Witold Rybczynski and I clearly do not have the same taste in architecture. But he raises an interesting point about the relationship between architecture and art in this recent post. Here's an excerpt:

In the name of renouncing the past—and denouncing anything that smacks of decoration—modernism has largely done away with art, the lonely Henry Moore stranded on a plaza, notwithstanding. The problem is that when you strip away figural and allegorical ornament, what is left are mute building materials, mechanical-looking details, and abstract space.

There is a long-standing tradition of integrating art, and other ornament, into architecture. But modernism viewed this sort of decoration as being superfluous. It wasn't functionally necessary and so why include it?

This has led us to today where there is a joke that investing in public art means investing in some sort of add-on that sits outside of your building and that can be classified as art. Perhaps something by Henry Moore.

The result, Witold argues, is that we have lost something critically important in our buildings: meaning.

But is allegorical ornament really all that different from a freestanding art piece? Don't both tell a story? And don't they both get applied, in a way, to a building that could surely continue on without it?

At the same time, what is meaningful art? Does it need to include bas-relief and/or figural representations? Or could it be a signed urinal on a pedestal in the lobby with an accompanying digital NFT?

There's no question that buildings need meaning. We all crave stories. But sometimes they communicate in different ways.

Photo by David Vives on Unsplash

Last month a digital-only version of a Gucci bag sold on gaming platform Roblox for about US$4,115. Again, digital-only. No physical bag that can be brought to brunch. At the time, this was about US$800 more than the real life version of the same Gucci bag. So why not go and buy that one instead?

I am sure that most of you are scratching your head at this and wondering: who the hell is valuing the digital more than the physical? Could it be that status and signaling -- perhaps the real purposes of a designer bag -- are even more important online in the world of Roblox than in real life? In this case, it wasn't even an NFT and so presumably there aren't any value claims around scarcity and authenticity. (Full disclosure: I don't know how Roblox works.)

It's important to keep in mind that meaningful innovation often starts out looking pretty silly to some/most. And to me, this feels like one of those times. What we are clearly seeing is a blurring between our digital and physical worlds. In fact, just today I was reading about a slew of digital-only clothing companies that sell, you know, contactless cyber fashion. One of those companies is Tribute (embedded post above).

The way it works is that you first buy a piece of digital clothing (which can sell out just like regular clothing). You then send them a picture of yourself and the company goes and renders that piece of digital clothing onto your photo. The result is what you see above, which to me looks fairly realistic (though at the same time fantastical, which I think is part of the point).

As out-there as this may seem, this strikes me as something that could become a very big deal. What is real on Instagram anyways? I can also see this being applied to other industries, including real estate. Maybe that is already happening.

What do you think?

I setup a new cryptocurrency wallet (offline hardware storage) this evening and then used it to buy brandondonnelly.eth using ENS (Ethereum Name Service). I don't know what the hell I'm going to use it for, yet, but I own brandondonnelly.com. So I figured I should grab the decentralized blockchain version of my name as well. Perhaps at some point in the future I'll be glad I did.

I plan to buy a bunch of other .eth domains in the near future as well. The costs are similar to registering a traditional domain.

Part of the reason why I'm doing all of this because I've decided that it's time to do a deep dive and better understand the possibilities of the blockchain (a decentralized vs. centralized internet). I've been following for a number of years, but it has been pretty surface level. It's time to get serious. And I must say that it felt pretty cool to use my new hardware wallet to buy something with ETH.

Overall, things started to really click for me when I saw the digital economy that was emerging with Ethereum (applications, NFTs, DeFi, etc.). Instead of just digital money, I could now see clear use cases and demand drivers for the cryptocurrency. Again, I used ETH to buy brandondonnelly.eth, which means I first had to be an owner of ETH.

If you're looking to better understand the possibilities of a decentralized internet -- specifically why non fungible tokens are bad ass -- check out this blog post by Albert Wenger. He uses the example of the Mona Lisa sitting in the Louvre to explain why NFTs are not a fad and, instead, a "fundamental and profound innovation."