320 --> 55:47.360 art good? Is this money laundering? Is this, wow, did anyone do this? But I don't know. Someone 55:47.360 --> 55:52.960 works for a decade, create over a decade, creates 5,000 pieces of art and just happens to solve 55:52.960 --> 56:01.120 them all at once. It's not quite as wild as people might think. Now, ex-copy, I think most people would 56:01.120 --> 56:15.120 agree, ex-copy is a crypto art artist. I would think, I think this is probably fair, most people, 56:15.120 --> 56:22.320 if they wanted to give you a definition, an easy definition of a crypto art, artists would 56:22.320 --> 56:33.520 point to ex-copy. It's uncontroversial that his work is in the crypto art genre. It tends to be 56:34.320 --> 56:44.800 very, it tends to be a little bit dark animated glitchy and often refers to 56:44.800 --> 56:54.160 themes that have to do with crypto art, crypto assets and so on. So on the bottom left is right 56:54.160 --> 57:05.760 click save as guy, which is a piece of art that reflects the common criticism of these that you 57:05.760 --> 57:15.760 can write click save. And so this, there's a lot of people who are not exactly sure if they're crypto 57:15.760 --> 57:23.280 art artists. Xcopy, I am pretty sure, is. And it's just amazing to see the evolution, right, 57:23.280 --> 57:37.680 like he, he worked on Tumblr is at some point he discovered cryptocurrency and NFTs and his early 57:37.680 --> 57:46.320 work would sell for $100, something like that. And recently this year, he made an open edition 57:46.320 --> 57:53.040 or anyone could mint as many as they wanted and it minted out at 23 million in 10 minutes for an 57:53.040 --> 57:58.960 open edition and his largest pieces have, or his most expensive pieces have sold in the 58:00.000 --> 58:07.920 one to eight million range. But this is also, I think, a reflection of how early we are in this 58:07.920 --> 58:18.880 movement as well, right? Like, I mean, Xcopy, who I think most people would say is a prototypical 58:18.880 --> 58:28.320 crypto art artist. A few years ago, four years ago, not 10 years ago, was an artist whose piece 58:28.320 --> 58:40.800 has sold for $100. And this has been, you know, we're in the period where this genre has taken 58:40.800 --> 58:48.400 form and taken shape and has grown from being something that a very tiny handful of people 58:48.960 --> 58:54.240 paid any attention to, too. A slightly less tiny handful of people, right? We're still, 58:54.240 --> 59:03.040 I think, in a world where if you surveyed 10,000 people in the world at large, without any 59:03.040 --> 59:09.280 particular orientation to them being crypto people, I don't know how many would know 59:09.280 --> 59:15.280 of ex-copy, but it won't be that many. And so we will see, you know, how this evolves, 59:15.280 --> 59:26.800 if it becomes, if it becomes a broader movement, and if it becomes a broader movement with the 59:26.800 --> 59:32.000 folks who were there in the early days. And so these are all things that we're going to learn 59:32.000 --> 59:46.800 along the way. This is just some data to give some context of volume of, yeah, this is volume 59:46.800 --> 59:53.680 on the major one-of-one oriented marketplaces. And so as you can see before, 59:53.680 --> 00:04.640 say, March of 2021, volume was, hey, it looks like there's nothing on the chart, but there 00:04.640 --> 00:12.000 are data points on the chart, they're just invisible. It was effectively no volume before 00:12.000 --> 00:19.280 March of 2021. It's when the first pickup happened with the first very large sales of alien crypto 00:19.280 --> 00:33.440 punks. There was a lot of activity last summer when crypto at large was very gloomy. And it's been 00:33.440 --> 00:41.840 much quieter recently. And as you're trying, I'm trying to look at super air through that data. 00:41.840 --> 00:48.000 We're kind of back, and this is how everything is in the NFT space at large, we're kind of back 00:48.000 --> 00:55.040 to the first half of 2021 for kind of super air, maybe a little bit foundation, say the first 00:55.040 --> 01:03.360 quarter of 2021, maybe a little bit higher for super air. And, you know, this is, again, it's 01:03.360 --> 01:08.400 going to be one of those very interesting topics, because people outside the space, 01:08.400 --> 01:20.880 like all you see, NFTs are just a bubble. NFTs are over. And while not making any forward-looking 01:20.880 --> 01:25.440 projections, I have no idea exactly what's going to happen. This has been the history of 01:25.440 --> 01:33.120 cryptocurrency, right? It spikes, it booms, it collapses. And when it collapses, it tends to 01:33.120 --> 01:40.000 collapse in price and volume at the same time, where people lose interest. But then it tends to 01:40.000 --> 01:48.720 come back in waves. And so this is, this is going to be more of a builder type period, 01:50.320 --> 01:55.600 where there's not automatic free money floating around. And we'll see which artists, 01:55.600 --> 02:04.560 which other application builders stick around and do interesting things in the space. 