What is an NFT and digital art?

NFT stands for Non-Fungible Tokens, they are digital versions of real-world objects like art, music, in-game items and videos. They are bought and sold online, frequently with cryptocurrency. NFTs can be sold online meaning artists no longer need to rely on galleries to sell their art, but there are NFT exhibitions where a physical copy is shown in the gallery but the buyer will buy a digital version.

NFTs are non-fungible, which means it has unique properties so it cannot be interchanged with something else and is one of a kind but have no tangible form of their own. When buying an NFT they can only have one owner at a time so you are buying the ownership for the virtual or physical assets, this does not mean that they own the exclusive rights and can decide who sees or shares the artwork.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56371912

https://n26.com/en-eu/blog/what-is-an-nft

NFT Examples:

2 Lives – Jersey NFT Exhibition

The Exhibition is based on: ‘Our life is between reality and NFTs, between tangible and virtual worlds. We all have 2 lives, offline & online. Now these lives are blended.’ Centred on the future of jersey and its metaverse. The Metaverse is a fictional virtual world which is used to describe the future of the Internet/digital world.

Ideas of themes to focus on:

A narrative is the way in which a story is told. Focusing on narrative, my zine will focus be telling the story of Jerseys cultures through images. I will be photographing various areas of St Helier in order to collate a few shoots worth of images representing different cultures within Jersey and areas where a certain culture is heavily populated or own businesses within the area. Im going to be using the images from my Identity and community shoots where I photographed people, places, hidden buildings and different landscapes in Jersey. I feel this will create an interesting zine and tell the narrative of Jerseys diverse range of cultures.

Sequencing- My zine will be simple but contain different layouts. Some images will be full bleed others may be a small box within the page. I will create a juxtaposition with some images that I feel work together well and create a good contrast. I also want to experiment with the use of colours within my zine by experimenting with juxtaposing images with the same strong outstanding colour and vibrantly coloured images next to a black and white image.

Experimenting

Full bleed:

Small boxes:

Juxtaposition:

I liked my juxtaposition images as with the portrait one, when speaking to the lady in the image she mentioned she worked in finance so I took an image of a typical looking finance building in Jersey. With the second I decided to go based off colour, in both images theirs a strong deep orange coming through.

Statement of Intent

The main topic for the NFT projects is community so we made a mind map and mood board of different types of community then using that we chose a few topics that we thought would be a good interpretation of community. Then we narrowed it down to generations then from that we would look at past fashion, showing the different styles from the 70’s to now and a prediction of the future with the progression of Jersey through the years.

A reflection of the past.

For our project we want to produce a NFT that reflects the change in fashion over the years and how trends have left and returned. To produce this we found old photos from the 1970’s and 2000’s to put behind the person we’re filming and taking new photos to use for 2021 and the future. For the background sound we thought of finding music from the time to reflect onto the filming of the set time line used.

STATEMENT OF INTENT: Reflect and review your mind-map and mood-board AND produce a statement of intent that clearly defines how you wish to interpret the theme of COMMUNITY as a 30 sec animated film and digital image:

3 words: Love thy neighbour

A sentence:  “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37-39)

A paragraph: The LGTQ+ community has been oppressed by various communities about their beliefs and practices, one being Christians. This is disappointing to think about because Jesus says to “Love thy neighbour” in Matthew 22:37; love not judge. As personally being part of both communities, I have found a way to balance same sex attraction and The Kingdom of God, so I found it my duty to show to Christians the sort of hurt and anxiety they cause to people part of the LGTBQ+ community, remind them that they should not judge but love and help these people. Another example that Christians should remember to follow can be seen in John 7:53-8:11:

⁵³ Then each of them went home, ¹ while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. ²Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. ³The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, ⁴they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. ⁵Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” ⁶They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. ⁷When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” ⁸And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. ⁹When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. ¹⁰Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” ¹¹She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

This powerfully shows that Christians should not condemn anyone but help them in faith and love.

For this film we are not trying to agree or disagree with the topic of “is homosexuality a sin” rather try and find a balance and peace between the 2 communities.

We will do this by having same sex actresses go into a church, read the Bible to show that they are helping each other in the faith, then when they make eye contact the film cuts to snaps of them running away from society and judgement; we did this to reveal that sometimes the pressure is so hard on these people that sometimes it feels like just giving up and running away to live your fantasy. We then will snap to riots to powerfully show to the viewer the kind of pressure the LGBTQ+ community faces. Finally, the film will go back to the actresses reading the verse “Love thy Neighbour” strongly recommending not to push either community away but helping them and direct them to the Father (God) instead of condemning them.

Trevor Jones

Trevor Jones is a Scotland based artist and is one of the leading names in the crypto art medium. His first NFT sold for $10,000 and has the highest selling NFT with his The Bitcoin Bull

The Bitcoin Bull – Gold ($2,500)

The Bitcoin Bull ($55,000)

The Bitcoin Bull – Silver ($750)

The Bitcoin Bull – Bronze ($200)

Over his career Trevor Jones has created 4,167 NFT’s resulting in nearly $3.3 million. Jones used a very clever tactic to get people to purchase his artwork. He charged $777 for a open artwork that entered everyone who bought into a draw for a 1/1 Connor McGregor artwork.

Analysis – The Bitcoin Bull

The Bitcoin Bull is a piece of moving artwork that shows the pieces of a bull tearing apart and then coming back together. The Bull is made from different things that look like they have been cut and pasted from different forms of media. There is a bitcoin symbol and twitter logo that are seen when the bull is in movement. The Bull then starts breathing and kicking up dust and scrapes it’s foot along the ground. The colours are quite bland but a diverse range of different shades of similar colours. Finally a man is seen to pull apart the bull and draws the outline of a bull when it is suddenly brought back together.

Beeple

Michael Joseph Winkelmann, known professionally as Beeple, is an American digital artist, graphic designer, and animator. He is known for using various ways to make different works that makes political, social commentary while using pop culture figures as references. Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million and is shown below. It started at $100 at auction and after a 2 week sale, reached $69 million.

The piece above is called The First 5000 days and contains an image a day Beeple has been posting online every day since 2007. The piece contains 5000 images that from far out are seen as a collage however up close they are seen like this.