{"id":19780,"date":"2019-07-12T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe7130002697"},"modified":"2019-07-12T12:00:44","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T12:00:44","slug":"making-tech-aesthetic-bitcoin-art-scene-blossoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/making-tech-aesthetic-bitcoin-art-scene-blossoming","title":{"rendered":"Making the Tech an Aesthetic, the Bitcoin Art Scene Is Blossoming"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When cryptograffiti quit his day job and dove into creating Bitcoin art full time, the concept of thriving as a Bitcoin professional \u2014 let alone one whose beat is visual art \u2014 would have been ludicrous to most. <\/p>\n

In 2012, this included shredding credit cards for resin sculptures and dabbling in street art, all in the name of the Bitcoin brand.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was super risky early on, and having to explain to family what I was doing [was difficult],\u201d he told Bitcoin Magazine<\/em>. \u201cI started doing street art and I was at this in-between stage with this startup I was working on. And I was like, you know what, this is more interesting. So I decided to go full bore, and if it doesn\u2019t work out, it doesn\u2019t work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, it\u2019s more than worked out, as cryptograffiti\u2019s work<\/a> has become widely recognized throughout the industry. Standouts include his credit card portraits of Hal Finney and Dorian Nakamoto<\/a>, his \u201cBlack Swan\u201d miniature portrait<\/a> that sold for a fraction of a penny on the Lightning Network and his bol\u00edvar charity portrait of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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His art often fuses the political, social and economic themes central to Bitcoin\u2019s core technology, especially with more performative pieces like \u201cBlack Swan\u201d and the fiat portrait of Maduro. Viewing something so abstruse and technical through an aesthetic lens makes it relatable, he said; the visual representations, and their potential to relate to the interests and ideologies in Bitcoin\u2019s orbit, bridge the technical gap for people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first got into this space, I found it hard to grapple with, and I kinda [started] feeling out of place with all this tech culture around me,\u201d cryptograffiti said. \u201cThen I decided to really crack what was going on and I fell down the proverbial rabbit hole and just knew visual imagery would help it spread because it would appeal to more people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sensing art\u2019s potential to spur Bitcoin awareness, he began creating when the Bitcoin art field was practically a nonentity. He could recall a few authors, such as Diego Rodriguez, who had contributed to Bitcoin Magazine\u2019s <\/em>print editions in 2012 and 2013. Wired<\/em>\u2019s famed \u201cRise and Fall of Bitcoin\u201d<\/a> article played a particularly pointed role in convincing him that art could shape the conversation around Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember thinking, \u2018This thing isn\u2019t going away, and there\u2019s going to need to be a way to portray this in the press, making this attractive or just to grab their attention other than just an image of a bitcoin or zeroes and ones with a hacker looking dark,\u2019\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

The New Bitcoin Art Scene<\/h3>\n

The opening cryptograffiti saw back then has grown into a subindustry within the wider Bitcoin industry itself. This enclave of crypto creatives, which is \u201cgrowing in quality and quantity,\u201d as cryptograffiti put it, was on full display at the Bitcoin 2019 conference in San Francisco<\/a>. Artists dressed Bitcoin up through conventional media like oils and wood, as well as ones that traverse the virtual and physical realms alike.<\/p>\n

Josie<\/a>, for instance, employs augmented reality (AR) to animate her portraits, opening up a new dimension for the viewer to comprehend her artistic vision and the work\u2019s narrative.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just continues a story,\u201d she explained. \u201cYou see the static image, but once you get into the AR, you can see exactly what\u2019s going on in my head and why I made it \u2014 the beginning, the middle and the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of her more prominent pieces portrays a woman, gas mask strapped on, transposed over a backdrop of USD and gazing intently at the viewer. When viewed through the Artivive AR app, the artwork sheds its USD backing to reveal a new Bitcoin-studded background, and as this transition occurs, her gas mask, with its Bitcoin frontispiece, fades away.<\/p>\n

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Josie told Bitcoin Magazine <\/em>that her work is \u201calways about promoting awareness and adoption\u201d and is a way for her \u201cto tell my story about owning my freedom, my identity, my money.\u201d Her art strives to empower and please. This is why she chooses primarily female subjects, as both a show of empowerment and to suffuse her art with a charm that makes it attractive to people who would otherwise turn away at the sight of Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI use women in almost all of my pieces because, for me, women are so powerful, so beautiful,\u201d she explained. \u201cThey\u2019re bringing life to tech and math and code that no one understands. Women represent life, so I think it\u2019s such a cool way to tie that in. And it gives people something relatable. The story of the art is she\u2019s owning her identity by using bitcoin, and it gives them a sense of empowerment that they can do that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

These representations have kickstarted conversations about what Bitcoin is and give people a chance to learn. That\u2019s what it\u2019s all about, cryptograffiti said, as he recalled his own experiences with capturing people\u2019s curiosity through his art. <\/p>\n

Art as a gateway drug for Bitcoin was a common intersection for most of the artists exhibiting at Bitcoin 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe paintings speak for themselves in a sense, but at the same time, someone who\u2019s not in the crypto space may not know what the bull and the bear represent,\u201d Trevor Jones<\/a>, whose art also incorporates AR, said. His app supplies viewers with snippets on Bitcoin\u2019s volatility and market cycles. \u201cIt\u2019s a more visually dynamic way to engage with the viewer,\u201d a better way to inform them than slapping a description under the pieces themselves.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the power of art infused with AR, another artist who exhibited at the conference, Chiefmonkey<\/a>, said that it helps to \u201c[bridge] a gap\u201d and spark discussion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an open studio at home, me and my girlfriend, to show people our art, and that\u2019s given me the opportunity to talk to people who don\u2019t know what Bitcoin is,\u201d he said. \u201cThen they see that there\u2019s a whole community of crypto artists, and so it bridges a gap between people who just like art to start learning about bitcoin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I have someone in my home, they\u2019re captive,\u201d he added, with a boom of laughter. <\/p>\n