02:08.800 --> 02:11.440 Yeah, so this is interesting. If you look on the left-hand side, 02:13.920 --> 02:18.800 there has been more of a change in secondary volume, collector to collector, 02:19.360 --> 02:22.560 than there has been in primary volume. Of course, primary volume is down quite a bit, 02:22.560 --> 02:30.480 the primary volume artist to collector has not fallen to the same amount. And the number of active 02:30.480 --> 02:38.800 collectors have not fallen to the same amount. What has happened is a drop in prices. And a drop 02:38.800 --> 02:45.200 in price is both because the price of ETH has fallen, and also because the price of a lot of 02:45.200 --> 02:54.400 this artwork in ETH has also fallen. So the interesting, the underlying usage data on the right 02:56.400 --> 03:06.480 has less of a drop than the US dollar data. But anyway, you look at it, these are very small 03:06.480 --> 03:16.880 absolute numbers. These are tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of collectors. And this can mean 03:16.880 --> 03:24.560 one of many things. It could mean A, maybe this doesn't happen. I doubt that's the case, but it 03:24.560 --> 03:31.920 could mean O, or quote-unquote early, and this will pick up in a different cycle. But that might 03:31.920 --> 03:37.280 not mean that super rare or a certain notice pick up in a different cycle, maybe in a different 03:37.280 --> 03:44.560 cycle, something new picks up. And so maybe the thing that gets mass adoption hasn't been invented 03:44.560 --> 03:52.800 yet. We just don't know yet. So it's interesting to see, and I think it's interesting to see this 03:52.800 --> 04:03.840 in the context of, in some ways, I think NFTs have taken on a much bigger mind share and reaction 04:03.840 --> 04:14.640 in the world at large than their actual mathematical point. I've said this before, I said this 04:14.640 --> 04:22.480 was almost all my presentations. NFTs are about 1% of the crypto market space in terms of market 04:22.480 --> 04:29.440 capital. They certainly get more than 1% of the attention. And I suspect one of the reasons they 04:29.440 --> 04:41.520 get that type of attention is unit bias. So when Ethereum trades from 800 to 5000 or 04:41.520 --> 04:47.760 Solana from three to 100, these all sound like small numbers, and you don't think about what 04:49.040 --> 04:54.480 Dogecoin trades underneath a dollar. And so they're like, okay, well, plus the dollar, 04:54.480 --> 05:00.080 I mean, maybe that's sensible, or it's 50 bucks, maybe that's sensible. That sounds like the price 05:00.080 --> 05:06.800 of a stock. And people don't think that the market cap for those in the tens of billions of dollars 05:06.800 --> 05:13.840 through most of, through most of 2021, Doge had a larger market captain, the whole NFT space. 05:15.280 --> 05:22.720 But because NFTs have attention getting sales, this one NFT sold for 8 million, 05:22.720 --> 05:29.360 69 million, 1 million, half a million. It catches people's attention for good and for bad, 05:29.360 --> 05:33.360 that's why I'd like to learn more of this, or it catches people attention and say, oh, well, 05:33.360 --> 05:39.360 this must be fake. It must be a scam. It must not be real. How can someone pay that amount of money? 05:40.080 --> 05:44.160 But it's not really the right way to look at it. The right way to look at it is on a 05:45.040 --> 05:48.400 total market perspective. And the right way to look at it is 05:52.560 --> 05:59.520 how much intangible cultural value are we representing with NFTs in general, with one of 05:59.520 --> 06:03.520 ones in general, and this is a large number or a small number. And then it absolutely turns, 06:03.520 --> 06:08.400 it's so very small number. And so what that means is that we're arranged to be seen, 06:08.400 --> 06:11.600 but it's clearly a small number and total absolute value. 