The recent performative attack by two Just Stop Oil activists, where soup was thown on a Van Gogh painting, resulted in widespread publicity and debate over tactics. As an artist who is embedded in the visual arts world, I was initially shocked by the action – which was staged to imply destruction of an artwork – until I considered the history of environmental protest and non-violent direct action.

Many reduced the protest to a question of whether it just polarised the public against climate activism or changed anyone’s view.

Protest and change don’t work like that. The effect of a single action can’t easily be assessed as to what effect it might have on the overall movement. Each action, by individuals or groups, feeds an overall momentum.

Many activists have spent decades writing letters, gathering petition signatures, lobbying parliamentarians, organising peaceful marches of varying sizes, and joining noisy but peaceful protests. Along the way they’ve suffered the vitriol of naysayers as well as the rain, the ignorance of some politicians and the sometimes biased, sometimes ignorant media (if the media can be induced to cover a story at all).

Those who attack Just Stop Oil and call for only non-disruptive actions are likely unaware of the history of the environment and climate movements and the rigorous thought that has gone into strategies over these decades. It is not that long ago that mass rallies and marches related to environmental concerns were common; Greta Thunberg’s Skolstrejk för klimatet garnered hundreds of thousands at times – Wikipedia puts the numbers at greater than one million in March 2019 and four million worldwide in September 2019. Politicians and media often ridiculed them either as too young to have cogent opinions or imperilling their education when they spent an afternoon protesting. Parents often supported their children’s activism.

Young people see those in power as ignoring reasoned voices and mass peaceful protest while their futures look ever bleaker and business as usual continues, after the initial hope of post-covid changes. And it’s not just the young. For many years environmental protesters were side-lined as wild counterculture hippies out of touch with reality. Now, reality backs many of those voices – in the pages of ‘Science’ and countless UN reports that warn of imminent tipping points, a future of extreme weather for the lucky and mass inundation, land loss and death for the unlucky (who are usually poorer and often less to blame). Meanwhile, corporates and hand-tied politicians continue as if very little was wrong, even when councils and countries have declared climate emergencies.

When governments refuse or are unable to stand up to business lobbying, greenwashing and decades of often clearly documented corporate lying and obfuscation, and the media treat peaceful protest as non-newsworthy, the call for non-disruptive actions becomes an attempt at wilful dismissal.

Many historical changes in policies of inequity have been effected by long-term and wide-ranging protest tactics. Many have forgotten that these were frequently hard-won battles against entrenched and monetarily-backed views which were initially not widely supported. Often diverse, non-strategic and ragged groups working semi-independently would act at various levels and suffer verbal and physical attack from an unsupportive public.

In most long term campaigns of change there are those who write letters and academic papers, those attempt to meet with politicians, others who talk on tv and radio, create websites, those who blog or document injustice, organise or turn up for marches and street actions and those who act more directly and are prepared to confront and get arrested. Each one of these actions, singly, appears to have little or no effect. But collectively and over time, with repetition, reinforcement and immense effort, each can add to a forward momentum that might result in change.

The global anti-apartheid movement acted internally and worldwide to bring attention to the South African government’s racist policies, from the 1950s until the end of apartheid in the 1990s. Actions were varied, including petitions, street protest, and attempts at a trade, cultural and sporting boycott with racially picked teams. In Aotearoa/New Zealand the latter involved attempts to stop rugby games between the Springboks and All Blacks, resulting in confrontation with the public and police. These protests split opinion over tactics and effects but protestors occupying the pitches of stalled games chanted ‘the whole world is watching’ and later found that their actions gave renewed hope to the then-jailed Nelson Mandela and others in South Africa.

Also in Aotearoa, wide-ranging action was taken against French nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific. The testing was initially above ground but even the below-ground testing endangered thousands of Pacific Islands people and irradiated islands, causing long-lasting pollution. Again, all forms of action were taken, including boats that sailed into testing zones to disrupt French operations.

The actions against a racist government and another that endangered people and environment  finally resulted in lasting changes for the better, although the toll on many activists was severe. In Aotearoa the French even resorted to state terrorism against protest, blowing up a Greenpeace boat in Auckland harbour which killed a Portuguese-Dutch photographer. The French government referred to their own actions (prior to being found out as the perpetrators) as a terrorist act, and then celebrated the government agents that planted the bombs.

Other examples of successful long term campaigns are the global actions against the Vietnam war through the 1960s and 70s, which eventually turned the tide of public opinion against the US government’s activity, and the Suffragette movement which brought about votes for women. In fact, while Aotearoa allowed women to vote in 1893, Britain continued to refuse. Newspapers there ridiculed the movement (the term suffragette was initially a term of belittlement coined by a Daily Mail journalist) and the actions became more direct, with women being beaten for speaking out, and imprisoned. Women in the UK only gained full voting rights in 1928 after a long and at times violent battle, with disagreements over the aggressive tactics.

These examples all describe political changes that happen slowly and with a diverse range of interventions. Movements have groups that don’t always work together or even agree on tactics, and many vested interests work against change even when the call for it is widely supported. The public are often not on side initially, and politicians are regularly decades behind in their thinking and lobbied hard by those who would lose power or money.