Disrupting More Than Just the Art Scene<\/h3>\n

Chiefmonkey\u2019s art takes inspiration largely from the Bitcoin community, and the wood-carved Satoshi Series he had on display incorporates Japanese influence to illustrate Bitcoin\u2019s short history. The first piece, \u201cSatoshi Goes Down the Rabbit Hole,\u201d portrays the Bitcoin progenitor\u2019s psychedelic jump into Bitcoin\u2019s multilayered design. Others, like \u201cGinko Crypto\u201d and \u201cSatoshi Summons the Bulls,\u201d depict bucolic Japanese landscapes with the Bitcoin price disguised as a mountain range in the background.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMy pieces in the future will be more politically challenging,\u201d he said, touching on the need to expand Bitcoin art\u2019s thematic frontier. Many of the artists on display at Bitcoin 2019, he continued, are testaments to how the aesthetic and thematic statements of the genre are maturing.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the art side, just sticking a bitcoin logo onto something doesn\u2019t make it art anymore, Chiefmonkey said. \u201cThe artists here today are making statements with their art. It is about<\/em> something, not just of<\/em> something. Crypto art is as much about politics, a discussion about traditional systems, and I think a lot of us will be doing something about that and opening up the discussion beyond just money.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Jones, this includes disrupting and subverting not just the conversion around money and politics but art and culture itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this disruptive quality to the work,\u201d he said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t like it in the traditional market, when I was starting to poke the bear with AR. I went into the Scottish National Portrait Gallery<\/a> and transformed Robert Burns and Hume into industry figures like Pomp, using my AR app.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt pisses them off and brings a lot of attention,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

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The Marriage of Bitcoin and Art: A Long-Term View<\/h3>\n

Jones, a professional artist of 16 years, found that the traditional art world didn\u2019t take too kindly to his use of AR. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was one of the first painters in the world to use AR in 2011 to \u201912,\u201d he said. \u201cThe art scene is quite conservative, so when I started playing with AR, the traditional galleries weren\u2019t interested in showcasing my work.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Bitcoin sphere, avant-garde in its own right, \u201chas been absolutely phenomenal\u201d with its reception, he said. The intersection of crypto and art is more natural than forced for Bitcoin proponents, and this is part of the reason why the Bitcoin art community is on the rise and so rich in variety. <\/p>\n

The only thing that\u2019s missing, according to cryptograffiti, is artists being able to directly monetize their work through Bitcoin and blockchain payment rails.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still so early that we\u2019re not seeing the benefits of the technology itself for things like micropayments to benefit artists,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Second-layer solutions like the Lightning Network<\/a> are one component of this, but another of Bitcoin 2019\u2019s featured artists, Gus Grillasca, thinks non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will complete the picture. This concept for art, funnily enough, dates back to its original application with Pepe Cash<\/a> \u2014 an ecosystem of beloved pepe memes where each \u201crare pepe\u201d is associated with an NFT built on the Bitcoin secondary protocol, Counterparty.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of us consider the rare pepe wallet as the birth of a digital art movement with these scarce digital tokens,\u201d Grillasca said. We believe that there is a very important movement around creating these scarce tokens. Artists can do all of these things now for revenue sources, to engage with their followers using these tokens.\u201d <\/p>\n

Using NFTs, artists can crowdfund through ICOs or distributing digital copies of pieces to their followers.<\/p>\n

For Grillasca, who creates NFTs for his work on Counterparty, this means creating, say, 100 NFTs for a certain piece. These tokens are digitally attestable and function like an artist-stamped or -signed copy of the original. This creates a digital scarcity that simulates the scarcity of original works in the real world.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what this means is that the digital can become more valuable than the physical,\u201d Grillasca said. \u201cNow, the digital has a market of its own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, as with Pepe Cash, anyone can copy the image associated with the token, but without the token itself, this representation will carry no value on the digital art market. Josie also expressed that these NFTs can be used to unlock the AR component of each piece, a feature that Grillasca\u2019s AR-compatible work also includes.<\/p>\n

NFTs very well could open a new avenue for artists to monetize their work and make it digitally scarce in ways that the internet\u2019s current structure won\u2019t support. Couple this with something like Lightning Network micropayments and, \u201cIt\u2019s only going to be a matter of time before revenue models for creatives will be expanded,\u201d as cryptograffiti said. This would mean Bitcoin\u2019s network effect reaching beyond its subculture of dedicated followers and interacting with a larger section of the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we want this to really grow and we want all walks of life, we don\u2019t want an uneven power structure to develop [like in the traditional system], and for me that means onboarding people in regions that need it most, being able to get creatives who will appeal to more creatives, and so on,\u201d cryptograffiti concluded.<\/p>\n

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The Bitcoin art scene has arrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2566,"featured_media":19783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[74,2316],"class_list":{"0":"post-19780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-cryptograffiti"},"author_data":{"id":2566,"name":"Colin Harper","nicename":"colin-harper","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/MjEwMTYzMzc3Njg5ODYzNjQ2-96x96.webp"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/exploring-the-bitcoin-art-scene.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}