06:18.320 --> 06:24.800 Yeah, this is also interesting, right? Again, for an, this goes nicely with my PowerPoint, 06:24.800 --> 06:33.840 per all of the, oh my gosh, NFTs are very, very expensive in popular press type logic. 06:35.280 --> 06:42.960 The average NFT sold on super, super air being the quote unquote elite site behind 06:42.960 --> 06:49.840 what's highly curated, the most expensive artist looks to have spent most of the last year and a half 06:49.840 --> 06:58.640 below 5 ETH. And at some point 5 ETH might have been $15,000. Today 5 ETH is, you know, 06:58.640 --> 07:04.480 six or seven thousand dollars. Okay, I mean, these are not unusual numbers 07:05.680 --> 07:11.680 for work coming from, you know, serious artists. If you go and say, oh, I bought a piece of 07:12.560 --> 07:18.880 art from a serious artist and I paid $6,000 for it, when people are obviously going to be 07:18.880 --> 07:26.800 shocked with us, but because you do have these power law outlier sales, I think they do create 07:28.400 --> 07:32.480 perhaps a misunderstanding of how the space in general is structured. 07:33.920 --> 07:38.400 Now, as I've been done in a body mirror, which I am, I'm going to go very quickly, 07:38.400 --> 07:47.680 just to give you a little bit of background on the guests coming in this week. People, 07:47.680 --> 07:51.840 I did not repeat in the slides. Oh, as I do have a slide here, but we discussed, we don't need 07:51.840 --> 07:59.520 to discuss again. Claire Silver is an amazing artist who focuses on AI art. So in addition to 07:59.520 --> 08:05.360 all the general one-on-one art things we already discussed, we'll also discuss the AI controversy, 08:05.360 --> 08:12.560 you know, of the general type is AI art art. As we said, it happens with every single new movement 08:12.560 --> 08:24.400 so it will happen with this one. Sam Spratt is a classic one-of-one artist, makes these very 08:24.400 --> 08:30.560 tight, very evocative series. We'll talk about him. He's a pre-NFT artist as well, so I think 08:30.560 --> 08:39.520 we can talk about that and transition pre-post NFTs. Sasha does some very interesting things 08:39.520 --> 08:43.680 with poetry. I love this quote on the left, I'm going to just read it out loud. 08:44.400 --> 08:49.280 Oral language and written text were invented as time machines, data storage systems. 08:49.280 --> 08:55.120 Poetry is the original blockchain, a way to save ideas using devices, meter, rhyme, 08:55.120 --> 08:59.520 accidents, et cetera, that make them easier to remember and almost impossible to forget. 08:59.520 --> 09:02.640 I think it was my favorite quote in this whole presentation, but that was amazing. 09:02.640 --> 09:09.280 I believe that the whole is an incredible photographer. It does, 09:11.680 --> 09:16.240 you know, his most iconic work, I think, in the NFT space are the Aeroglyphs, where he has drones 09:17.200 --> 09:23.120 create light art over national landscapes, but he's done amazing things he did the National 09:23.120 --> 09:34.880 Geographic cover recently for Stonehenge. We can talk with him about NFT photography. Isaac Wright 09:34.880 --> 09:45.600 Drift has another incredible story. Drift has climbed a lot of very high buildings and taken 09:45.600 --> 09:50.480 incredible photographs of those buildings and was put in jail for this and then was released. 09:50.480 --> 09:58.320 And so I think it was going to be a lot of things to discuss, not just about NFTs itself, 09:58.320 --> 10:06.160 but about non-conventionality and society, and we'll see how those things all come together. 10:07.440 --> 10:10.320 Blessing, that was very interesting. 10:10.320 --> 10:26.240 And so it's a different constraint. Constraint to a phone for the photography and then it's also 10:26.240 --> 10:35.040 been today's NFTs. Priyanka is going to tell us about the borough. The borough is a Southeast Asian 10:35.040 --> 10:41.440 collective who are in the NFT space. And so, I think it's a really interesting topic, 10:41.440 --> 10:48.080 both with Blessing and with Priyanka. What do NFTs mean for internationalization, right? I mean, 10:48.800 --> 10:57.840 would the artists, let's say, in the borough or in South Asia? Would they have had access to 10:57.840 --> 11:08.080 a collector like me? I don't live in India, travel to India, but I don't live in India. 