Movements can change in their effectiveness and can often be co-opted by less supportive groups, for instance the takeover of child abuse hashtags by far right groups. Infiltrators can provoke or undermine action in ways that demoralise and defang groups e.g. police targeting and surveillance of legitimate protesters in the UK, NZ and many other countries.

Some protests move to violent actions in the face of frustration. So far, most environmental activism shies away from this and many activists are trained specifically in non-violent action and resistance along the lines of Gandhi’s movement in India.

Confrontational protest isn’t always on the side of movements we might all agree with. Anti-abortion protests have involved much direct action and violence for years, as have the recent conspiracy-laden anti covid vaccine protests. Right wing racist movements also try some of the same tactics.

Climate change is one part of an environmental and consumer-culture campaign that has been active in many ways since at least the 1960s. There are individuals who are effective in research that informs scientific evidence, and those who are more comfortable in actions that target politicians with letters or appearances at government select committees. Others are better at bringing sound-bite arguments for change to the media or in organisation of mass marches.

Right now, at the coca cola COP27 UN summit, world leaders and corporates are gathering to try to implement previous COP requirements and to work out whether and how to help poorer communities who are likely to be more directly affected by climate change, while having contributed less to the causes. We’ll see lowest common denominator statements, many of which will be ignored, delayed and obfuscated over. Meanwhile the Egyptian hosts are arresting some activists and side-lining others and making participation by NGOs extremely hard. It’s becoming clear that the COP27 app downloaded by 5000 attendees already, has spy-level permissions that may give authorities the ability to read email, listen in using phone microphones and view images for ‘security purposes’. One has to wonder why a vitally important series of UN talks is sponsored by a global corporate responsible for massive plastic pollution, where business interests get access to meetings and speakers while groups that try to bring the voice of the public have been pushed to the fringes or even disallowed.

The argument of this piece is that protest and engagement by the people who are most affected by climate change and environmental issues in general is becoming more and more circumscribed both by the authorities, by global organisations who might set regulations and by the media who require more juicy material for their pages.

While throwing soup at paintings may not have the most obvious connections with climate change, it indicates the frustration and anxiety that is affecting more and more ordinary people who have tried other forms of protest.  This one protest continues to create debate over its tactics and effectiveness. Given that another direct action, at Amsterdam Schiphol airport, which directly targeted the use of private planes, is already starting to fade away from news and commentary, we can expect more creative, desperate and obscure types of action.

Personally, I currently remain more comfortable creating art and writing. However, as long as these other protests remain non-violent, I expect to support their objectives rather than find fault with their methodology and implementation.

———————–

The reasons for the protest and the debate over tactics were not covered well by much of the media, which to my mind makes those media complicit in the cause of direct action protest. If you want to hear their cogent and clear arguments, Owen Jones interviews another Just Stop Oil activist, Emma Brown, in an informative, emotional 15 minute clip.

Artnews writes about it and links to a video of Phoebe Plummer, after her court appearance.

Direct tiktok link, complete with criticisms about her oil-based earrings and vest.

A skynews piece quotes Bob Geldof in support (as well as being furious at road blockades) and links to further art actions.

I wrote more than a year ago about some investigations into NFTs. Initially drawn in by the possibility of online publishing as an environmentally cleaner equivalent to physical exhibitions. My first post was about finding and rejecting OpenSea and its use of  PoW Ethereum-based blockchain.

A second post in March 2021 detailed an investigationof cleanNFT platform hicetnunc.xyz and the environmental and practical issues around art-based NFTs.

Lets say its been eye-opening and a rollercoaster ride since then.

hicetnunc was underground and then suddenly and temporarily had more activity than the popular OpenSea. Just as suddenly, on November 12th it was turned off.
Four months went by while a successor (or fork) was brought to life in the name of teia.art
As teia was about to launch, suddenly hicetnunc was back online. But the landscape had already changed. A tezos based generative platform – fxhash – had drawn some attention and was massively popular, and another – versum.xyz had just come online, formed by ex hicetenunc developers. objkt.com had been going since July 2021, firstly to introduce auctions to the hicetnunc arena and along with the hicetnunc mirrors that popped up hours after it went down, there was a much bigger ecosystem, all co-existing and overlapping to one or other extent.
In March 2022 came an 8bit on-chain artistic platform 8bidou.com (which experienced some growth and scammer issues) and a 3d environment – tz1land.
All of these platforms more or less use a web3 model of decentralising content. In the case of an NFT platform, that means that text content might come from (and go to) a blockchain. Images are stored on a third-party space that guarantees extended availability, such as IPFS. Taking this further, development of the platform might occur globally with contracted or volunteer devs. The platforms sometimes attempt to have decentralised administration, distributing organisation through a DAO.
On the art side of things, Tezos appears to have collected up a unique and experimental range of artists from diverse regions. Part of this diversity is because the get-involved cost is peanuts, even for most poorer artists. Five New Zealand dollars will allow you to mint 10 works or more on many of the platforms, AND start a small collection of the works of others. To participate in Ethereum-based platforms you’re talking hundreds sometimes – and those are transaction fees, before even the cost of the art comes into play.

