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Last June, six artists – Jet Martinez, Wolfe Pack, Vogue, Joshua Mays, Bud Snow and Ruff Draft – ventured to the fifth floor of Auckland’s most iconic building: the Tribune Tower. Once inside, they painted and installed murals over 10,000 square feet of blank walls. The songs ranged in style and theme from the figurative work of Wolfe Pack in honor of the dancer IceCold3000 to the contemporary work of Jet Martinez in pastel colors, inspired by Mexican folk art. Within a few months, these murals disappeared – erased by the creators’ own hands. The works were never intended to live in this building. They were destined for the metaverse.
It’s not uncommon for street art to have a short life, but it was different. Demolition has always been part of the Mural Universe Murals plan, which turns the ephemerality of street art into a feature, not a glitch. In the days between the creation and deletion of their works, the artists did something unusual: each mural was scanned and turned into a 3D model of themselves. Then everyone was improved with the help of augmented reality. For nearly two weeks, the group led AR space tours, allowing about 300 people to share the immersive experience. After being destroyed, the murals were cut into the blockchain as NFT and now live in digital form. “Buildings can collapse, weather can cause damage, and development can get in the way,” said artist Rachel Wolf-Goldsmith, also known as Wolf Pack, who led the project. “By scanning a mural and turning it into NFT, we are perpetuating art forever.”
This is far from the image that many people have of street artists – of lone figures, bottles upstairs, who stealthily paint in the dead of night, only to make cleaning crews bleach their piece the next morning. Far from being vandals, the new generation of street artists often works on city-approved projects, putting up murals that celebrate the community and the history of prominent buildings. Unlike graffiti artists who cast labels, they make scars of a different kind and increasingly incorporate technology that enhances and expands the experience beyond the wall.
Independent curator Gita Joshi, host of The curator’s salon podcast is not surprised by this rapid adoption of technology. “Street artists are often rebellious by nature,” she says, “so it makes sense for them to be at the forefront of development in the digital space, where their work can be seen by people outside the realm of street art.”
Even before technology became an integral part of art itself, it was a tool on which artists depended, from software to visualize and edit their work to projectors used to place it on walls. Technology has also penetrated the aesthetics of street art. “Technology has influenced muralists’ processes from imagination to performance,” says Wolfe-Goldsmith. “We see design elements like bugs, pixelations, distortions, chromatic aberrations and digital collage in today’s art. Street art is fascinating because it is for everyone, without barriers. This is the voice of the city, expressing political excitement, joy, cultural movements and creative trends. ”
Still, generating revenue from it remains a challenge. NFT can change that. “NFT allows artists to increase their international audience, compensate and find advocacy for their work,” said Joshi, an optimist about what the near future might hold. “While people are buying real estate in, say, Decentraland, I expect NFT street artists to find new opportunities as commissioned artists.
Perhaps the best indicator of the potential of this market is the emergence of companies such as Streeth, which is focused exclusively on cutting NFT street art. “Street art is perhaps the most underrated and underserved niche in the art sector,” says co-founder and CEO Marco Kalamassi, “but at the same time it is the most creative, most destructive niche where the artist has the most freedom.” of speech, the greatest freedom of message. “Street is not alone. NFT Mural Collective was created by street artists to support the genre in the NFT market.” Street art deserves a place in art history just as much as cubism, Dadaism or surrealism, “said artist and founder Stacey Coon, also known as StaySea, who started the band after marking and disfiguring two of its murals.” NFT’s contracts and platforms give us a way to be these historians. “
NFT cutting can be a surprisingly simple process. In its most basic form, all it takes is to have a crypto wallet and a digital version of your work of art. Most sites will take you through the rest of the process, as the NFT Mural Collective does, requiring you to fill out a form with a few details about the song. You have more control and transparency in the sale of the song than in many traditional settings, from choosing the original price for the song to deciding on the percentage of royalties for second sale that you will receive if the song is resold, and choosing a set by payment methods. Then the platform picks up and digs the piece for you.
Despite all the ease, cost-effectiveness and perseverance that the blockchain has to offer, the physical presence of a mural is still indispensable. Such as The Majestic, a 15,000-square-foot mural painted last summer in downtown Tulsa by artists Ryan Sarfati and Eric Scotnes, also known as Janoe X Zue. Rich in images that reflect the city’s Art Deco heritage and Oklahoma’s flora and fauna, it features a central angel and two children in a lavish Henri Rousseau-like setting featuring woodpeckers, butterflies, swallowtails and catfish. So much of the power of this mural is its relevance to the place and community in which it is located. But this power does not stop at the ends of the wall, it is also in the QR code of the mural, which unlocks an enlarged version of the piece with floating fish, fluttering butterflies and clouds racing across the sky. Those who can’t see the piece in Tulsa can see the augmented reality version of the mural online.
“Five years ago, thinking about a 15,000-square-foot augmented reality mural was just unheard of,” Sarfati said. “I’d like to create more physical art than digital right now, but the merging of the two is great.”
But murals on the scale of The Majestic need big budgets. Sarfati and Scotnes managed to generate extra income through NFT from the duo’s work at the Art Basel Miami in December, but services such as the NFT Mural Collective also allow artists to raise funds based on works that will be cut after being completed. To blur the boundaries between the real and digital worlds and encourage online fans to engage with physical murals, each wall will be equipped with a proof of attendance protocol or POAP, a digital memory that anyone can collect from any unique mural site. who visits. “NFT is expanding the artist’s audience because it’s not just about street art fans, it’s about NFT fans, digital art fans and cryptocurrency fans,” Kalamasi said. “This is a huge audience that is growing with each passing day.”
The fact that the patronage of online collectors can fund the creation of murals in the real world may be the best use of NFT to date. “Nothing can change the deep emotional response from watching a large-scale mural in person,” Koon said. “The immortalization of the murals on the blockchain allows these beautiful and massive works of art to live long after they expire.”
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