11:08.080 --> 11:11.680 If they were in a gallery in India, I'd almost certainly not know about them. 11:13.120 --> 11:17.680 But online in the NFT space, I've collected from some 11:17.680 --> 11:27.920 members of the borough and this global environment and seeing people from around the world, 11:27.920 --> 11:33.040 different cultures, different approaches. I think it's one of my favorite things about the NFT 11:33.040 --> 11:41.120 space and just I also feel very new. I think at the very, very, very elite level of collectors 11:41.120 --> 11:47.200 and artists, the people who can hop on a plane and go to a show in Hong Kong and Singapore and 11:47.200 --> 11:53.920 New Delhi and New York and the artists who have enough of a following that people will get them 11:53.920 --> 11:58.640 into those shows. Yeah, sure, you could collect internationally before, but that's a very elite 11:59.360 --> 12:07.680 environment, a more normal environment. For even people who, you know, take this type of stuff 12:07.680 --> 12:13.360 seriously, it's much more plausible to collect from around the world, to see different perspectives 12:13.360 --> 12:21.920 from around the world in the NFT space than it is in the traditional art system. And Ena, 12:23.040 --> 12:24.880 you know, we're going to talk about a couple of things. 12:28.000 --> 12:36.320 Yes, her art has some really interesting ideas on how NFT art and one-on-one art can also be used 12:36.320 --> 12:40.960 for social change and so we'll see how those things play out. So, I mean, it's going to be 12:40.960 --> 12:46.720 an incredible set of folks. We also have Art None, who I think is very relevant to the topic. 12:47.280 --> 12:55.120 So, hopefully, what we managed to accomplish today is you and me will go into these other 12:56.720 --> 13:01.360 interviews or panels or see how it serves them with a common initial framework. 13:02.480 --> 13:05.680 And then, hopefully, through the course of the next two or three, because we will enhance our 13:05.680 --> 13:09.280 framework. We will learn some things. We'll come back and see how we can enrich it. 13:09.280 --> 13:18.000 And then kind of pull this together. So, I think, yeah, that's it for me in this session. 13:21.280 --> 13:26.080 I guess I could take some questions. I have a little bit of time. I can take some questions. 13:26.080 --> 13:41.120 Let me just check if the team wants to feed me any questions that have come up. Give me one second. 13:41.120 --> 13:58.160 Some questions. If there are, we'll go for there. 14:11.120 --> 14:26.560 Okay, I'm seeing a few questions. One question was, 14:28.960 --> 14:34.720 to get my view on digital collectibles versus NFTs as a term, I ended up discussing that. 14:34.720 --> 14:44.320 Anyway, same thing, Reddit, and why they feared the word NFT. Oh, they feared the word NFT because 14:45.280 --> 14:51.200 NFTs got a lot of very aggressive, bad publicity in the mainstream press. 14:51.200 --> 15:06.800 To me, shockingly so. The general approach was end-to-end negative on every dimension. 15:08.960 --> 15:20.080 And for no particularly obvious reason. It's just the type of reason that people don't like 15:20.080 --> 15:27.200 new things. They were possibly some legitimate questions about environmentalism, which again, 15:27.200 --> 15:31.360 I don't want to get into this. It's a complicated topic. I'm not convinced the proof of work isn't 15:31.360 --> 15:40.960 that is positive also. But in any case, you had non proof of work, blockchain is the whole time. 15:40.960 --> 15:47.120 And either on an absolutely well-communicated pathway to proof of stake. So anyone who was saying, 15:47.120 --> 15:57.280 oh, well, NFTs are going to destroy the environment at best not well-educated in the topic, 15:57.280 --> 16:05.440 and at worst, you know, misleading. Now that either is proof of stake, 16:05.440 --> 16:10.320 if it was on a proof of stake system, obviously traditional art is worse from the environment than 16:10.320 --> 16:18.560 NFTs by a gigantic marsh. Making something physically, taking it to an art convention, 16:18.560 --> 16:24.960 flying people there to see it, running a gigantic concrete building, a museum with 16:25.600 --> 16:32.240 HVAC and security and people in order to see it, flying to New York to go to the moment. 