Steering an anticipatory traditional artist who wants to start in the NFT space

Intro

This article will attempt to inform artists who have little knowledge of the process of NFTs applied to art but want to experiment or sell within that space. Specifically, the interest is in helping Aotearoa/New Zealand and other geographically or economically separated artists participate in a green decentralised art space. There are many choices to be made when entering the space but one central point is to understand the environmental issues that surround the blockchains that run these spaces. The intention of the article is to steer the curious artist in the direction of Green NFTs and give evidence and links for such a choice. The emphasis is less on sales than on curiosity and experimentation. A case study on the HicetNunc.xyz platform will give practical information.

Background

Historically, Australasian art and artists have had a distance disadvantage when compared with those in the Northern hemisphere. Not only the disadvantage of transportation of works, but seeing a benign neglect of the distinctive work that is coming from these countries. One could posit a blindspot to work that is not part of the European / UK / US centric art markets.

This is not to negate the breakthrough that artists such as recent contemporary Aotearoa / New Zealand artists Simon Denny, Michael Parakowhai, plus Australian, Indonesian and Taiwanese counterparts, but it is much harder for most artists from these regions to gain any recognition.

Perhaps because of this historical blindspot, even when work can be created and shown on the internet, such countries not in the art markets’ purvey still suffer from lack of recognition and awareness. It’s a running joke, how often New Zealand is left off maps even when ‘global’ inclusion is lauded by a show. Even more ignored are the unique creations of Pasifika artists whose nations are often completely unknown in the Southern hemisphere.

The current interest in NFTs globally, and the decentralisation of arts structures that accompanies it holds hope that global distance boundaries will be further transcended. But the concern is that in the rush to get on these platforms, and with a lack of knowledge that newcomers inevitably have, decisions will be made that don’t account for environmental concerns.

Currently NFTs are being hyped as every artists answer to lack of sales and notoriety. While there will no doubt be artists who are concerned just with selling their art, I expect many artists will benefit from an understanding of the social and environmental concerns before they step into this area.

Blockchain and energy costs

Briefly, art-based NFTs are tokenised references that point to a work of art held somewhere on the internet and authenticate the ownership. This authentication is handled by a contract written in a blockchain. A blockchain is a ledger of transactions (which doesn’t hold the actual work) and is connected to a cryptocoin such as Bitcoin. Most NFT systems use the Ethereum blockchain, known as a Proof of Work (PoW) system. PoW relies on complex calculations that require high energy inputs for security (the ‘work’). Consequently, the power requirements to run them are significant and have been a cause of concern for many. A few alternatives are available, most using Proof of Stake (PoS) systems. The energy requirements for PoS blockchains are significantly reduced, some say a million or more times so.

For many, the environmental impacts of Ethereum platforms are way too high. French artist Joanie Lemercier, who was releasing works on NiftyGateway, cancelled a new release after they would not respond with energy consumption requests, and started to look for more environmentally friendly platforms (promoting hicetnunc.xyz and participating in the Green NFT Discord).

Brief history of web art and NFTs

Like many, a few months ago I knew very little about NFTs. My own work deals with digital and tech waste in the area of photography. As such, I was interested in the potential to reach a diverse audience through showing work online, removing the need to make physical work (and waste). While the internet itself provides such a staging area, it competes with all the other uses and websites that abound and distract.

NFT platforms, however, provide a space where there is a specific focus on art (although that space includes collectibles and other monetisations). Unfortunately these are often promoted and talked of as just marketplaces, but artists are staking claims in much more diverse ways, especially on the more experimental platforms, with lower fees.

Of course NFTs have not come out of a vacuum. One reason is the recognised need for visibility, permanence and yes, compensation for artists who primarily produced electronic work, infinitely reproducible and transferrable.

The phenomena of digital and technology-based art has been around in many forms, predating even such artists as Nam June Paik, and electronic music pioneers like Kraftwerk. Early computer and code-based art is documented in such books as Art in the Age of the Internet * and Digital Art **, along with net based experiments that have often been mostly missed by the majority and left to linger in dark web corners, or suffer from platform decay (eg when platforms close down and take accounts and content with them – who remembers Geocities or [music platform xxxxx]).

The beginning of the web, when it was fervently non-commercial saw the rise of new art-forms that used the concepts of the network, the transmitted work and the connections built through an international way of connection.

This work was often created by coders or graphics people (even from others who dabbled in html but had more or a hacker or experimenter attitude or inspired circuit-bent enthusiasm) who never considered it art or themselves artists exactly, and perhaps at times saw it as ephemeral. Often creating for little reward or recognition. Some of these people were minor legends in the rise of digital and net based art, and some even broke through into the outside art world and offered venues and shows that conventional artists dreamed of. Most remain known only by a pseudonym to a few.

More recently, there are vibrant communities of art experimentation using code, AI / gans, pixel-art, memes, and other net-specific cultural items. Platforms like the web and router-based The Wrong have provided alternative curated zones that get media attention.  The Photographers Gallery *** in London has recently been featuring network based art. Showcasing photographers who explore game environments for subject. Who use google as a camera. Who track and critique the delamination of images through their networked path, much as Hito Steyerls ‘poor image’ **** discusses.

