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Back when everyone wanted to buy and trade crypto, my friend Evgeny started a marketplace for NFT photography called Sloika. This, to me, felt like an obviously good idea, both in general and for him specifically. Evgeny had previously cofounded the photo company 500px, and so Sloika was initially conceived of as 500px, but for web3. This is a good story.
I have collected a number of photos via Sloika and, in general, I continue to regularly collect NFTs. Of course today, relatively few people want to trade and collect NFTs. The market is largely dead. What is obvious is that there was a giant NFT bubble and it popped in 2022, along with some other asset bubbles.
But does this necessarily mean that NFTs and NFT art are bad ideas?
When I think of bubbles I often think of something that Fred Wilson wrote on his blog. His argument was that bubbles tend to be directionally right; it's the magnitude that we get wrong. A good example of this is the dot com bubble. Yes, it was a massive bubble. But it was directionally right. The internet was going to matter -- a lot it turns out.
Even if we go back to "tulip mania" during the Dutch Golden Age -- which is often brought up as the pinnacle of dumb bubbles -- one could argue that it was still directionally right. Today, tulips remain the most sold flower in the US. So we still love them; we just got a little too excited back in the 17the century.
When it comes to NFT art, I like to think in terms of these questions:
Will humans continue to appreciate art? (Seems obvious.)
Will humans continue to want to collect things? (This is arguably a fundamental human instinct.)
Will provenance and authenticity continue to matter in art? (Blockchain technologies are really good at this.)
Perhaps the only question that remains is whether people will want to collect digital art. But even this feels fairly obvious to me. The challenge, I think, is that the display side of the market needs to be more built out. Because alongside the instinct to collect things is the instinct to display them. That's why NFTs initially took off as profile pics on social media.
So as a start, I think more, better, and cheaper displays would be a big help. There's something very different about projecting an NFT in your living room versus having it live in a crypto wallet on your phone or computer. You need to really experience it, just as you would a conventional piece of art. And like all art, context matters.
I haven't yet invested in a dedicated NFT display, but I plan to do that in the near future. And I'm looking forward to displaying my collection of NFTs, including the one at the top of this post. It's a drone shot of the west side of Toronto in the middle of winter, and it was gifted to me by Evgeny. Thank you for that. It's an honor to have it as part of my art collection.
Photo: Six Bling (via SuperRare)
Last week, the Centre Pompidou -- which is Europe's largest modern art museum -- announced that it has acquired its very first NFTs (18 pieces by 13 artists) and that it will be exhibiting the collection this spring. This makes them the first museum in France to own NFT art and, I'm guessing, one of the first in the world. (The Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently got some as well.)
This is fun for a few reasons. The obviously fun reason is that it's good for NFT collectors and people who generally support this space. Big institutions bring legitimacy. It's one thing to say that these JPEGs are stupid while sitting at home on your computer, but it's an entirely different thing to travel to Paris, visit the Centre Pompidou, look at its white gallery walls, and then say that these JPEGs are stupid!
The other fun thing about this is that it shows a continued openness to new ideas and new technologies. Here are some words from the Pompidou (that have been translated, by Google, from French):
The idea was not to be the first, but to bring together a relevant collection, which could testify to a creative and critical appropriation of a new technology by artists, and how this disrupts and displaces the art ecosystem. From its creation, the Center Pompidou has relied on the idea that contemporary technological creation and creativity should be at the heart of the institution. From 1974-1975, therefore even before the opening of the Center, the National Museum of Modern Art acquired major works and installations by Dan Graham and Bruce Naumann. Video installations using real time, and it was the very first institution to do so.
This wasn't always the case in France. One of my favorite art history classes from university was one that covered Impressionism. Partly because I thought their work was cool, but mostly because Impressionist painters were, in a way, early modernists. They rejected the academic approaches to painting and instead decided to make up their own rules.
At the time, in the 19th century, this was seen as entirely radical. And it meant harsh criticism from the established art world and an inability to meaningfully exhibit at the Salon (which was everything at the time). But history has a way of showing us that if something is inherently a good idea, you can only remain stubborn for so long.
The Impressionist painters began hosting their own exhibitions starting in 1874 and, by 1881, the government had withdrawn its official sponsorship of the annual Salon. The jurors wanted to cling to only traditional painting styles and the world wanted to move on. And here it is doing that again, today.
Back when everyone wanted to buy and trade crypto, my friend Evgeny started a marketplace for NFT photography called Sloika. This, to me, felt like an obviously good idea, both in general and for him specifically. Evgeny had previously cofounded the photo company 500px, and so Sloika was initially conceived of as 500px, but for web3. This is a good story.
I have collected a number of photos via Sloika and, in general, I continue to regularly collect NFTs. Of course today, relatively few people want to trade and collect NFTs. The market is largely dead. What is obvious is that there was a giant NFT bubble and it popped in 2022, along with some other asset bubbles.
But does this necessarily mean that NFTs and NFT art are bad ideas?
When I think of bubbles I often think of something that Fred Wilson wrote on his blog. His argument was that bubbles tend to be directionally right; it's the magnitude that we get wrong. A good example of this is the dot com bubble. Yes, it was a massive bubble. But it was directionally right. The internet was going to matter -- a lot it turns out.
