[NetBehaviour] The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of #CryptoArt (a not very deep reading of a high price piece of cryptoart)
Edward Picot
julian.lesaux at gmail.com
Fri Jan 29 22:28:09 CET 2021
Ruth and everyone,
I've been spending some time looking at this image and thinking about
it. The first thing that struck me about it was its horribleness. It's a
bit difficult to put your finger on exactly where this horribleness
comes from, but I think it's got something to do with the fact that
different sections of the picture - different layers, rather - are in
completely different styles. The butterfly, for example - one wing's in
shadow and the other is in light, but apart from this nod to
three-dimensionality it's just a flat shape, a cut-out. The Ethereum
logo kites in the background - likewise these have got panels in light
and panels in shade, but they don't actually make sense as three
dimensional shapes, and the really infuriating thing about them is the
way the 'strings' on which they're supposed to be 'flying' don't join up
accurately with the corners. Then you've got the chair, the ruffs on the
Harlequin costume, and the boy's hat, hands and feet - all lifted
straight from Picasso, but the way in which they're painted no longer
makes any sense because of how they've been cut and pasted out of
context. Actually one of my first thoughts about the painting/artwork
was 'he doesn't look as if he's properly sitting in that chair, it's
almost as if he's been draped across it or he's leaning against the edge
of it' - and when I look at the Picasso original there's some of that
same feeling. But Picasso is deliberately doing something with the
pattern of the Harlequin costume, making it too bold and slightly wonky
and playing it off against the wistful and lost look on the boy's face -
all of that gets lost in this reworking. The painting of the face -
Vitalik Buterin's face, Vitalik Buterin being one of the founders of
Ethereum - is in a different style again. It almost feels as if his face
is going to split open into a toothy grin, and we're going to realize
that we're looking at one of the older and more painterly front covers
of Mad magazine. And that may even be deliberate, because the writeup
alongside the picture makes it apparent that there's some kind of
satirical intent here.
The effect of these different layers, different fragments, different
styles all being put together in one picture is jarring and banal.
That writeup: 'Leaning against a large chair, the boy genius fiddles
with his fingers in a somewhat nervous manner; nevertheless, he stares
directly at the viewer with what appears to be a confident, ‘Mona
Lisa-like’ smile. Vitalik has no idea what the future has in store for
him, but he’s prepared to face any obstacle ahead as he begins life's
adventure'. The satirical intent is most apparent in the phrase 'boy
genius'. I think what Trevor Jones, the artist, is trying to convey is a
sense that Vitalik is out of his depth but determined to front it out.
But there's a clumsiness in the phrasing - is 'confident' really the
right adjective for the Mona Lisa's smile? Shouldn't Vitalik be
overcoming obstacles rather than just facing them? Don't obstacles
belong to a path rather than an adventure? And is he really just
beginning life's adventure when he's already become so famous and made
so much money? The metaphors don't quite work, and the clumsiness of
this piece of writing seems to be a kind of parallel with the clumsiness
of the artwork.
But the other thing this writeup is doing, apart from telling us that
this is a piece of art about Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum and blockchain
culture in general, and that it's got a vague satirical flavour to it,
is making connections with the canon of 'great art' and 'great artists'
- most obviously Picasso, but also the Mona Lisa. And if you look at
Trevor Jones's website, and other examples of his art and how he
describes them, this is obviously a concern of his.
Then you've got what might be termed the new media aspect of the
artwork. When I came back and looked at it again after a day or so, it
had changed. The butterfly was in a different place. The background had
changed - there used to be a rainbow behind the chair, but now there
were some chains of blue cubes; and there used to be some seagulls, but
now there were some Pokemon-style creatures. This is where it gets
interesting. It turns out that the picture consists of a number of
different layers, and some of the layers move over time, and their
movements are determined by what's happening to the value of Ether and
the price of oil. It was when I started to find out about this aspect of
the artwork that I started to wonder whether it maybe wasn't so bad
after all. After all, anyone that creates art digitally will be familiar
with the process of working in lots of different layers. When you've
finished the process of creation what you normally do is meld all these
layers together to create the illusion that the finished piece is a
single flat image like a drawing, a painting, a print or maybe a
photograph. But the difference is always there, and actually you can see
that difference in artwork that's been created digitally if you know
where to look for it. So what Trevor Jones is doing in Ethboy is putting
this use of layers into the foreground, instead of trying to pretend
that it's not there: he's conceptualising it and developing its digital
potential. He's created a piece about Ethereum and the workings of the
blockchain that actually brings those workings into the artwork itself
as a form of animation. That's kind of funky.
And if you look at Trevor Jones' website, there's actually some quite
good stuff on there. He did another earlier artwork called Ethgirl,
which I actually much prefer to Ethboy - much more cubist in style,
incorporating the Ethereum logo again, along with other things such as
the Twitter logo, a smiley face, a cat face and so forth. It's much more
unified as a picture because the style is less disparate and it's
painted in the greys and browns that are characteristic of a lot of
Cubist pictures. There's another one called 'Picasso's Bull' which I
also like. Both of these are animated like Ethboy, but in a slightly
different way - sections of the Cubist structures swing apart to reveal
other parts beneath, rather than the Ethboy process of different layers
simply moving while the central image remains stationary.
