007 - The Burn
A self portrait from 2007. On the one hand burning to ashes on August 27th, 2021. On the other hand existing exclusively digitally for infinity. Everyday works of art are listed as NFT’s and then go on to become owned, collected, traded, displayed. Owning NFT’s will eventually become a relic of the past, but for now ownership drives the adoption of this new technological field. Ownership drives the mechanism behind this blockchain. Someday, all we are will only exist as information. Given enough time all existing artwork will perish.
Tokens, coins, smart contracts, rarity. Value and rarity. I once heard that people buy things when value outweighs the cost. Most successful coins have an constant relationship between their value and cost, whether that relationship be inverse, linear, parabolic, etc.. So what is it that makes artwork valuable? Many things, mostly demand. The information age; galleries for the masses. All works of art accessible across the globe and beyond. De-Fi: Decentralized Finance. A means of decentralizing control. The pharaohs strictly controlled their art and images. In modern times it is locked away in castles, keeps, and bank safes, galleries, or museums. Others are open to the public, at a cost of course, through taxes or the price of admission. Ephemeral, mortal works fading and degrading through air, moisture, and light.
Who will embrace this movement? Certainly it is being adopted, gradually, over time. But who will stand and BURN their works of art commemorating them to a digital eternity? The digital eternity, a river of information. Artwork, the ashes of civilization.
This work “007 - The Burn”, seeks to do just that. A 1:1 trade. The physical for the digital. Going all in on the great experiment. At the same time, my remaining physical works of art just became one piece more rarer. Or will I burn them all? RE: The sound in the NFT, The cicadas have other things on their mind. Also, fun fact, while filming and burning this work an animal of some sort up in the tree above me deposited some liquid on me, I suppose they were trying to dampen the flame, or perhaps a blessing. Either way, noteworthy.
View the NFT below and purchase here. This NFT is 1/1 and possibly the first burn of physical art transformation to the blockchain.