#i really hope that this whole ai art thing goes the way of nfts

[bcanetwork]

BCA NFTalk Vol.3｜Art Blocks NFTs’ Imagination

Guest Speakers：Host ArthurLou BCA Co-Founder丨Vulcan DAO GP（简称A）

Zero Chen NFT Consultant of FTChinese.com（简称C）

Ting Song AI and Blockchain Artist丨IOAC Asia Ambassador（简称S）

Hesiod 「Theogo NFT Observer」Chief Editor （简称H）

Nico Yang VulcanDAO GP（简称Y）

Background: It's been a few months of a mini-bull market for NFT collectibles, which the frenzied sales of CryptoPunks have pushed up in recent days. In addition, Art Blocks, as a generative art segment, topped the 7-day trading volume list strongly, ranking first with The Art Blocks segment was ranked fifth overall with $498 million. These three segments - avatars, generative art, and solo editions - make up a solid JPEG Summer. In this context, we invite four guests to chat about the NFT imagination beyond Punk.

01

Host A: What do you think of the macro reasons for this 2021 Summer rampage? Share some of the recent Punk-like replica disc projects and NFT collecting tips that you've been following.

C: It's not very surprising that Punk is on fire; its holders or investors/collectors who are bullish think it should be higher priced. Its broken circle has become more apparent, and this mini-bull market is a spurt of an accumulation from the entire NFT market that preceded it. Social subcultures and aesthetic psychology drive NFT and trendy fashion, so its rise and fall may be very different from how technology has evolved and popularised. Compared to traditional art and traditional collecting, this wave in the crypto world should be just beginning. If CryptoPunks do become digital antiques, I believe they will be worth much more than that in the future.

Y: Until 2021, it will be difficult for digital content creators to get their work recognized by the market and to cash in without relying on big institutions with a centralized approach. The breaking of the circle in media and the entrance of money brought by the wealth creation effect have greatly refreshed the perception of digital content. Echoing what Che Guevara once said, "After we leave, they build you schools and hospitals, not because they have shown great mercy, but because we came."

The identity that comes with NFT is only really felt when it is held. The purpose is different, and the logic of buying and collecting can be very different. A scarce NFT is a status symbol in itself.

S: Compared to the art market, which is repeatedly tested and scrutinized by connoisseurs from different perspectives, there is a sizeable speculative bubble in the English-speaking community on Ethereum. A lot of this bubble is in cultural content and projects that lack culture can be short-lived. The works that I want to keep inside my wallet for a long time are the ones that I will be happy to look at even ten years from now.

In this JPEG Summer, I strongly feel that it is similar to 1CO at the end of 17, where all aspects of blockchain project parties were active, but the market turned cold after 18 years. A successful crypto art series is also a successful cultural product that combines technology and art.

Punk is Punk in the same way that an asteroid hitting the earth is hard to replicate, and special times happen like this. How do you ambush the next Punk? 1. Is there innovation? 2. Is the seed community very geeky? 3. Is it a historical level under the megatrend? 4. Can the team continue to do it? 5. are the institutional holders coming in at the middle stage good enough to drive the project forward? 6. can it create a cultural resonance in the circle? These are all worth exploring.

Regarding collection investment strategies, I am very much focused on niche artists from developing countries, especially those with a pure art background or a very pioneering sense of creativity in the contemporary art field and those who respect the blockchain spirit of the blockchain community.

Moderator A: Each Trader (trader) has a different investment strategy, and each person has limited energy to focus on one vertical track. Suppose one is easily influenced by the market and forcibly changes his investment strategy. In that case, it is scary for a Trader, which is equivalent to the whole cognitive system having to be reconstructed.

H: The cost of a physical painting is not high, but it can be sold for hundreds of millions. Therefore, the value of a work does not lie in its materials or cost. Its physical price does not determine the value of Jpeg. In the structure of the blockchain market, Crypto Punks, Art Blocks, and BAYC represent the three dimensions that can be found in the NFT market. Crypto Punks starts from a programmer and is driven by technology; the monkey BAYC is community-driven. The blockchain community may be The base for the survival of the future blockchain; Art Blocks enter from artistic creativity.

