While in grad school, I often was punished for trying to tie music or art into "real-world" matters - a lot of academics often pride themselves on being "above" the mundane in their ivory towers, but that never sat well with me. I eventually dropped out of my Ph.D program and started working in the industry because of that - it was difficult, but in the long run I'd say I was mostly better off. (The path to being a professor is not all what it's cracked up to be, honestly.)
My critique of the art world was more aimed towards concerns of aesthetic trends rather than individual actors in the space - since I felt that would be more effective than calling certain people out and making a scene - some artists have definitely done that as an approach but they usually lose their legal battles and it didn't seem to make much difference in the long run, at least from what I've seen. My approach was more "fighting fire with fire" - in this case, fighting art with art.
The reason why I bring this up is because NFTs and crypto art are in an interesting position where there is still the potential to move the needle in regards to aesthetics and shape the way art is done in the future in a very real way. What we call "trad art" is very entrenched right now - there hasn't been a major breakthrough in the space for a very long time...even the avant-garde has been institutionalized at this point and has largely lost its appetite for change. Even internally, there's sort of this existential malaise in art institutions there right now where they feel "everything has been done" and it's virtually impossible to surprise people anymore. Even the big names like Banksy feels kind of gimmicky these days because the stunts he pulls has been done a thousand times over at this point.
But NFTs has a few things going for it that has literally never been done before - the ability to tie artworks to economics (crypto) and politics (DAOs) directly, enforced by a mechanism (the blockchain) that is both secure and transparent. This makes things like ledger records sacred - because it is permanent and unchanging with time - something that is lacking both in the digital and real worlds at the moment.
Some people think crypto enthusiasts have joined a cult - and they're not necessarily wrong in thinking so. For a lot of people, the blockchain is a spiritual thing that they can always turn to, despite what else might be going on in their lives or in the world itself. It is permanent, unchanging, eternal.
The status quo, however, does not go down without a fight. Projects like FTX and the numerous centralized projects that are posing as decentralized platforms are ways that institutions attempt to distract or dilute the masses from real change, which is something that they don't actually want. The NFT hype of 20'-22' started growing at an alarming rate, and the institutions panicked, especially as the market cap started to climb into numbers that could potentially displace the incumbents from their thrones. It wasn't that long ago that video games surpassed Hollywood in both reach and market size, after all - the "newcomer" industry has been larger than film, music, television, and radio combined, after all.
So in response, they created projects that had the appearance of a blockchain but was actually just another iteration of old models in disguise. The NFT movement started from a pure place, then got confused for a while as the incumbents took over, eventually lost, then the market crashed after people realized that the fire that got them in was no longer there. On its most basic level, that's basically what happened. The big projects like Bitcoin and Ethereum haven't seen any meaningful updates in a while - and they now spend most of their time talking about politics - not about DAOs, but in the traditional systems that feel more familiar.
You could make the case that maybe this is a necessary thing, especially for crypto projects to operate within the bounds of existing models of politics and the models of venture capital that is currently in place. But people signed up for crypto for the revolution - not for the bureaucracy - the crypto community's goals have become increasingly unclear and muddled as time goes on as the culture surrounding it becomes more and more indistinguishable from the things it claims to disrupt.
But these pattens are tales as old as time, and is not likely to change - and one artist saying one thing is not likely to make much difference in the long run. However, "fighting fire with fire", the way people's conceptions of art changes, is to push the boundaries of aesthetics itself, in a way that is both intentional and aware. This part of the process doesn't get talked about often enough, even among the art community itself.
I see a lot of artworks that use "revolutionary" technologies like NFTs as their medium, but often the artwork itself is often paying homage to established styles - which sends mixed messages to the audience, who often leaves the experience confused or unsatisfied. This, to say the least, does not leave an emotional impact - which is why a large part of the NFT markets gave up on the idea of art altogether and started trading these "tokens" as commodities instead. There are still no right or wrong ways to create art, but what gives artworks their power is intentionality - how the styles are used (both old and new), and what the artist is trying to achieve.
