THE FIRST VIRTUAL EXHIBITION BY THE STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM
CURATED BY
- Dimitri Ozerkov
- Anastasia Garnova
THE DIGITAL FUTURE HAS ARRIVED. EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD HAS A DIGITAL TWIN. THE OLD AND NEW WILL SOON BE UNITED IN THE DIGITAL METAVERSE. ART IS BEING SOLD, BOUGHT AND BECOMING A COLLECTIBLE IN A NEW FORMAT, THE NFT.
Both geographically and in terms of meaning, the Hermitage exhibition The Ethereal Aether is closely linked to the Stock Exchange building created by Jean-François Thomas de Thomon, whose “cloud world” is used to exhibit the most modern digital works. Art in the blockchain is directly related to cryptocurrencies and crypto exchanges. Consequently the virtual space of the historical Exchange is the perfect platform to talk about NFTs and cryptography in a historical-philosophical context. We found the name of the exhibition in the poetry of Fyodor Tyutchev, which makes it possible to toy with the word “aether” in its different senses: the original Greek, traditional, physical, and modern cryptocurrency.
The soul would want to be a star,
But not at the time when the luminaries shine
From the midnight sky like living eyes,
And look at the sleepy world of the earth, —
But rather in the day when, concealed by the smoke of
The scorching rays of the sun,
They blaze brightly like gods
In the aether, pure and ethereal.
All the works at the exhibition are dedicated to disclosing and explaining the nature of the blockchain and NFT. The project will launch the creation of the “Celestial Hermitage” – a new museum in the virtual noosphere, which in future will be transformed into a digital branch of the actual museum. The objective of the “Celestial Hermitage” is to preserve, study and supplement our digital cultural heritage: metaobjects from virtual reality, including those initially existing in digital form (and not simply digitised from the analogue world).
In spring 2021 a key event happened in the digital art world: Christieʼs auction house sold a work of the artist Beeple Everydays: The First 5000 Days for the record amount of $69.3 million. This work consists of 5,000 pictures combined in a 10 MB file. The work was bought by the crypto investor MetaKovan from Singapore, who creates virtual spaces. After this transaction, NFTs attracted the interest of major players from the real art market. Critics started contemplating the advantages of the new format, artists began building plans on how to fit in with the new agenda and access the market, while major auction houses – Sothebyʼs, Christieʼs, Phillips – started selling works for cryptocurrencies and exhibiting digital artists, using drops, collectibles, and editions. Summer 2021 was marked by a real NFT boom: disputes would rage every day in the then-popular social network Clubhouse between curators and artists on the future of digital art. It was then that we decided that the Hermitage should hold an exhibition on this topic.
Digital art based on file exchanges started to develop intensively in the mid-2000s. In 2014 one of the pioneers of this trend Kevin McCoy created the world’s first NFT – the work Quantum, a psychedelic opalescent octagon. Artists working with new technologies started thinking of ways to bring digital works to the market, assigning them a price and preserving their uniqueness and authorship: for if a work exists as a digital copy, it may by definition be copied an unlimited number of times.
When we photograph an image from a canvas using a camera and then try to reproduce it and transfer it to another canvas, we understand that we are not dealing with the original, but instead with a copy. However, if we put a picture online that had been drawn on a computer, it immediately loses its uniqueness, because in digital art each copy is an exact reproduction of the original. How do we make sure that the file retains the copyright, and that its creator receives royalties and can file a claim to retain rights to the work?
In 2014, at the Seven on Seven conference Kevin McCoy and tech entrepreneur Anil Dash presented Monegraph – a blockchain tool which makes it possible to track digital authorship and enable the creators of new works to retain rights to them. Using this system, you can understand where the original digital file is stored and track the transfer of rights to the file from owner to owner. Each NFT object can be “printed” as a unique copy and transmitted to another person, transferring the work from one virtual wallet to another one. NFTs work on the basis of а smart contract (8) which implies that the artists and the platform receive a specific percentage of each subsequent sale.
For example, the animation Nyan Cat, which has already been viewed by approximately 200 million people on YouTube alone, is a pink cat flying through space, emitting strange sounds and leaving a rainbow trail behind. Nyan Cat has an author (9) who posted a link to the original prototype file online. When the value of this file reached 300 ethers (at that time, approximately $750,000), it became clear that this was the start of a serious game.
How do NFTs change attitudes to contemporary art? Mankind of the 21st century more and more frequently does not want or is unable to go to actual museums or store at home “dusty pictures” which have to be restored, insured, transported, and hung on walls. To keep a collection of physical, analogue art, you need to have a duly furnished storage space and the proper staff. Ownership of non-digital art is causing more and more headaches for today’s owner. At the same time, the NFT format makes it possible to change the status of an object easily. When a collector buys a physical picture at an auction and tells friends, the first thing they do is to show the painting on their smartphone. And then they’re asked: “And where is the actual picture?” The response: “They’re processing and packaging it right now. Then they will bring it over, provided that there are no problems at customs. However, you can look at it right now.” NFT lets you do the same thing; the only difference is that the original picture, which has to go through several stages in the analogue space, is no longer needed. You already have the picture – in a digital wallet that can be managed through your smartphone.
