Concept, Tech, Aesthetic, Community

One of the first NFTs I collected was by Gerilya. It helped that Indonesian gabber collective Gabber Modus Operandi were depicted, but I was also drawn to the use of non-Western iconography and subject matter combined with Gerilya’s own hyper-contemporary visual style. It feels as if NFTs continue to open up fresh possibilities for artists to propagate new artwork.

Cheng’s work often represents expansive explorations at the forefront of tech-infused art. It also demonstrates the messy reality of contemporary art within this increasingly prevalent realm, in this instance bringing together deterministic philosophy, gaming, simulation, and stimulation.

Darren Bader has transported contemporary art at the far end of the conceptual spectrum to NFTs. Bader’s use of NFTs is not just quirky aesthetic and subject but also the use of blockchain-native technologies to set up new webs of experimental social play.

Asendorf’s work combines open-source technical innovation with the pursuit of digital beauty. It typifies and advances a style of generative and pixel-based art that has become dominant in the NFT space. But his ability to arrive at alluring and compelling images via conceptual experiments with technology is unique.

Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst represent a cross disciplinary way of building and proliferating expertise across fields including art, music, AI and crypto. Here they made some relatively early experiments in creating artwork with the AI system DALL-E 1, resulting in the gloopy text-to-image diffusion model style aesthetic and eerie, otherworldly feel.

I want to se more artists from the so-called “traditional art world” coming into the NFT space and making work. I want their work to be seen by the group of digital/NFT-only collectors that have grown over the last few years. I want their artwork to improve and influence NFT-related artwork and vice versa. I want them to experiment with the tech, culture, and new dynamics. By no means do I think that artists outside of this “space” should not be allowed to enter. It’s staid gatekeeping. Murata, like so many others, are digital-first artists who should be here experiencing and advancing.

"As above, so below" as a saying goes. Like Murata, Braithwaite-Shirley is a digital-focused artist with worthwhile and hopefully continued input into this burgeoning art space.