16:32.240 --> 16:37.280 All of these things are like orders of magnitude, more carbon intensive than NFTs. 16:37.280 --> 16:46.640 And so people who, in theory, a month ago, were super, super upset about the environmental 16:46.640 --> 16:54.240 impact of NFTs. If they really, really, that was the real issue, one would assume today they'd 16:54.240 --> 16:59.760 be promoting all artists to use NFTs and be trying to shut down or limit physical art. 16:59.760 --> 17:08.800 I haven't seen a single person say this. And so it makes me wonder if the real reason was 17:09.840 --> 17:16.560 environmentalism in this case, or something else. You know, the rest of the rest of 17:16.560 --> 17:23.600 the criticism was, I don't know, just wild. Mostly it was over the bucket of, oh, I don't know, 17:23.600 --> 17:29.280 there's a, there's the normal crypto bucket. It must be money laundering. I mean, this, 17:30.480 --> 17:35.440 it's the answer to everything planned. People don't know why something's happening. And 17:36.320 --> 17:43.360 in other words, effectively it's, they're too expensive. But if they're too expensive, 17:44.480 --> 17:48.480 it just means collectors are overpaying artists. 17:48.480 --> 17:56.800 But it struck me as a very strange thing for the mainstream press and the art press to be 17:56.800 --> 18:03.200 really upset that artists are now getting paid more money. I mean, it was not obviously the case 18:03.200 --> 18:08.560 to me two or three years ago that the world of large was concerned that artists were making 18:08.560 --> 18:13.120 too much money and we had to cut down on their money. The world of large has always been concerned 18:13.120 --> 18:19.200 that art and culture tends to be underfunded and artists tend to be underfunded. And suddenly 18:19.200 --> 18:23.920 there's a mechanism where they're being very well funded. And somehow this is also a problem. 18:25.920 --> 18:31.600 Even though, unlike traditional art, right, the, the funding is creating at a minimum, 18:31.600 --> 18:36.880 a visual public good, you can see the art everywhere. And in the case of CC zero, an actual public good. 18:36.880 --> 18:56.320 And so this, this, I think is the general question of coping mechanism when something new happens 18:56.320 --> 19:03.520 and you don't understand it, you'll complain that you're, I think all the things is like, 19:03.520 --> 19:08.880 I don't like this. I'm starting there emotionally. I don't like this. And now I'm going to think 19:08.880 --> 19:16.480 about the reasons that I don't like it. The one that I should probably find this article before 19:16.480 --> 19:24.560 it vanishes, right around the people's sale, there was a newspaper article being New York 19:24.560 --> 19:29.920 Times art editor, which went on and on and on of like crypto art isn't any good and maybe it's not 19:29.920 --> 19:34.080 real art. It's like you've kind of been kidding me. How come when you're having this discussion 19:34.080 --> 19:40.320 in 2021? The whole art movement you're going to decide is not actually art because, 19:41.120 --> 19:47.680 I don't know, it's too key. It's too man of the people. It's something, something like that was 19:47.680 --> 20:01.680 the argument, which is obviously absurd, right? Sothe net effect of all this 20:02.560 --> 20:06.640 was that for a lot of civilians and if he's got a bad name? 20:09.200 --> 20:14.640 And the reason I got a bad name, I think is not hugely necessarily something that if 20:14.640 --> 20:21.520 T space the wrong thing, there are people who did wrong things in the space, but the press on NFTs 20:21.520 --> 20:29.520 was unrelentingly bad, a relentless leader. And so I didn't understand it. I didn't. 20:30.560 --> 20:37.200 I couldn't imagine someone feeling this way about Bitcoin, where the, because Bitcoin had a bunch 20:37.200 --> 20:43.920 of assumptions that you should have a deflationary currency or a fixed currency or a gold standard 20:43.920 --> 20:49.520 based currency. And I can imagine someone in from a traditional macroeconomic perspective saying, 20:49.520 --> 20:54.160 no, this will be very bad for society, because we need to be able to use national sovereign 20:54.160 --> 20:58.880 currencies to manage the business cycle and we could for employment have the very sophisticated 20:58.880 --> 21:02.560 counterargument that most people don't make, but at least some sophisticated people made it. 21:04.240 --> 21:12.480 Why there was a very negative reaction to a bunch of people want to give a bunch of artists a lot of 21:12.480 --> 21:21.120 ether. This seems like an unambiguous societal good, and it should have been celebrate. But 21:21.920 --> 21:28.960 this is where we are. I think we're going to go