Cryptopunks are simple pixel-based pictures that the artists from the collective Larva Labs have been creating since June 2017. Recently the price of these files also started rising abruptly. Now some of them cost more than a million dollars. One might think that this is madness. Who is buying them? On the one hand, these are participants in the crypto industry -individuals who made a lot of money from cryptocurrencies. On the other hand – these are people of the future who live in the digital reality that they access through their smartphones. They have decided that virtual life is far more important than anything else. They are more interested about how they look in social networks than aspects of their physical presence in the analogue world.
Artefacts dating back to the creation of the contemporary internet are extremely successful. For example, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold the NFT of his first tweet (“just setting up my twttr”) for almost $3 million. The same thing recently happened with the original code of the World Wide Web, which was sold as an NFT at a Sotheby’s auction. It is highly likely that the source codes of social networks, payment and gaming systems, and well-known logos will appear very soon on the market: today all these digital assets are being reinterpreted as part of modern culture. This is a gradual process: at some point we believed that only great books and great artists would have a certain value and be unique; this was followed by children’s books, then films and video art were also added to the list. Today, the influences of Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, and Anselm Kiefer, as well as cartoons for adolescents, can be identified in the performances of Kayne West. This means that analogue contemporary art has become definitively part of our flesh and blood. And we are moving further, whether you like it or not.
Look around you. Cars have stickers with their owners’ social network user names. Their travel around the map of the city has been transformed into a computer “driving game” in real space and time. After winning the US Open in September 2021, the tennis player Daniil Medvedev fell down on court, stuck his tongue out and started imitating a “dead fish”. Millions watched the live broadcast. “Only legends will understand”, the tennis player explained afterwards. “What I did after the match – this is L2 + left”. On the FIFA computer game on PlayStation, this keyboard combination is used to celebrate a goal scored in cyber football.
These days it is simpler and quicker to use an online search engine than to access the information in some other way. We have shelved paper-based dictionaries and encyclopaedias, other than the most specialised ones. However, soon they will also be replaced by software. We no longer go to libraries, for we can find almost everything online and instantly see it on our screens at any time, day or night.
Once the first stage of the valuation of assets and assignment of rights to them had passed, it was the turn of art. We believe that the next development stage in art will involve demand solely for digital creativity in line with the change in generations. New NFT formats, faster and with higher capacity, will appear.
The artists of the 1920s taught us that art lives in every single individual, while the artists of the 1960s taught us that everything can be perceived as art. Contemporary people are more and more interested in and want to own objects from their childhood and youth: cartoons, advertising, GIF, memes – everything considered at one time marginal, and then manifestations of culture that were so dear to one’s heart. The things of childhood and youth are remembered forever. Research is now being conducted into advertising clips as a key part of our cultural memory. Mankind holds in reserve numerous fascinating digital assets, which are now more and more frequently attracting the attention of artists and collectors.
Interest in digital art intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of people sat at home for months on end and only communicated online. The museums were closed, and the idea of acquiring one’s own virtual collection stopped looking irrelevant. This is exactly when Time magazine identified with the new trend, offering its own cover for sale as an NFT: “Is Fiat Dead?” created in 2021 specially for auction on the (16) SuperRare. The cover was dedicated to the opposition of cryptocurrencies and traditional money and was a continuation of the series of questions from other Time covers: “Is God Dead?” (1966) and “Is Truth Dead?” (in 2017 after the inauguration of Donald Trump).
Today, when the commotion of the first successes of digital art has abated slightly, this naturally leads to the question: what will happen now to traditional, analogue works of art: paintings, drawings, engravings? Is it really possible that they will no longer be needed and will be cast onto the scrapyard of history? In this context, it is interesting to recall the burning of a Banksy work arranged by the blockchain company Injective Protocol in 2021. It paid $95,000 to the New York gallery Taglialatella for a Banksy engraving that mocks collectors spending vast amounts of money on works of art (with the laconic inscription: “I canʼt believe you morons actually buy this shit”). They scanned the work, packaged it in NFT, and publicly burned the paper original, uploading a video recording of this event on YouTube. The NFT with the engraving was offered for sale in a cryptocurrency auction, where it was sold for approximately $400,000 – furthermore the price rose precipitately specifically due to the destruction of the physical art work. This incident (an exception to the rule) confirms the hypothesis that analogue and digital art will continue to coexist, but competition between the two will become more entertaining.
