Thread by @dbc___

What does the #CryptoPhunk manifesto teach us about "the new art", a la #NFT art?

Here are my thoughts in thread form. Get out your rocking chairs and shawls, we are goig to sit back for a few minutes

phunks.medium.com/the-cryptophun…

#NFT art was born into two contexts. There are actually two Renaissance moments happening at the same time.

1. The first is a struggle between what is visually appreciated, what is considered art

2. The second is a dialogue about decentralisation and control for artists

The CryptoPhunks were delisted twice because, who knows. There are no logical explanations for it, other than the most likely: the people running OpenSea have no clue what art is and they don't understand copyright, image and visual practice.

Some early #NFT art, as best as I can make out, was rushed into being by money-seeking greedy and elitist "collectors" who saw a window of opportunity on the "decentralised" web3 platforms and built up massively funded tech enterprises to make a business out of it.

I don't know all the #cryptophunks by name; i know some of their addresses, some are anonymous, some are doxxed. but the point is, the phunks were taken down twice when they tried to perform a "flip" of the Punks that were already seeing high valuations on platforms like OS

Each of the Phunks, was "hand flipped" by Philip the Intern -- and here is our art movement. And the art moment's birth, imo.

The whole point of Phunks was to show that art in this space is a hand-molded and handcrafted thing, everything from the minting on original contracts,

to the hand-to-hand combat of debates on what is art, who has a right to that art, and what control should be given to governments, investors, CEOs and others to manage and manipulate the platforms upon which the masses are seeking autonomy and individuality in their lives

The #cryptophunks, in a way, embody the one-to-one and peer-to-peer constant debate that is the actual art of this visual art movement.

B/c each NFT is built on a solidity contract that is customised by real developers and real people, the true "art" is the information layer

There are many generations of this going on. @RR_BAYC and @RR_BAYC are doing with Ryder himself hand-minting each of the 10,000 issues of @BoredApeYC apes that have now been stripped of metadata racist traits and left with only provenance and this hand to hand combat discussion

I want to stress this as clearly as I can.

Artists will constantly make the case that it's their visual style and uniqueness that makes what they do art.

There is an inherent tension here. Our way of seeing art, when on the Internet, is always an interaction with a copy.

The real art is something that can only be seen by debating it, and talking about it. In essence, we are in a new epoch, or a kind of resetting. Just as the Dadaists and Surrealists had to do after the major world war in the 40s, conceptual artists today are resetting the vibe.

And it's good they are doing it now.

It's quite obvious to anyone who pays attention that it's necessary. Would you rather reset the system of concept, theory, visual aesthetics and meaning before the nuke, or after, where it's going to be really hard to find the pieces?

I am writing a novel in this narrative. It's about a man who is caught in a nuclear holocaust. He gets radiation poisoning. He steals a boat out of Hong Kong and then finds he has a stowaway teenager on board. As he dies from his sickness, he tries to teach her

But he can't remember everything. He can only talk about the ideas and pieces them together with the fragments of the songs, art objects, poems and histories he remembers. When she reaches the new shore, she has made her own story, and it's bigger, more compassionate.

and she has to teach it to people she has never seen before, and has to learn their language because they don't really know hers that well.

This is the way.

Let's get to work, people.