Even if we go back to "tulip mania" during the Dutch Golden Age -- which is often brought up as the pinnacle of dumb bubbles -- one could argue that it was still directionally right. Today, tulips remain the most sold flower in the US. So we still love them; we just got a little too excited back in the 17the century.
When it comes to NFT art, I like to think in terms of these questions:
Will humans continue to appreciate art? (Seems obvious.)
Will humans continue to want to collect things? (This is arguably a fundamental human instinct.)
Will provenance and authenticity continue to matter in art? (Blockchain technologies are really good at this.)
Perhaps the only question that remains is whether people will want to collect digital art. But even this feels fairly obvious to me. The challenge, I think, is that the display side of the market needs to be more built out. Because alongside the instinct to collect things is the instinct to display them. That's why NFTs initially took off as profile pics on social media.
So as a start, I think more, better, and cheaper displays would be a big help. There's something very different about projecting an NFT in your living room versus having it live in a crypto wallet on your phone or computer. You need to really experience it, just as you would a conventional piece of art. And like all art, context matters.
I haven't yet invested in a dedicated NFT display, but I plan to do that in the near future. And I'm looking forward to displaying my collection of NFTs, including the one at the top of this post. It's a drone shot of the west side of Toronto in the middle of winter, and it was gifted to me by Evgeny. Thank you for that. It's an honor to have it as part of my art collection.
Photo: Six Bling (via SuperRare)
Last week, the Centre Pompidou -- which is Europe's largest modern art museum -- announced that it has acquired its very first NFTs (18 pieces by 13 artists) and that it will be exhibiting the collection this spring. This makes them the first museum in France to own NFT art and, I'm guessing, one of the first in the world. (The Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently got some as well.)
This is fun for a few reasons. The obviously fun reason is that it's good for NFT collectors and people who generally support this space. Big institutions bring legitimacy. It's one thing to say that these JPEGs are stupid while sitting at home on your computer, but it's an entirely different thing to travel to Paris, visit the Centre Pompidou, look at its white gallery walls, and then say that these JPEGs are stupid!
The other fun thing about this is that it shows a continued openness to new ideas and new technologies. Here are some words from the Pompidou (that have been translated, by Google, from French):
The idea was not to be the first, but to bring together a relevant collection, which could testify to a creative and critical appropriation of a new technology by artists, and how this disrupts and displaces the art ecosystem. From its creation, the Center Pompidou has relied on the idea that contemporary technological creation and creativity should be at the heart of the institution. From 1974-1975, therefore even before the opening of the Center, the National Museum of Modern Art acquired major works and installations by Dan Graham and Bruce Naumann. Video installations using real time, and it was the very first institution to do so.
This wasn't always the case in France. One of my favorite art history classes from university was one that covered Impressionism. Partly because I thought their work was cool, but mostly because Impressionist painters were, in a way, early modernists. They rejected the academic approaches to painting and instead decided to make up their own rules.
At the time, in the 19th century, this was seen as entirely radical. And it meant harsh criticism from the established art world and an inability to meaningfully exhibit at the Salon (which was everything at the time). But history has a way of showing us that if something is inherently a good idea, you can only remain stubborn for so long.
The Impressionist painters began hosting their own exhibitions starting in 1874 and, by 1881, the government had withdrawn its official sponsorship of the annual Salon. The jurors wanted to cling to only traditional painting styles and the world wanted to move on. And here it is doing that again, today.
Our team is looking to partner with local Hamilton, Ontario-based artists and creatives as part of a new project that we're working on for next year. So this post is intended to be a call to artists. If you're based in Hamilton and doing great work, we would love to hear from you. Please drop me an email (brandon@slateam.com).
In my mind, art and culture is a fundamental ingredient in Hamilton's ongoing renaissance. Each and every time I'm in the city, I feel like I meet someone who is an artist. And there are so many great examples that we can point to.
Take Scott Martin (aka Burnt Toast). Scott is a Hamilton-based illustrator and co-creator of the fantastically popular Doodles NFT collection. I don't have one in my wallet, but I can tell you that I want one. The current starting price for a Doodle is nearly US$9k. But as an alternative, you could also just go to downtown Hamilton and look at one of Scott's public murals.
Go Hamilton. Please show us what else you are creating.
Photo by Abigail Chen on Unsplash
Our team is looking to partner with local Hamilton, Ontario-based artists and creatives as part of a new project that we're working on for next year. So this post is intended to be a call to artists. If you're based in Hamilton and doing great work, we would love to hear from you. Please drop me an email (brandon@slateam.com).
In my mind, art and culture is a fundamental ingredient in Hamilton's ongoing renaissance. Each and every time I'm in the city, I feel like I meet someone who is an artist. And there are so many great examples that we can point to.
Take Scott Martin (aka Burnt Toast). Scott is a Hamilton-based illustrator and co-creator of the fantastically popular Doodles NFT collection. I don't have one in my wallet, but I can tell you that I want one. The current starting price for a Doodle is nearly US$9k. But as an alternative, you could also just go to downtown Hamilton and look at one of Scott's public murals.
Go Hamilton. Please show us what else you are creating.
Photo by Abigail Chen on Unsplash
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