NFT platforms such as Rarible, Nifty Gateway and SuperRare have been around for a year or two. Others such as Foundation and OpenSea are more recent starters. Some select their artists carefully, others are open access. All are showing sales numbers that might be surprising. And showing work that surprisingly sells.

The buyers on these platforms are a quite a mix and have different interests and motivations to conventional art collectors. They often come with a ‘collectable’ mindset. Art is marketed in timed ‘drops’, hyped and teased.

Some platforms cater more for the multiple, collectible high sellers, others have a wide range of pieces on show, from paintings photographed, images of sculpture digitised, to hybrid works, originating from traditional backgrounds but with digital interventions such as morph-like movement or modified by AI interpreted imagesets, through to true digital works that haven’t seen the outside of a computer (or tablet), and work that conceptualises and critiques the space it sits in (and the buyer/collector mentality that covets it).

Practical thoughts for newcomers

Some criticism is made of conventional art that is brought into NFT space. It’s seen by many as a place that should hold digital-native work only. Some platforms do tend to select artists who produce that kind of work predominantly. But many artists are finding that their real-world work fits well in some places, especially if a story is attached.

As a traditional artist entering the world of NFTs, you’ll need to explore platforms first, finding the one that is most amenable to the work you do. Prepare to be bewildered both by the tech aspects and the networked and memed cultures that exist in the space. You will likely feel an outsider and it’s worth noting that although the NFT space has a place for traditional 2D and 3D visual arts, it is also the primary space for digital artists (and collectable makers, and hucksters trying to make a buck).

You will find some who produce NFTs that are essentially documentation of a work, but then offer a copy of the real work in conjunction with an NFT (although this does have problems since the real work is not authenticated in the same way as the NFT). Others are reworking material into works that become hybrids, but take care that you don’t just make work because it will look good or sell well in this new space.

This is not a space where you can bluster in noisily. Often communities have been established and there is a much stronger consensus culture to all manner of decision-making. Yes- decisions. You will be joining more than just a platform, but the surrounding culture, whether through twitter, discord or other open (and closed – clubhouse invites for iOS users anyone?) forums, since this is a young, fast growing space that is forming and breaking rules.

You will need to learn, and expand your horizons. You’ll have the opportunity to meet artists (and coders) from around the world, although few so far from Maori and Pacific regions. The smaller platforms and their discord channels are lively and more multicultural than many spaces you might have encountered, no matter which culture you align with. Respect is paramount.

Artistically, you’ll encounter all manner of work that might be new to you. You’ll see work that is challenging visually. Work that is derivative and blatantly plagiarised. You’ll see work in editions of 10,000 with minor changes across each version (which sell better than yours). It will not be clear why buyers are buying those works and not your own. You may be disheartened with a lack of sales. Tempted to try out what you start to see as selling tropes.

The other seriously practical upskilling you’ll need is understanding the coin base that your nft will be minted in, as well as being knowledgeable about what exactly you are selling when you sell the nft. That is, a contract of ownership, not copyright. You need to understand this so that you can explain it to your buyers, your dealer, your friends. Most importantly so that you don’t break the terms of your nft mint – if you mint an edition of 10, don’t try and sell more. Much like setting an edition size in real life, but it’s easy to lose sight of this in digital space. A notebook or database for referencing your mints in some archival way should be on your mind.

You will also find the space to be heavily uncurated at times. Collectibles sit beside spinning coin memes, next to landscape and GAN experiments, video, text and audio, along with high and low conceptual work. There is generally no way to order your minted works other than that of the system default, although this may evolve.

So far, money has barely been mentioned. But most platforms push the monetary-value of the work (or its auction listings) above the art-value, or even of the artist name and title. Minimal interfaces strip away the context and often allow very small space for accompanying text.  How you tell your story in this space can be another learning exercise, building on micro text output on the nft page itself, twitter minimalism, or Tumblr, Instagram etc. You can create a blog item or web page around the work, each part standing alone but adding to the ‘story’ of your work.

Be assured though, you shouldn’t approach NFTs as a way to sell more and live off your art unless you a) already have a name and a following that will seek you out b) you happen to make the right kind of work and it can be found c) you are incredibly bullish at marketing yourself (and annoying a whole bunch of onlookers).

In terms of discovery, you’ll often find platforms attempt a simplistic curation by including a ‘theme’ or art-type dropdown selector. Tagging and keywords are common ways of trying to make the tens of thousands of works more discoverable. But the reality is that there are already thousands of artists who are way further down the track and familiar with the nuances of these spaces.

Since all NFT platforms are geared around selling work, you will need to figure a pricing structure and the editioning of your online work. Many NFT platforms have lower prices for work, although it is more possible to have larger editions. Don’t forget that you are now selling direct, but you are also in control of the marketing of your work. Twitter has become a key place to announce new mints of work. You may need to set up a new account and slowly gather a following there.