From the perspective of social governance, Token is an institutional symbol. Mature NFT projects must create a field and a way of existence, and a variety of hobbies professional life corresponds to the current needs of various communities. I don't see it as a speculative target but rather as a script for building a kind of Metaverse called the respective Metaverse, whose development depends on the evolution of the community.

02

Moderator A: The more successful 10K projects have a cultural tribe behind them, and the ethos can be very different from project to project. How do you see Art Blocks as a clear stream with awe-inspiring numbers? How do you see it breaking out and the appreciation and valuation insights into generative art as a discipline?

S: The group of projects in NFT that are particularly speculative and not culturally good enough are like passing clouds and won't be in the prosperous state they are today when the market is in a bad mood. But two things are sure to go a long way: firstly, good cultural content is never speculative. But anything that has an innovative aesthetic or interest that strikes a chord is not entirely speculative and has its own commercial identity quite typically. The second point, the trend towards avatars and social identities, is unstoppable.

I am very bullish on generative art. Behind it is a respect and exploration of the mathematical logic behind information technology. The methods used are engineering in nature and reflect the cultural identity of a group of people.

C: Generative art started with computer technology and continued until this wave of artificial intelligence, more precisely the application of convolutional neural networks, entered the aesthetic vision of the masses, with a low correlation to the market price of generative artworks. In the past, the general aesthetics of popular art did not break through the traditional class texture (strong mediated aesthetic vision), the blockchain market changed this law, and the same thing is now entering the NFT art collectibles market.

H: NFT is a fuse to the art market, not a monopoly on art history. When the financial operation goes to an extreme, it is decoupled from the actual value creator. Although Art Blocks has a centralized organizer, it is isomorphic with the state-of-the-art community. Generative art will present different visual effects depending on the materials used. With the rapid development of technology and speculation, it is possible to join the first-line NFT.

Y: Art Blocks is the same thing as the explosion of CryptoPunks. Looking at the top 20 Crypto Punks holdings, the most intuitive data is that there is a very high degree of overlap with the big Art Blocks accounts, with the smallest of these holdings holding more than 50 Art Block NFTs.

More generally, a large percentage of the first blockchain explorers to make a large fortune were programmers. The culture that Art Blocks carries is precisely an aesthetically pleasing phenomenon from a programmer's perspective.

Any art form first evolved from technology, and the value of NFT relies on the programmer-led blockchain revolution to provide sufficient wealth to support it. Crypto Punks represent a new class of people, the last piece of the puzzle in internet development.

03

A: The bigger the wave, the further back you look; what should be the kind of work that can be called classic or digital antiques? What is the view on the future of NFT?

C: If we look at this from a long-term perspective, three points need to be considered. Firstly, there is a characteristic of any cultural investment product that performs more similarly to financial assets in a bull market and can be less liquid than financial assets in a bear market, with a liquidity black hole. Classic core assets can find counterparties no matter when they are traded. Broad consensus and acceptance are the hallmarks of traditional investments, and a sense of scarcity and value is formed over a long period.

Secondly, whether crypto art or generative art, continuing to move forward requires special attention to fit in with other cultural and sub-cultural trends, the spirit of the times.

Thirdly, the artist is a profession, not an inoffensive one. One might as well consider the NFT market giving artists such opportunities as a form of nourishment. If it does not produce investment returns, it is still making its contribution to the art market.

H: I encourage artists to get involved in art that may not be very romantic because there is a massive demand for essential art waiting there. A good NFT project is hardly successful without the creation of artists, and NFT offers a vast blue ocean for artists. Calmness is always within one's heart, maintaining a sense of rationality in the course of a bear or bull market, no matter how noisy it may be.

Host's summary: Since I entered this track myself, there are still times of anxiety and confusion, but things are still in the making. I hope that I can do something genuinely long-term like the four excellent teachers.

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