Prior to the stunt with the burning of the engraving, it looked as if Banksy was the main nonconformist artist of our time, who simply spends his time drawing ironic pictures at night on the walls of cities and mocks the contemporary art world. By destroying his work, Injective Protocol effectively repeated Banksy’s own stunt: in 2018 his famous Girl with Balloon (2006) was sold at a London auction, but immediately after the sale and the final hammer confirming sale, the work concealed a shredder which shredded half of the work in several seconds. In this way Banksy demonstrated at the time his attitude to the art market. Three years later, also at a Sotheby’s auction, the work was sold at a price several times higher. It is worth noting that the arsonist of the engraving from Injective Protocol had a reproduction of Girl with Balloon on his hoody.
Today some experts believe that the rebel Banksy is simply a participant on the art market like anyone else and is playing by the rules. Will NFT technology manage to overturn these rules in its favour and show that real works will no longer be needed? Is NFT art a revolution that will overthrow the art world, or just another facet of an endlessly inflatable art bubble? We believe that it is the former, but still argue amongst ourselves.
NFTs are bought and sold on online marketplaces that attract a community of interested artists and collectors. Should NFTs be rapidly manufactured and sold? Or should one hype up the artists making NFTs? Or should one buy stakes in the platforms selling NFTs? Or do business with the exchanges connected to these platforms? Today art dealers like discussing what will happen to analogue art galleries: will they die or switch to the new format?
Old art was frequently interested in moral issues. Then followers of the avant-garde declared that an artist was by definition amoral: he should act however he wanted. Meanwhile the role of the moralist idea was replaced by the actual art form. In the 20th century the cult of the abstract triumphed – one merely has to recall the works of Wassily Kandinsky or Paul Klee. The measured pace of morals was replaced by the speed of movement (see Marinetti’s car flying into a muddy ditch) and the swiftness of decision-making. A work of art was reinterpreted as continuation of the will of the artist or the language of their body: any behaviour by the “author” automatically becomes a work of art. Art stopped being connected to manual work. The touch of the author’s hand, the telling brushstroke – all this gradually began to lose value. In the world of NFT, everything is completely different: the author “died” a long time ago (19); only anonymous characters remain, who receive royalties on anonymous wallets. Morals and form are no longer relevant. Only the fact of ownership and the hype around such ownership are important. The focus is on the person who owns a specific file – for example, take this pointless cat – and one can say: “By the way, this is my cat for a million dollars.”
A close-fought battle is underway in the art community, and it is not at all clear who will win: the great artists of the 20th and 21st centuries who are only now discovering the new digital reality and accessing it through the digitisation of their analogue works as NFT – or young, vigorous NFT artists who from the very outset have been working only in digital? Will the democratic market, built on the principle of self-organisation, win out, or will curators with their own programmes? Old galleries with a reputation or completely new sales markets? It is clear to us that platforms need curators who will select the NFT works and assemble online exhibitions and auctions from such works.
The art market is not the only party interested in the NFT format: so is show business and big sport. The case of the official marketplace of the National Basketball Association – NBA Top Shot – is indicative. Collectors have always sought out basketball cards with pictures of athletes (collectibles). Now they are being replaced by video cards documenting key moments of the most memorable matches – for example, when NBA star Lebron James threw a three-pointer in the final seconds. The collection is stored in the Top Shot system, where you can register and acquire these video cards. Unlike art sale platforms, this concerns solely the collection of digital objects costing a couple of hundred thousand dollars.
Major brands are also expressing an interest in NFT. For example, in 2019 Lоuis Vuitton arranged a collaboration with the gaming company Riot Games: LV’s designers created a branded suitcase carrying the world championship cup in the game “League of Legends”. Recently, Louis Vuitton launched “Louis the Game”, with some of the NFT prizes created by the artist Beeple. Why then is it important for a fashion house such as LV to be represented in this industry? Its top managers understand that today’s valuables are primarily virtual. It is more important for today’s young people to own a virtual object than a real one (22).
Today big virtual worlds operating on the blockchain have been created – for example, Decentraland. Here users buy land plots, build houses and decorate them with virtual works of art. They also have virtual museums. These are platforms with significant levels of traffic, recouping costs through the sale of significant amounts of advertising space. Previously a business sought to lay its hands on e-mail accounts and buy up all the domains with its name. Today they are buying square metres on virtual platforms to build shops and boutiques there. Online events are also becoming more and more popular. For example, in April 2020 more than 10 million players watched rapper Travis Scott give a concert in the computer game Fortnite, lasting about 10 minutes. In the real world, so many spectators would not have been able to watch it. And this is only the start.
We are confident that the area of digital art, NFT in particular, will develop in incredible ways, and that it can look forward to a great future – safe, smart and fascinating.
Dmitri Ozerkov (@dimitriozerkov)
Anastasia Garnova (@digitalmadonna)
With the participation of neural networks
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqqmMKFRdx4
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20211215054902/https://celestialhermitage.ru/en/