With these things in mind, you need to evaluate your reasons for investigating the world of NFTs. These might be just that you are curious, want to seek out new audiences, or show work in non-physical venues.

Environment

As mentioned, platforms using Proof of Stake are inherently less polluting than those on Proof of Work blockchains, and are commonly referred to as ‘clean NFTs’. Counter-discussion is that Ethereum is moving fast to ETH2 which will switch to PoS. However, this still remains speculative and follows two years of such suggestions. Many PoS platforms run on the Tezos blockchain which means you will require the tezos coin to participate. (In PoW systems you will generally need to buy Ethereum coin).

Going with a clean NFT now means you are immediately a lot better off eco-footprint-wise than minting with PoW.

But, be aware that PoS still does have an energy use as do other processes you will be using to create and mint work. For instance there is a growing awareness of general digital waste. There are many aspects of this, but consider that it covers both the technology directly, and the electronic space that uses energy and produces physical waste. For example, you might also want to consider the physical equipment you use. Are there take-back / supplier-recycling schemes for your computer, scanner, printer, camera, external hard drives etc (short answer, especially for NZ is no!). Secondly, consider the hidden power uses you create – cloud storage of your files (that includes sites like Dropbox), the archived material you leave around internet space (unused but still extant accounts, perhaps with gigabytes of data adding to redundant data storage). If you host websites, you might want to look at green webhosting, although in all areas there is a large potential for benefits to be more about greenwashing than real-world effects, to a greater or lesser extent.

So, minting cleanly is not the end goal of what you might want to achieve (and what your buyers, gallery, and detractors might want to question you on), and like many things, once you start down this path, people will expect you to continue, be perfect, not make any mistakes.

I mention detractors, and you should be aware that artists minting NFTs are getting such grief at times, especially those minting in platforms that still use Ethereum. But most detractors are not even aware of the differences in PoS and PoW so you may have an educational role as well. Know your facts!

Benefits:

Global reach (potentially, with self-promotion)

Secondary sales royalties (yes, these barely exist in the real world but they are a part of most NFT structures). Royalties are a percentage value that comes back to the artist, but these are configurable and you can also manually do whatever you want with those returns – at least one artist is distributing royalties to gallery staff.

Vibrant community

Environmental

Concerns:

Does my work fit the space?

Do I have the time up front to invest in the learning curve both of the platform and the marketing?

Do I have the time up front to invest in the community?

Do I have the basic technical ability, or help, to a) create, manage and document work digitally b) setup a wallet with (PoS) coin, and learn the workings of the platform as well as to keep work and wallet secure?

Hic et Nunc

In my own study of the area I checked three platforms – OpenSea, HicetNunc and NFT Bazaar.

OpenSea proved to be a shock both in the cost of minting works on Ethereum, and at the same time, Memo Atken’s article on the environmental costs of PoW came out. Joanie Lemercier pointed me in the direction of HicetNunc.xyz, a platform that runs on the Tezos network and is only three months old. NFT Bazaar is even more recent and not fully launched as of May 2021.

Perhaps surprisingly, hicetnunc (H=N) is built primarily by one Brazilian coder crzypatchwork voluntarily. The newness of the system (plus some concrete decisions) means it has a barebones look, and only very recently were the keyword tags that artists were encouraged to add, functional as clickable.

H=N refers to works as objkts (since they can be art, documents, music, etc) and in March there were just over 10,000, from about 500?? artists. Two months later, in Early May that number is over 71,000. H=N has seen a lot of growth given that it is one of the few functioning PoS platforms with open access that could be offered as an alternative when questioning of PoW became strong in March 2021. H=N itself still has few art discovery tools, but 3^rd parties have built some very useful ones that are referenced in the H=N wiki document.  This document also has information about wallets and the other necessities about joining up.

Briefly, in order to use any NFT platform, you need a crypto coin wallet that works for the blockchains you use. Tezos is not as widely supported as Bitcoin or Ethereum so you may need two wallets if you also want to use those coins.

1 – set up a wallet

There are ‘offline’ wallets – often on USB sticks, which are very secure and necessary if you have large amounts of a coin. Most do well with a browser based wallet such as Temple or Kukai (both wallets work with Tezos).

Wallets have a private key and a public key. The general rule is – never give out your private key. Store that key safely and securely – you won’t need it often but if you forget it, you will *never* be able to access your wallet, with whatever coin it has in it. Your public key is public and you can give it to anyone. H=N and NFT Bazaar actually use it as the web address to your collection of work.

2 – join H=N

You join, by connecting your wallet with the sync link at the top right of a H=N webpage. You won’t be able to mint or buy work because there is nothing in your wallet at this stage.

3 – get some coin

You will need an account with a crypto-outlet – a crypto coin trading platform. Tezos is not as commonly supported especially in New Zealand so you may need to research this. Unless you know what you are doing, don’t go with small, new or otherwise dicey platforms – there are many scams in the crypto-coin world. Check that your choice will sell Tezos – Dasset is NZ based. Coinbase and Binance are international and may be harder to set up accounts from NZ (or have lack of or no support – Coinbase as of March 2021).