There are also some paintings on the website based on QR codes (the
paintings are scannable), and some earlier ones on the theme of
synaesthesia (music translated into mainly-abstract art). I like all of
these more than I like Ethboy.
There's a lot of explanation on the website, and it gives quite a strong
sense of how Jones has found his way to the space he's working in now.
'I consider myself a traditional painter but one who is also absolutely
fascinated with art and tech collaboration.' He starts his story with
the synaesthesia paintings, and then describes how he seemed to lose his
audience when he became fascinated with QR codes: 'very few really
understood why I, as an artist, would be so excited about these odd
looking squares'. Then in 2012 he 'discovered Augmented Reality' and 'I
felt rejuvenated because I was no longer creatively constrained to
these seemingly arbitrarily patterned squares'. But on the other hand
the sense of being at odds with his audience continues: 'It's been a
long and arduous process pursuing my passion for technologically
inspired paintings while at the same time gradually coming to the
realisation that these works would struggle to be accepted into the more
conservative Scottish art establishment and commercial galleries.' As a
result, 'Since 2015 I've slowly distanced myself from the local art
scene I've been focusing on the tech world and connecting with fans of
my new work on an international level.' The contrast of 'art
establishment' and 'local art scene' with 'the tech world' and 'fans'
seems significant, as does a comment he makes elsewhere on the website -
that when he discovered Bitcoin he 'fell down the rabbit hole'. You get
the impression that here's a 'traditional painter' who has gradually
found his way into very different territory, but without being able to
completely lose his desire to be judged in terms of old school artistic
values - hence his desire to make connections between his work and
artists such as Picasso or great paintings such as the Mona Lisa. When
you go back to EthBoy, you find yourself wondering whether it's really
Jones himself who is the central figure, out of his depth but trying to
front it out, not really sure of his bearings any more but trying to
forge ahead nevertheless.
I don't like EthBoy, but I do think it's got some interesting ideas
behind it, and I do find Trevor Jones an interesting figure. I suspect
that he'd be a more successful artist in aesthetic terms if he could
dump some of his preoccupation with pre-digital art - but on the other
hand the sense of tension and uneasiness in a work like EthBoy seems to
come from the way in which his 'traditional art' references jar against
his digital experimentation - and I suppose you could argue that that's
what makes it interesting.
Time for supper!
Edward
On 23/01/2021 11:28, Ruth Catlow via NetBehaviour wrote:
> Hi Graziano,
>
> These are the things I observe about the Cryptoart scene - and that
> puzzle me
> - no one talks about the imagery, meaning, concept - evva!
> - and prices are always given in $$$s not a cryptocurrency
>
> Anyone want to volunteer do a deep reading of a piece of high-price
> crytpoart? Perhaps this one
> https://async.art/art/master/0xb6dae651468e9593e4581705a09c10a76ac1e0c8-807
>
> image.png
> It would be great to know if these artists are cashing out their
> crypto immediately after the auctions. If not why are we not hearing
> about the prices in the cryptocurrencies with which they were bought?
>
> warmly
> Ruth
>
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 4:53 PM Graziano Milano
> <grazmaster at googlemail.com <mailto:grazmaster at googlemail.com>> wrote:
>
> In 2020 the crypto artist "Beeple" (Mike Winkelmann), that is
> mentioned in “The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of #CryptoArt (Part
> 1)”, has broken records on Gemini’s Nifty Gateway platform by
> selling a collection of 20 artworks for a sum of $3.5 million:
> https://fullycrypto.com/digital-artist-beeple-sells-nft-collection-for-3-5-million
>
>
> By the end of this century the value of these 20 Beeple’s artworks
> may increase or completely collapse as it may happen to Bitcoins
> and other crypto currencies.
>
>
> On Fri, 22 Jan 2021 at 10:50, Ruth Catlow via NetBehaviour
> <netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org
> <mailto:netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org>> wrote:
>
> re: http://cryptoart.wtf
> I mean... It's a great troll but it's not good enough!
>
> The meme of blockchain's outrageous energy use is a barrier to
> more diverse people entering the development space.
>
> Blockchain technologies are important because species collapse
> and climate emergency is an effect of the global political
> economy. Blockchains tech like cryptocurrencies, tokens, and
> smart contracts are the only tools we have (as yet) to
> organise directly p-2-p at a planetary scale.They are still
> new but they offer a way to imagine and realise both money and
> governance at a global scale, independent of states and
> corporations.
>
> The debate about blockchain's environmental impact usually
> focuses around its high energy use.
