Each technology is a blank canvas in the initial stage: from the Internet to the blockchain, to today’s NFT.
Original Title: “NFT Art-A Watershed Moment in Art History”
Written by: Mia Deng, Partner of Dragonfly Capital
In art history, the emergence of a new medium is always accompanied by the birth of a new genre. Before the invention of photography, artists mostly pursued the realism of painting: recording the sights seen by the naked eye in the most accurate way. After the birth of photography technology, the artist turned his attention to subjective experience and thinking consciousness. Impressionist artists including Monet used stippling and other techniques to depict the artist’s inner perception.
Image: Vermeer’s “The Maid Pouring Milk” and Monet’s “Water Lilies”
This allows us to look back at the rise of NFT art today. Many people are confused about it: what does it mean? Why does it arise?
We believe that NFT art originated from another technological revolution in the art field: the Internet.
From a financial point of view, art is like any other commodity—its value depends on the price that collectors are willing to pay. In the past few centuries, physical galleries and auction houses were the main places where art transactions took place. However, the traditional trading system is mainly based on physical works such as paintings and sculptures, which is not suitable for digital art.
There are two reasons for this.
The Internet is only a few decades old, and so is digital art (VR/animation/programming art). The business model of traditional galleries is formed around physical space. Although galleries have begun to incorporate this type of work into curatorial exhibitions, digital art is still only an accessory, and traditional display modes cannot be used for it.
One of the constant suspicions of digital art is that you can simply copy and paste digital files-it does not have the scarcity and uniqueness of physical art in the traditional sense.
Since the traditional art trading model is not suitable for digital art, there are very few markets it forms. As there is no established market, artists’ motivation to create digital art is very low. This creates a cold start problem: the lack of a market suppresses the creative spirit of artists (enthusiastic artists still share their works on platforms such as Instagram, but most people cannot make money from these works).
NFT is a global property rights system based on the premise that any electronic document should also be valuable. An NFT existing on the public chain can guarantee the uniqueness and scarcity of the work. Second, the openness of the blockchain provides cross-border mobility for works, expanding the collector group to any corner of the world (because digital culture itself is global). From the buyer’s point of view, NFT democratizes the collection of art: as long as you have an Internet connection, you can enjoy the same collection rights as those in the gallery world. These are not available in the current market for digital art.
The emergence of NFT has been criticized by many traditional art systems, and they worry that NFT platforms will replace galleries. This is an unnecessary worry. The invention of photography did not replace realistic painting, and Airbnb did not replace the hotel industry. The universe of NFT art will exist in parallel with the traditional art world. The fact is that we have seen many galleries and auction houses including Sotheby’s and Christie’s actively participating in this field.
Don’t NFT have a lot of bubbles now? Yes it is! But this is a natural internal logic of the development of the virtual currency industry-the birth of a new market makes many creators and collectors eager to try. Over time, the industry itself will develop a better understanding of the balance between pricing and supply and demand. Just as only a few works in the long river of art have been written into history, so will NFT art.
What we have witnessed in the past few months is a shift in art history’s paradigm. And this is just the beginning. We also need a better product infrastructure, the popularization of collectors and creators, and the in-depth participation of more art institutions to eliminate the separation between traditional art and the NFT industry.
Today, we are honored to announce that TR Lab (Tabula Rasa Lab), a new NFT art distribution and collection platform incubated and invested by Dragonfly, has been officially established. We collaborated with Li Xin (Christie’s Global Non-Executive Vice Chairman) and the founders of Artsy, RAM Shanghai Bund Art Museum, and ART 021 (one of the largest art fairs in Asia) to establish the NFT art platform TR Lab. The first released work was created by an internationally renowned artist and will be available in May. More details will be announced later.
trlab.io
The full name of TR is Tabula Rasa, which means “blank slate” in Latin. Each technology is a blank canvas in the initial stage: from the Internet to the blockchain, to today’s NFT. Their form and value depend on the artist’s creation. TR Lab is committed to helping creators better understand and use this “blank slab”.
Whether you are a creator, art institution, collector or developer, we welcome you to contact the team team@trlab.io .
Note: Thanks to Li Xin, Xu Mengchen, Haseeb Qureshi, Lynette Lee, Celia Wan for their contributions and feedback on this article.
Disclaimer: As a blockchain information platform, the articles published on this site only represent the author’s personal views, and have nothing to do with the position of ChainNews. The information, opinions, etc. in the article are for reference only, and are not intended as or regarded as actual investment advice.