Essentially, You need to join and verify yourself to the platform, which can be quite intrusive (sending face ID or even taking a picture of your face). You put some money into the trading platform with a credit card, bank transfer and then buy your coin. The coin is now on a wallet on your trading platform, and you can transfer it to your preferred tezos wallet such as Temple.

Be aware that you can’t transfer all of your coin over because a small amount is required for ‘gas’ (basically a transaction fee). You can get away with buying as little as $10 or $20 on some platforms.

3a) Tezos fountains

The friendly and accommodating nature of NFT platforms extends to them giving you free money. Fountains have been around for more than a decade, when you could be gifted 1 or 2 bitcoins just to get you started. There are fountains for tezos too. Often just individuals or collectives who want to help artists get started and may give 2 tez or 0.33 tez to allow you to mint a number of works

4) Minting and listing

Once you have a wallet with some value in it, you can buy work, and put up your own. H=N is straightforward once you’ve done it the first time. From the dropdown menu, click on OBJKT (mint).

You enter title, description and tags. You choose how many works to mint (called ‘editions’) and the royalty rate you want from 2ndry sales. Then, click Upload OBJKT and this allows you to select a file from your computer.

If you are uploading an image, it needs to be a jpg or png, gif etc. You will need to have prepared this file, titled and sized it. You may want to consider adding metadata to the file, and note that it is likely that geocoding information may have been added by your camera and you may want to strip this out (look up image metadata editing tools such as geosetter).

H=N can do a wider set of file types than many platforms including movie formats, pdf, svg and html, which allow authors, poets and coders to put work on there.

Click Preview to see that it all looks good. This information will not be editable once the work is minted, so double check it.

H=N will open the wallet, and show that there is are two small charges to mint.

Wallets (or blockchain connections) can be temperamental, and may take some time or even backtrack and fail so you may need to try a few times (if the transaction shows ‘backtracked’ you can safely try again). If you need to try more than once, make sure you wrote down all those description details etc – saving them in a file, with your copy of the work is one way of documenting the NFTs you create.

5) List

Minting only creates the NFT, but doesn’t list it for sale. It will show in your ‘creations’ but as Not For Sale.  When you are ready to offer it, click ‘manage assets’ in the H=N menu. You then select the work and from its page click on ‘swap’. At this point, you can swap/list all the editions of the work for one price, or you can swap some for a lower price and some for a higher price, and even keep some in reserve (either as ‘artist proofs’ or available for you to send directly to someone’s wallet).

Pricing and editioning is an art in itself. It depends on the value of your work to others in many of the same ways it does in the real world.

NOTE – don’t list for free (0 tez) because bot accounts currently hoover those all up and start reselling.

Once you click ‘swap’ the item should (sometimes slowly) get listed with edition and price, and now collectors can find and buy your work.  You will see that the work has an OBJKT number and you can use the page address with this number to promote the fact that it is available, in appropriate places (tweeting, on the share-your-objkt channel in the Discord, on Instagram or your website).

6) Secondary sales

If someone buys your work, they can also resell it (they just use the swap function on it). Because of the royalties tied to this, some works can generate appreciable secondary sales returns.

7) Collecting

If you have any curiosity at all, you will see work by others that appeals to you. You can buy this and become a collector yourself (the work appears in your collections tab).

Because of the current prevalence of bots and copyminters (those who mint others’ work and pass it off as their own), it pays to check that the artist has made the work themselves.  See the next section on authenticating yourself.

8) Authenticating yourself

Your profile will be identified by your wallet address until you authenticate it. You do this by filling out a form which asks a few details and asks you to send a very small amount of tez to them. You also include the ‘hash’ of that operation as proof. See H=N wiki for details

9) Read the H=N wiki / Discord

Find the link to the wiki in the link under About on the menu.  Many questions will be answered here. Many more will be answered on the Discord server, also linked in About.

Other notes

What is my NFT and where is it stored?

Your NFT technically is a receipt of ownership on the blockchain of the coin/token used. The blockchain authenticates this, but does not store the artwork. Several globally recognised systems can be used by platforms to store the actual artwork – such as ipfs, or with opensea, this can be your own hosting. Some may point out that these are new structures and not proven over time. You and/or your collectors could have concerns about the longevity of the works they purchase (although at least some works (jpgs, movies, pdfs) are able to be downloaded at the time of purchase)

Marketing….

As with the real world, DIY or through 3^rd parties. Don’t shout or shill. Beware of twitter feeds that ask you to shill to them – most are more interested in increasing their reach, not yours).  Find your audience and treat them well.

Your existing platforms (irl and online) – twitter, instagram, tumblr, facebook, blogs, websites, dealer website etc

Use of tags, keywords.

You do not own this space – humility

What can I mint?

On many platforms, file formats are limited – jpg, gif, mov

HicetNunc in its experimental fervour, offers a unique set of formats that add to the standard and allow for (limited) forms of javascript, html, P5js (processing with javascript) and svg

Skills needed

You will likely need to increase your understanding of blockchain and the coin you are to work with.

You’ll need to understand the workings and rules of the platform you go with, along with its culture.