In general, art institutions will more likely than not disagree with that take above - the law of the land right now is art is always subjective, in the eye of the beholder, cannot be judged, priceless - well, except when some gallerist decides that something is worth $10 million "just because" - and removes your ability to object or criticize that decision. Aside from that, there are other motivations, too, like not wanting to anger your patrons' children's artworks by saying that "it needs work", or denying the "genius" of the powerful and wealthy by giving them honest feedback and constructive criticism. It's much easier to just tell them what they want to hear, then take the paycheck in return. As they say - half the economy runs on people buying and selling things, the other half, telling people with money what they want to hear. Most people have to make a decision in their lives regarding which path they want to take. (Neither path is easy, to be fair.)
So aesthetically, this leads to a lot of works that have no "inherent narrative" behind them, where the story is kind of tacked on later, only after the work was already created as an afterthought. These types of works come in different forms, but some of its characteristics are:
- No subject matter - you're not quite sure exactly what you're looking at or listening to. (And the artist does not tell you.)
- The artist explicitly tells you how you should feel. (This is a red flag, even as a personality trait.)
- Excessive embellishments that mask the form of the piece. (There to distract you from what the work actually is.)
- Audience participation (The artist wants you to do the work for them, while they take the credit. Also a red flag.)
- The artist explicitly tells people that they're free to interpret the work "however they like", but gets angry when you don't think it's the best thing ever. (Fishing for compliments, also a red flag.)
So I won't name any specifics but if you look around everywhere you'll probably notice works like these are pretty much everywhere, both in public, private, commercial and non-commercial settings. It is the dominant form of aesthetics right now - some might label it as late postmodernism or metamodernism, but it's difficult to label precisely because of its amorphous nature. It also ties in very nicely with the idea of the "medium is the message", which works to the advantage of tech platforms that basically values users for their stats, rather than what they have to say. It also lets people justify selling jpegs of rocks for millions of dollars, just because they can.
When the message doesn't matter, the shell is the only thing you have left, after all. If you can find a poor sucker to sell those rocks for millions of bucks, why not? It's nihilism translated into a business practice, at the expense of the uninformed.
There's technically nothing "wrong" with making art in this way - but the problem is that its pervasiveness has smothered out other ways of doing art, and the concentration and centralization of aesthetic sensibilities have made it difficult for people to even imagine other ways of thinking about art in itself. It's in the galleries, in the concert halls, social media platforms, startups and venture capital, in the media - even in crypto. It is EVERYWHERE.
The biggest problem, I'd say, is the disconnection between the intention of the artist and the way the piece is created. Oftentimes you run into artworks where the artist says one thing, but you struggle to find the connection between how it was done vs what they were trying to say. This is also a byproduct of many artists having "outsourced" their work explicitly - but many artists also struggle to do this even in their own works because they haven't been properly trained in areas of bringing their intentionality to life. So what happens is that the audience sees the work, gets confused, leaves a few polite comments, then leaves and never talks about the work ever again. It's unfortunate, but that's most of the art world in a nutshell, both online and off. But it is also the source of anxiety and dissociation modern people feel in their day to day lives, because the creators who have that ability to bring about those connections again are typically sidelined or unappreciated by the mediums we interact with, day to day.
So - the reason why I keep on pushing for music NFTs - despite its small numbers and the lack of support in the industry as a whole, is because it is the most visceral artforms out there. And not even music videos - but just music, in it of itself. The internet itself has always been heavily biased towards visual mediums - its evolution from pictures to video went very quickly, but in the meantime, music and audio has largely been left untapped. You can tune pictures and videos out of your mind fairly easily - but music affects people in ways that are still not very well understood - and that's where I believe where people will turn to when they finally realize that the current ways of things aren't really working. Are there any other alternatives, really? I've looked all over but I honestly can't think of anything else.
You see, if you have enough money and power, you can make people do things. That is a known fact. But you can't change the way how people feel, or what they're saying or thinking about you behind their backs. That's a mistake a lot of wealthy people make and it ends up costing them dearly - even if they have their material needs well taken care of. But artists have that ability - to change how people think - to change the way how they feel. That's where the power of art lies in, and that's where we should be going. I'm hoping that they'll be at least a few people willing to go on that journey with me - it won't be easy, but it is something that needs to happen...the future will end up looking too grim, otherwise.