NFT was interesting for a moment as it promised – for the very first time – a viable market for fine art collectors, for ‘moving stills’. and that created a small flurry of creativity in this area.
But NFT seems to be revealing itself to have been a nice tech experiment – conducted with cooperation with generous artists – but mostly a mirage in terms keeping artists alive.
Movies and computer games are big enough to command market value – but they are more functional or ‘entertainment’. Even they fail to deliver ‘art collectors market value’ in the same way as physical art works.
‘Moving stills’, which occupy what I like to call a ‘cameo space’, somewhere in between those two has long been ambivalent in terms of ‘fine art collector value’. It seems poised to remain that way indefinitely. At the same time they offer a similar artistic value/experience as looking at a painting on a wall. Indeed they might even be proudly displayed on art gallery walls. A gallery can charge entry fees but who wants to collect/own the art piece.
If this makes one sand and one needs to hype up compensation for in some way, it might be said that ‘cameo space is where true Art resides’ – simply because no one wants to own it or collect it. They either see it and and try to extract some higher value out of it – or they don’t.
If people cannot own it – does that mean that it is aesthetically ignorable, the way daily reality is? It is a product of human creativity, if that counts for anything in our emotional value system.
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