>
> [EXPLAINER: Blockchains' level of energy use are due to the
> consensus mechanisms (CMs) they use to verify transactions,
> and to "mine" currency. The amount of electricity used varies
> according to the CM. The two dominant CMs are Proof of Work
> (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS)
> Bitcoin uses PoW and infamously consumes the same amount of
> electricity as 159 countries. Ethereum (the platform for
> programmable money - and therefore the focus of a lot of work
> on new forms of governance) is moving to Eth2 a PoS system
> which uses far less energy. But this is still 2 years off.]
>
> Questions about the environmental impact of blockchain are
> important and difficult to answer. It's right that we assess
> the impact of Blockchains but we need better ways to compare
> all emerging digital infrastructure ecosystems - including
> other financial techs, IoT, ML AI, 5G.
>
> A focus on reducing energy use is not enough. As @alsodanlowe
> put it "It would be crazy to ban or dissuade colleagues from
> participating in an effort to decentralize money away from the
> forces that create the priority for fossil fuels (much of it
> built on debt) just because those forces exist. PoW is
> agnostic. Banks and existing oligarchy is not."
> https://twitter.com/alsodanlowe/status/1317444999361957891
>
> Blockchain is a future technology. It is built for use in a
> world of clean, limitless, renewable energy.
>
> Efforts need to focus here...and on the political economies
> and the cultural adoption patterns that they can support and
> grow beyond accumulative self-interest and extractive
> capitalism if we are avoid accelerating climate collapse.
>
> This morning I retweeted this from Sarah Friend "If I hadn't
> spent the past five years working in crypto, I'd probably be
> moralizing about it too, and this is perhaps part of why I am
> so profoundly annoyed by its superficial detractors - my
> shadow selves, who know so much less than me and are so much
> more sure they're right"
> https://twitter.com/isthisanart_/status/1352288565850492928
>
> There's so much more to say about all of this. Especially
> about the role that art has to play.
>
> Soon!!!!
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 9:35 AM Annie Abrahams via
> NetBehaviour <netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org
> <mailto:netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org>> wrote:
>
> The website http://cryptoart.wtf pulls in random
> blockchain-based
> CryptoArt from the web, and estimates the ecological
> impact of each work
> in terms of energy consumption (kWh), and greenhouse gases
> released
> (KgCO2) as a result of blockchain-based transactions
> relating to the work.
>
> https://memoakten.medium.com/the-unreasonable-ecological-cost-of-cryptoart-2221d3eb2053
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org
> <mailto:NetBehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org>
> https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>
>
>
> --
> Co-founder & Artistic director of Furtherfield & DECAL
> Decentralised Arts Lab
> +44 (0) 77370 02879
>
> *I will only agree to speak at events that are racially and
> gender balanced.
>
> **sending thanks
> <https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press-releases/2019/november/think-before-you-thank-if-every-brit-sent-one-less-thank-you-email-a-day-we-would-save-16433-tonnes-of-carbon-a-year-the-same-as-81152-flights-to-madrid.html> in
> advance
>
> *Furtherfield *disrupts and democratises art and technology
> through exhibitions, labs & debate, for deep exploration, open
> tools & free thinking.
> furtherfield.org <http://www.furtherfield.org/>
>
> *DECAL* Decentralised Arts Lab is an arts, blockchain & web
> 3.0 technologiesresearch hub
>
> for fairer, more dynamic & connected cultural ecologies &
> economies now.
>
> decal.is <http://www.decal.is>
>
> Furtherfield is a Not-for-Profit Company Limited by Guarantee
>
> Registered in England and Wales under the Company No.7005205.
>
> Registered business address: Carbon Accountancy, 80-83 Long
> Lane, London, EC1A 9ET.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org
> <mailto:NetBehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org>
> https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>
>
>
> --
> Co-founder & Artistic director of Furtherfield & DECAL Decentralised
> Arts Lab
> +44 (0) 77370 02879
>
> *I will only agree to speak at events that are racially and gender
> balanced.
>
> **sending thanks
> <https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press-releases/2019/november/think-before-you-thank-if-every-brit-sent-one-less-thank-you-email-a-day-we-would-save-16433-tonnes-of-carbon-a-year-the-same-as-81152-flights-to-madrid.html> in
> advance
>
> *Furtherfield *disrupts and democratises art and technology through
> exhibitions, labs & debate, for deep exploration, open tools & free
> thinking.
> furtherfield.org <http://www.furtherfield.org/>
>
> *DECAL* Decentralised Arts Lab is an arts, blockchain & web 3.0
> technologiesresearch hub
>
> for fairer, more dynamic & connected cultural ecologies & economies now.
>
> decal.is <http://www.decal.is>
>
> Furtherfield is a Not-for-Profit Company Limited by Guarantee
>
> Registered in England and Wales under the Company No.7005205.
>
> Registered business address: Carbon Accountancy, 80-83 Long Lane,
> London, EC1A 9ET.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org
> https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.netbehaviour.org/pipermail/netbehaviour/attachments/20210129/e9a6cf7a/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 695646 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.netbehaviour.org/pipermail/netbehaviour/attachments/20210129/e9a6cf7a/attachment.png>
More information about the NetBehaviour
mailing list