Along the way, you will learn more about digital arts, decentralised systems, crypto-coin wallets and transactions and much more that will initially appear to be highly confusing.

Cost

PoW systems that mostly use Ethereum coin are expensive mostly due to the ‘gas’ cost of transactions. Expect to pay up to a hundred dollars (US) for setup, and for each artwork mint.

With PoS systems, the costs are much lower – setup can be free. You can get small amounts of coin from ‘fountains’ sometimes, which give you enough to mint a few pieces. Otherwise, you can buy the coin and you might only need $10 worth to get started (although the pathway to getting that coin will add various charges).

Collecting

Most artists I know would not define themselves as collectors of art. Sure they will have art by others, often swapped or gained cheaply (or photocopied etc). Most artists I know are too poor to buy much physical art, and have little space to display it.

When you enter the crypto art arena as a creator though, it’s quite likely, especially on the alternative platforms, that you’ll find work that you like, or you’ll swap with others (H=N has recently run two weekend-long ‘swaps’ called OBJKT4OBJKT where thousands of pieces were collected by artists). You will be drawn into collecting because it can be cheap, and what’s more, it takes up no physical space. Finally, it is just fun and engaging with the community of creators.

So a warning too: don’t snap-buy, check the provenance of the artist to make sure they are indeed the actual creator. Selling of others’ work is becoming common-place; selling of plagiarised work is too. Check if the artist has a verified profile, a social media or web-link that looks authorative.

Articles and other

Memo Atken 1& 2

https://memoakten.medium.com/the-unreasonable-ecological-cost-of-cryptoart-2221d3eb2053

Wired article on Joanie Lemercier

https://www.wired.com/story/nfts-hot-effect-earth-climate/

Joanie Lemercier article

The problem of CryptoArt

Curated and external shows of work

Phillipines show – Mono8

https://www.mono8gallery.com/objktion

Malaysian show

The Fen

https://www.hicetnunc.xyz/gallery/thefen

Cryptovoxels Hic et Nunc

https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=S@753E,432N

World Art Day (fundraiser – click on ‘collection)

https://www.hicetnunc.xyz/tz/tz1ejivVeR6WxqzphH31EJPm87jyYu6HVXXw

Chopperchunky Gallery – new found things

https://art.kunstmatrix.com/apps/artspaces/dist/index.html?timestamp=1618738728560#/?exhibition=5053235&language=en&returnURL=https:%2F%2Fartspaces.kunstmatrix.com%2Fen%2Fexhibition%2F5053235%2Fnew-found-things&returnURL=https:%2F%2Fartspaces.kunstmatrix.com%2Fen%2Fexhibition%2F5053235%2Fnew-found-things&splashscreen=false

Copyright and Copymint

There are ongoing issues with popular NFT producers having work copied and/or plagiarised.

Disclaimer

This information is correct as at May 2021. The area is fast moving and change is inevitable and unexpected. Expect technology failures and concept movement. If you enter this space you will be still on the cutting edge of a group of technologies and you should expect things to change, sometimes radically.

* Art in the age of the internet : 1989 to today / edited by Eva Respini

** Digital art / Christiane Paul

*** Hito Steyerl – In Defense of The poor Image

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/

**** The Photographers Gallery

https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/

Stu Sontier: As a photographer, working in an experimental way with the materials and waste of the digital realm, the act of putting work online in general has been one I’ve been interested in for a long time. I built one of the first online galleries of photography in New Zealand in 1996, for PhotoForum and since then have built and organised many other showings of photographic work online. See my work here: https://stusontier.net  and my H=N works: https://www.hicetnunc.xyz/tz/tz1U8mFPuyGr48BWnULky9kUqAVQk8ewBHtU

Following up on a post a month back about NFTs and environmental issues around their energy use.

Briefly, the more prominent NFTs run on the Ethereum blockchain, which uses Proof of Work. PoW requires huge energy inputs as its base philosophy. I was in the process of experimenting with minting NFTs on Opensea which currently uses Ethereum, so that stopped me in my tracks  – artist Joanie Lemercier remercier? recently stopped his minting on Nifty platform when he realised his previous minting had wiped out years of his attempts at reducing his eco footprint.

I emailed Joanie, after I read a Wired article about him looking for Proof of Stake platforms as an alternative (but like many pieces of journalism that poke holes, then don’t give details of how to find alternatives).  Joanie pointed me in the direction of a new platform, Hic et Nunc (Latin: Here and Now). I also found two others, and not being like Wired, I present them for others – Viv3 and kalamint.io – both these currently need you to apply to be able to mint and so far have not let me in – it appears just due to being overworked).

Hic et Nunc – hicetnunc.xyz – is a nerdy platform, there is no other way to describe it. Artists are mostly known by their extremely long wallet public id unless they go through a nerdy process of applying to attach some profile information to that wallet.

This digital object, from the series collapse, is my first minted object, trialling Opeansea.io collections.
NFT – non-fungible-transaction – is a way of authenticating ownership of a digital asset. As well as digital artworks, this could be a gig ticket etc. In relations to digital works, which may exist as many copies, the NFT works to prove that you are the owner of a minted version. The work may be minted as unique or as part of an edition. The hype-generating blockchain is the method of proving ownership, authenticating sales and holding a chain of history. This is a new (2017 appears to be the start of it) area for art and ever-changing, with some potential fundamental issues.

