Replicant Art vs Sublimation Art
Our perception of NFT art is guided by social media influencers who generate excitement about a few projects. But what should we really be looking for, if we are collecting authentic art?
French art critic Jean Lescure said: “Knowing [in art] must therefore be accompanied by an equal capacity for forgetting knowing. Non-knowing is not a form of ignorance but a difficult transcendence of knowledge.”
In other words, Lescure is saying we should accept the moment in viewing art when we are not sure what we are looking at and accept that a new form a knowledge must come to us through some kind of non-intellectual work in order for us to understand it.
How often does any of that happen when we look at art on the blockchain? These days in blockchain art, we are mostly caught up in a cycle of economic “Fear of Missing Out,” led by social media influencers that push agendas of anonymous teams and insider selling and trading.
I call this behavior Replicant Collecting.
As a replicant collector, one is not making choices about an art piece based on a personal experience with some kind of transcendent or sublime interaction with the art object. One simply is copying the cult-like buying behaviour of others in the hoard.
Contemporary Replicant NFT Market Activity Looks Like This
Influencers use hype tactics and essentialism to broadcast aspiration myths about money and the NFT market, like when Cozomo de Medici talks about Xcopyart only as a way of talking about money motives, or when Franklinisbored obsessively and repetitively comments on how much he earns as he flips Bored Ape Yacht Club apes.
This kind of narrative generates a psychosis or hallucination about art’s connection to profit and value
This psychosis goes viral, because many are in dire straits, working one or more jobs, trying to do well for themselves or their family. They are gambling. One cannot say their motive is an appreciation of art.
An all or nothing psychology prohibits them from examining what it is they are buying
This hype psychosis rapidly creates replicants (people with human need and desire, who derive pleasure from the world through aesthetic contact with symbols and meaning but who are empty-headed because critical functions have been turned off to avoid losing out)
The replicants become focused on things like early mints and whitelists, herd behaviour ensues
They begin to distrust anything that doesn’t look like their NFT
Collectors and buyers of art do not see the art at all, they see the window of opportunity
A portal opens in the Web, and instead of meaning being delivered, it’s like the escape hatch in a spaceship, out goes all their money into the void of some galactic wallet on the blockchain
Influencer bags get filled that fund more projects that they buy and then offer narratives for as they sell more and generate more return for themselves
What does this mean for the culture that a more sincere blockchain art is hiding in?
Influencers essentially meme non-reflective non-questioning purchase behaviour into existence
This creates extraordinary inflation in non-relevant, empty objects, or NFTs that have no value because they are generated simply to be gamed.
In fact, rapidly increasing prices and inflated values are a signal that you are being had
Real artists, who are learning how to use smart contracts are trying to ape this behaviour and their art and craftsmanship goes missing, or they flee to other blockchains or they block and unfollow their friends and confidantes \
A different class of art, that I call the Hidden Renaissance Art, goes unnoticed mostly because it does not rely on this hype cycle and because it requires that the buyer or collector of the work interact with the art and the blockchain in a way that requires real thinking.
So… How can you tell what is real? I’ve come up with a model that I am sure will remain the same over time, though it may have parts added to it.
The Four Questions We Must Ask to Find Hidden Renaissance Art
1 Does the expression or form of the art comment on its medium in some way?
2 Is the artist's work create a sense of familiarity about a topic or a feature of the self without directly representing something the audience is already familiar with? In other words, does one experience the phenomenon of something specific to one’s humanity but experiencing it in a new way?
3 Is there a confusion in the reception of the artist by the current community? Are they not quite sure what to make of what that person is doing? Is there disagreement about the cause and effect of her / his work?
4 Does understanding the work require a new vocabulary that takes time to create?
These hidden renaissance pieces are not evenly distributed, because they are very hard to find. Most of what makes blockchain art what it is is under the surface. It’s in the contract language, and it’s in the work that happens as one is discovering the art.
I have laced the article with examples of what I call Hidden Renaissance art. I will end with another one.
It is created by a developer named Dovetail, who works with a group called Capsule21.
It’s called a mememe, and it’s an abstract expressionist visual presentation of the wallet owner’s transaction identity. Here is mine:
A few things happen in this interaction that make this Hidden Renaissance art.
The owner of the wallet must create his or her own biography
The owner of the wallet sets his or her own price for the “worth” of the mememe
The owner of the wallet must decide whether they want to be the person who pays the most in the current rankings of the buyers to secure a physical copy of this work
The algorithm then reads the “digital markers” of your transaction history and as you mint the piece it assigns color values to this “self’s” experience
Dovetail, on this work: “These digital markers of identity are you. In the fantasy future of ETH-maxis, your address is you in the same way the government views you as your social security number. It's a record.”
“Interestingly, when choosing your "web3 identity" in the form of a PFP collection NFT, you put in work to find the one you like best.”
This is a true commentary on blockchain as a medium and on identity as it relates to this medium. It’s truly using art to create a commentary on a new form of expression and enabling that very expression at the same time.
I’ll end there.
Capsule 21 is a good place to start to explore the blockchain as it relates to art, or art as it relates to blockchain.