through a phase where a lot of companies want to 21:28.960 --> 21:36.720 say it's digital collectibles, it's digital assets, it's all of these things. I think it's fine. I 21:36.720 --> 21:41.200 think it's natural. It's how they get their feet wet. I'll make a prediction. I'll make your 21:41.200 --> 21:46.720 prediction in front of hundreds of thousands of people. In the end, we will use the term NFTs. 21:48.000 --> 21:57.840 I remember this phase with cryptocurrencies at large when was out of 2014 to 2018 21:59.200 --> 22:06.160 where everyone said, okay, well, we like this idea. It's good. But we need to talk about blockchains, 22:06.160 --> 22:12.400 not crypto assets. Crypto assets are scary. I talk about blockchains. Blockchains are not scary. 22:13.120 --> 22:18.560 And if it's an enterprise blockchain from IBM, even better, that sounds very not scary at all. 22:19.680 --> 22:27.520 And this happened in the 1990s when there was the internet, and it was uncontrolled and 22:27.520 --> 22:32.240 uncontrollable and scary. Was it okay? We like these ideas about the internet. We like them. They're 22:32.240 --> 22:39.840 nice. But we're going to make us the big telcos, the information superhighway, which will be this 22:39.840 --> 22:47.200 controlled network, and that's going to be better. And this can go on for several years, and I think 22:47.200 --> 22:59.440 it will go for several years, where people will want to use more comforting terms, less perceived 22:59.440 --> 23:13.040 scary terms, so that people can feel more comfortable with them. I think in the end, 23:14.080 --> 23:21.760 none of the terms that I have seen actually accurately describe NFTs. What they describe is 23:22.400 --> 23:29.200 a specific application of NFTs that could also be implemented in many cases, not as an NFT. 23:29.200 --> 23:38.320 And so it's fine. I don't mind people using them. I think it might be a necessary phase 23:38.320 --> 23:47.440 in the development and adoption cycle. But I don't think that's where we end up in the long run, 23:47.440 --> 23:54.400 because every one of them is incorrect. And the correct term for the technology, 23:54.400 --> 23:59.680 that is a non-fungible token traded on a decentralized blockchain, is NFT. It's not 23:59.680 --> 24:05.760 digital collectibles, it's not digital assets. It's not digital art, it's not any of these things. 24:05.760 --> 24:11.920 It's NFT. So we'll see. I mean, I don't mind either way, however, it ends up in the long run, 24:11.920 --> 24:18.320 is okay. But it's my prediction. But this prediction will be true in, I don't know, 24:18.320 --> 24:22.880 three to five years, not in three to five months. We're going to go through a long phase for a 24:22.880 --> 24:28.400 bunch of big companies and governments are going to want to take some of the ideas and theories about 24:28.400 --> 24:34.560 NFTs, sometimes implement them in something with not an NFT at all, sometimes actually do an NFT, 24:34.560 --> 24:43.840 but hide the NFT part, because they're going to feel it's less scary. And that's fine. But I do 24:43.840 --> 24:49.120 think it then will end up with NFTs. It is certainly the case that I'm going to keep talking about 24:49.120 --> 24:54.960 NFTs. You will not see me switch to digital collectibles. I don't think it's scary. I think 24:54.960 --> 25:01.920 people are grown adults. I think people can learn new things. And I do think the press does have kind 25:01.920 --> 25:11.280 of a reflexive negative reaction to technology. And they tend to delay a little bit the developer 25:11.280 --> 25:18.160 to go into this way, but eventually inevitable things are inevitable. So I think that's what's 25:18.160 --> 25:24.240 going to happen here as well. Okay, I need to wrap up here. I think we got to the questions. 25:25.600 --> 25:34.640 Thank you everyone again for joining. Keep an eye on the UNIC metaverse Twitter account 25:35.440 --> 25:42.800 for when the new sessions are when they're able to release course materials. And they are working 25:42.800 --> 25:47.760 on ultimately a website where all this stuff will be found in one place. And so hopefully 25:47.760 --> 25:51.760 two or three weeks from now, this is going to get even easier. And you can just go to a web page 25:51.760 --> 25:57.600 and see all these things. But for the time being, I think Twitter and Discord are the places to go. 25:57.600 --> 26:27.440 So as always, thank you and I'll see you back in the metaverse.