The NFT Explain Me with Marina Galperina and Amy Whitaker

On this episode of Explain Me we do a deep dive on Non-Fungible Tokens, NFTs, pronounced Nifty, by also N-F-T. Joined by guests Marina Galperina, features editor of Gizmodo, and former curator and writer on digital art, and Amy Whitaker, author and assistant professor of visual arts administration, hosts William Powhida and Paddy Johnson navigate the headlines generating news around this new digital currency, the basic definitions, and the potential and dangers it poses to artists. 

 

Timestamped resources

 

6' 21'' Explain Me's episode Related Utopias: Bitcoin and the Artworld with Kevin McCoy.

 

7' NFT definitions and the blockchain 

 

13 Do artists need to care? 

 

21' The Guardian features Marina Galperina's Vine Show. 

26' Beeple Mania and aesthetics discussion - Liberal Jon McNaughton or early digital art maximalism in the style of Cliff Evans and Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung? 

 

40' NFT platforms and markets. Massimo Franceschet and Sparrow Read's The Inconvenient Truth About Secondary Markets, Part II 

43' Legacy Russell tweets about the toxic white male culture dominating NFT conversation. Follows up with a shout out to QTPOCIA+ and female-identified people engaging NFTs.

 

44' Who is the face of NFTs? Kenny Schachter. His NFT article on Artnet. 

 

47' Kenny Schachter's "Scam Likely" on Nifty Gateway.

51' Alternatives - Casey Reese's Artist-to-artist exchange with Bitmark.com, Feral File. Goes live March 19.

Also relevant: Reese's Medium article, Collecting Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction 

57' - NFT and blockchain carbon footprint

1 hour 10' Reasons for optimism

1 hour 16' Art pricing and Greg Allen's Facsimile Objects

 

1 hour 22' Amy Whitaker discusses valuation and commensuration sociological studies

 

Read and Watch

 

Amy Whitaker, A New Way To Pay Artists, TEDXfoggybottom

Amy Whitaker and Roman Kraussl, Fractional Equity, Blockchain, and the Future of Creative Work, Management Science, July 2020

Amy Whitaker, Art and Blockchain: A Primer, History, and Taxonomy of Blockchain Use Cases in the Arts, Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts. Summer 2019

Amy Whitaker, Hannah Grannemann, Artists’ Royalties and Performers’ Equity: A Ground-Up Approach to Social Impact Investment in Creative Fields, CMSE Vol 3, no 2, pg 33-51.
Memo Atkin, The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of #Cryptoart, Dec 14 2020
Rea McNamara, How Crypto Art Might Offer Artists Increased Autonomy, March 2, 2021