Art you cannot touch

What is crypto art? Is it the future of art? Is it art at all? Can we appreciate art through a screen ? Should you enjoy art with other senses too? Should art be unique and perishable?

I’ve been working on understanding what Crypto Art and NFTs are, and recently watched a French documentary about it.  It’s been all swirling in my mind, so I figured I would put it on paper.  Or at least on screen. Ironic, I know.

Digital anything is hard for me to comprehend, because I was born at a time when Internet was not really a thing.  I remember when my parents got our first computer, as well as our first microwave and first VCR -I don’t think we ever got a second one, DVD players came soon after- so you can understand my difficulties!  

from cave paintings…

… to digital art !

Crypto art is digital art. Digital art is a new type of art simply because digital screens and Internet did not exist until fairly recently as opposed to cave art for example, or even marble sculptures and oil paintings.  Because digital art is held on a digital file, it can be shared without any borders or any limitations through the internet.  As an artist, I should be entranced by this idea.  Making art accessible to everyone is an old art trope.    There are too many gate keepers in the art world, and the idea that anyone can share and experience art is fascinating.  I am *slightly* addicted to Instagram because there is no barrier (other than the algorithm, but that’s a separate issue) and you can discover amazing art made by a bartender living in Nairobi.

NFTs are tokens of digital information attached to the art files attesting to its authenticity. They also help digital artists getting paid, not just once but every time their art gets sold, getting a percentage each time. If singers get royalties every time their song is played on the radio and writers every time their sell a book, why shouldn’t visual artists get paid when their art is seen by new people?  I like this concept.

Unfortunately it’s not working.  Not only are artists not getting their percentage but crypto art is in trouble. It was all the rage for a short while and created a bubble in 2021 that quickly crashed in 2022.  No one in the art world wanted to be left behind on this new art market and things quickly escalated until they fell off a cliff.  On top of that, since there was money to be made,  people started creating  NFTs claiming that the digital art they attached to the file was theirs when it was not. Apparently there is no way to stop them doing that because there is no regulating body and so crypto art auctions are full of fakes.  It’s like someone sneaking into an art gallery and writing their name on a painting, leaving with it under their coat and selling it online without anyone being able to call the cops.  Digital art will eventually recover but some kind of regulations will have to be put in place, and any type of bureaucracy means restricted artistic freedom once again.   Although some digital artists say they don’t mind sharing their art online without compensation as they believe art should be free, they probably don’t want other people claiming that they created the art. Hence the need for more regulations and less freedom.

But is digital art even art?  It may seem like an illegitimate art form to traditional artists.  If you are a physical artist, creating on a screen can seem like cheating, not “real” enough.  Besides, I don’t see the point of art you can only watch on a screen and that can be replicated ad nauseam.  Isn’t everyone getting too much screen time as it is?  Shouldn’t art be a way to escape the digital world and connect with reality?  Shouldn’t it be unique?   But don’t mind me.  I realize that I am too old for this and digital art will eventually sort itself out.  They will be good and bad artists in digital art like in any other type of art.

Of course, AI is not going to help.  Screenwriters, musicians, comedians, illustrators and painters have been freaking out about being replaced by the big bad AI.   Shouldn’t digital artists be the worried ones?  Their work is already assisted by computer, so taking them out of the equation seems like an easy step.  Some digital artists use “found” images (did they float upward from the depth of the internet?) and create compositions with them. They will have to prove that what they’re doing is different from what an AI can do.  But there are elephants that paint with their tails , and some that hold a brush with their trunks, so the situation is not that different.  It’s not necessarily the result but the intent behind the art and the continuity in the work you make that matters.  Artists will keep creating no matter what technology throws at them.

 I don’t see AI attempting ceramics any time soon and I am grateful for this.  I am old school, so I think art is at its best when you can physically experience it with your own eyes and senses. That’s a platitude.  Everyone knows that seeing a Van Gogh painting in real life is nothing like looking at a poster of the same painting, or a photo of the real thing through a screen on your computer.  It’s even more important for 3D art.  By definition, a 2D picture, however well photographed will not do justice to a 3D art piece.

The irony for “real life” artists is that most of their art is first experienced through a screen.  We apply to art exhibitions by downloading digital pictures of our art, we put them on social media, we attempt to sell them online by showing the same pictures.  I had an online customer leave a review saying “Gorgeous, more so in person” and that sums up the catch 22 of selling art online: you have to convince people to buy something that looks worse than the real thing.

The upside is that when people experience your art in real life at an art fair or in a gallery, they get bowled over by the physicality of it.   Being present can be the only way to truly experience some art pieces.  I went to an exhibition by an artist (Vik Muniz) making collages with old photographs and creating images from these images.  For example, he would cut and assemble hundreds of black and white pictures of children and create the portrait of a child with it.  From close us, you saw all the bits and pieces of cut photos attached together, and couldn’t see the portrait.  From far away, you could only see the portrait.  In his statement, the artist explained that he was intentionally doing art that could exclusively be experienced in person and not shared online, at least not the whole experience.

Detail shot from the mouth of the portrait shown on the left. Collage by Brazilian artist Vik Muniz made with black and white photo prints.

At the end of the day, I strongly believe that what you experience through screens is not as powerful as reality.   Your art in real life will reach fewer people but the quality of the experience will have no comparison.  Maybe it’s even more powerful for art that people can actually touch and interact with.  Ceramic pieces can be appreciated with the eyes, but also by touching, experiencing the textures, the smooth glaze, the rough carved surface.  Functional ceramics and other types of art often classified as craft like glass, jewelry, fashion, food can even be experienced with your mouth, your neck or your whole body.  That’s something you’re definitely not allowed to do in a museum with a traditional painting or a statue.

The other art form that could be comparable in its physicality, although in a different way is street art.  It’s only visible where the art is displayed and will be seen by fewer people (or through a screen, again, if a photo is posted online), but in this specific spot it is accessible to everyone, and everyone can interact with it, simply looking or adding to the piece or even destroying it.  The art belongs completely to the public then, to the point that its destruction is part of the art process. 

Dress by Iris Van Herpen . A full body art experience.

(photo attribution: Rhododendrites, Nautiloid dress by Iris van Herpen (51545), CC BY-SA 4.0)

Street artists cover other artists and expect their art to be covered and disappear in turn. It’s a transient art. (photo attribution: Activekritizen, Draw the Raised Bridge 1, CC BY-SA 4.0)

I wish I could embrace destruction as part of the process in my own practice as well.  Alas, I do experience my own art getting destroyed as a tragedy, no matter how often it happens with ceramics.  And yet, the fact that it is physical and can be destroyed, the fact that it is unique and exists in one place and one time only, not looping around forever in a digital cloud makes it more valuable and unique in my opinion.  Hurray for art that you can touch and break!