Digital Art

Some years ago, an Israeli artist was involved in a road accident in which she suffered a whiplash injury. The injury prevented her from working with oils on canvas. A computer professional told her about 3D software programs and image manipulation programs. The new digital medium was clean and she could save the file at whatever point she had reached and go rest when she needed. She soon began uploading the images she had created to the Internet. There was the risk that others would copy her works, so she began to upload files of poorer resolution or with watermarks to discourage this, which significantly interfered with the exhibit process.

NFT Art and Israeli, Jerusalem Art Gallery

When a prestigious auction house like Christie’s gets on board and sells an NFT collage of images by a known digital artist for $70 million, that is proof that it has gone mainstream. Cryptocurrency like Bitcoin can be traded like any currency and broken down into smaller units, in the same way that you can make change for a dollar. That’s what makes these coins and tokens “fungible.” What makes NFTs non-fungible are that:

1. they cannot be taken apart
2. each token is a singular unit, like an original work of art
3. they are unique and non-fungible
4. can only be minted with cryptocurrency and given, sold, gifted or transferred to a recipient who has the same type of cryptocurrency
5. use Etherum, which permits minting or coinage but also smart contracts, which allow for very complex coding
6. allow a digital image to have its own, unique, copyright, and
7. each time one is sold, the original owner gets a percentage of the sale

NFT – Not Just Art

Non-fungible tokens are not only about visual or plastic art like painting, drawing, sculpting, etc. Tokens can be minted for anything that can be contained in a digital image. The tokens can be of fashion, music, photographs, etc.

The uninitiated masses will still struggle to understand this for some time but many artists, musicians and influencers have already garnered huge payoffs. A celebrity’s first tweet was minted as a token and bid for $2.5 million.

Far From New

The original game built on the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform was and is CryptoKitties, a digital trading game. People there can purchase and then sell unique virtual cats that are stored on the blockchain. The game’s popularity generated so much traffic that it taxed the Ethereum blockchain and drastically slowed down the network, thereby drastically increasing transaction fees and causing many others to get “stuck.”

NFT Stimulus

There are collectors who want to support independent creators by buying their pieces. They are curious about the idea of taking a digital item and owning it. Crypto millionaires and billionaires also want some variety in their cryptocurrency holdings and to stimulate the crypto ecosystem.

Israel, too, sees growing awareness and desire for NFT art and it won’t be long before Israeli art galleries, even in Jerusalem, will offer NFT alternatives to the large, framed pieces and sculptures.

Menucha Page is an American-Israeli who creates fine art pieces in her Jerusalem gallery. Creating NFT art pieces would be the logical, next step to spreading her name.