Featured Event
DEMO2024
06/05/2024
11AM
Conversations · Rhizome
NFT Aesthetics
Cover Image:
Harm van den Dorpel, Event Listeners, 2015, screenshots of custom software. Courtesy the artist.
This program will be presented via Zoom, register for this online program here.
NFT Aesthetics continues “Net Aesthetics,” a series of panels that seeks to examine how the internet is reshaping contemporary art. Where prior panels (presented in 2006, 2008, and 2013) responded to developments such as blogs, social media, and postinternet art, this panel gathers artists to consider the implications of NFT marketplaces and platforms for artistic practice.
NFTs are unique (that is to say, non-fungible) “tokens” that are assigned to digital artworks and registered, bought, and sold via cryptocurrency blockchains. Practitioners from distinct artistic scenes—including illustration, fan art, and creative code—have been sharing their work on NFT platforms for several years, developing their own shared values and aesthetic languages. Yet the ascendancy of NFTs appears to be quite sudden for those on the outside of these communities—including many artists, who now face questions as to how, or if, to translate their practices to this emerging context, with its complex affordances and limitations.
This event brings together artists with a range of NFT experience, working in 3D modeling, text, software, and digital painting to discuss the implications that NFTs have for their practices. Panelists include artists Harm van den Dorpel, Auriea Harvey, Katherine Frazer, Sara Ludy, and Ryan Kuo, who will each share their own work, their engagement with NFTs, and their views on the larger implications that NFTs hold for our understanding of art and culture as a whole.
This event is presented in conjunction with “World on a Wire,” the first exhibition in a new partnership between Hyundai Motor Company and Rhizome of the New Museum to showcase leading digital art globally.