This is a first exploration of the act of publishing, or minting a digital work, to find out what the world of exclusivity in digital visual art looks like. There are inherent issues here, one being the idea that an infinitely reproduceable digital work can become a unique digital object through proof of ownership. Secondly, there are problems with what is actually owned – the NFT includes a unique url to the file *at the time of minting*. This references a specific server and file position. If the server is retired or the file moved, the URL in the NFT no longer points to the object. Several systems are being worked at to slove this, the most basic being businesses offering long-term file storage, which have no guarantee of surviving long-term.

A third issue, one for the impoverished artist is the varying cost of setup and minting. Transactions are added to the blockchain at a cost (a cost that tries to give a return to the miners who incorporate new transactions). That cost is variable (you can also pay more for quicker transaction processing). It varies acording to demand for work, and also on the current value of the coin being used.

For NFTs, ethereum seems to be the coin of choice. Ethereum transaction costs are called gas and usually measured in kwai. Mintbase started to allow artists and others to set up digital stores and mint artworks for sale (or giveaway). Back in 2020, a store cost about $US2 and minting 5 works about $1. At this time – March 2021 setting up a store is more like $250.

For this reason I looked to Opensea, which bills itself as ‘The largest NFT marketplace’ and suggests that you can mint NFTs and sell for free ” Plus, there’s no fee! You don’t even pay for gas, and you can sell without paying gas as well if you’ve initialized an OpenSea account”.  How does that work if gas is a cost? Opensea hold off the cost of gas until you actually sell a work, which sounds pretty cool and workable for artists who, generally do not generate a lot of sales.

It turns out though that there are hidden costs with Opensea, that they elude to, but don’t make sense until you are at the point of attempting to list a minted item. Suddenly there is a demand to authenticate your account ‘you must first complete a free (plus gas) transaction’  for $0 + gas, and, hello, that gas cost, at the current time, is $US58. This is a one-off fee, but suddenly ‘free’ is costing real money. I don’t really care whether Opensea get any or it really is just gas costs (which it appears to be), its still $US58 to me.

A fourth issue, and one that should be the top of everyones list is that cryptocurrencies currently work on the basis of doing meaningless work that has a major environmental impact. That is, hundreds of thousands of pieces of hardware work away at knowingly complex mathematical tasks in order to keep the blockchain secure and trusted this is known as ‘proof of work’). This work uses power, lots of it. Fortunately there are studies into how much power and the impacts that is having. There is also work being done that may reduce the need for ‘proof of work’ and blockchain just may become less of an environmental distaster in the making.

A fifth issue, subjective perhaps, is that the work that is currently mostly being sold and praised on the various NFT platforms is often dull, stolidly meme-based (endless collages with bitcoin and eth symbols, or cats, dogecoin dogs), repetitive, ripoffs of minimal or graphic artists of the past or interesting but half finished digital experiments hurried to NFT fame. Indicative of the interest in the system over the art is the sometimes difficulty in even figuring out who made the work. Rarity, collectibility and value are the name of the game in the NFT platforms, I guess hoping that the buying hype, with people’s need to get quickly on the bandwagon (especially if you missed out on the cryptocoin winnings early on) will cause them to overlook quality or other aspects.

A collaborative book with photographers Harvey Benge, Jon Carapiet, Haruhiko Sameshima and Stu Sontier, along with writer Lloyd Jones.

The book has a website for more detail and purchases, and you can view the short video I made for it all here.

images from .....and then there were none

images from .....and then there were none

images from .....and then there were none

image from .....and then there were none

My work-in-progress Collapse was featured by PhotoForum NZ with an essay written by Andrew Wood. This work gets directly into the materiality of digital photography, using the test outputs of printers and direct application of inkjet inks onto various paper surfaces.

Here’s a link to the full essay.

collapse - printer voicing #5

collapse - printer voicing #4

collapse - printer voicing #1 (blue scalar construction)

collapse - waste ink wip #4

collapse - waste ink wip #3

collapse - waste ink wip #1

collapse untitled 6 (buried, creased, blown around)

collapse untitled 7 (buried, creased, blown around)

I entered a five part image (titled in a literal manner ‘backprinted dustcatcher’) in the 2019 Wallace Art Awards and it made the finalists, and was shown in the Salon de Refuses.  The images were printed beautifully by the Digital Darkroom and framed by Homestead Framers.  Currently the work is for sale – please enquire….

This work appeared in my show ‘from this one moment’ in June 2019. The leporello-style book shows it in a self-contained sequential format which suits the notion of infinite observation.

observer phenomenon - clasp case

observer phenomenon - clasp case

page 1 - 2

page 3 - 4

page 7 - 8

page 11 - 12

back cover inside

 

 

IMG 4878-sm

blue scalar-2-wip

white riser with blue -wip1

blue scalar-3-wip

Experiments with using what would normally be considered waste, this is a continuation of my project ‘collapse’.