Blockchain x Art

How is blockchain revolutionising art? A discussion on NFTs, sustainable minting, digital ownership, and art collection…

From proof of stake to crypto aesthetics and the environmental cost of the minting process, this round table of experts and artists will survey the present state of the NFT landscape and its prospects as a sustainable ecosystem. While the ‘crypto art’ realm has escalated from a fan culture avant-garde to an advertising paradigm for established brands and artists, we aim to demystify the cryptosphere’s real implications.

Panelists:
Carolina Mostert is a Specialist Writer and Project Manager at Sotheby’s, London. In October, Sotheby’s launched its own NFT platform - Metaverse - where of the 53 lots available, five have been sold for over $1M, including works from digital artists Pak and Yuga Labs (each closing for seven figures).

Alex Estorick is Contributing Editor for Art and Technology at Flash Art. Last year, he founded the magazine’s digital column, “The Uncanny Valley”, specialising in the relationship between AI and contemporary art. He recently published the first aesthetics of crypto art and is currently working to establish the blockchain as a more progressive ecosystem.

Simon Denny is one of the leading and earliest artists who explored blockchain culture. Thinking about crypto since 2016 when he exhibited one of the foundational installations addressing blockchains, "Blockchain Future States" at the 9th Berlin Biennale. In 2021, the processing power from his “NFT Mine Offsets” work was established to be donated to environmental research via climateprediction.net.

Robert Alice is a London based artist and pioneer in the crypto art and NFT space. HIs Portraits of a Mind (2019 - ongoing) is the first NFT to be sold by a major auction house (Christie’s New York). Alice's work has been featured in the New York Times, Financial Times, CNN, Forbes, Fortune and Vogue and exhibited in New York (Christie's), Beijing (Ullens Center of Contemporary Art) and Shanghai (JinArt Center).

Arthur Breitman is the creator of Tezos, a public blockchain enabling decentralized governance through self-amendments. With its low transaction fees and higher energy efficiency based on the Proof of Stake Protocol (in comparison with Ethereum), Tezos has become a popular option for artists and major brands to build their NFT projects, including MacLaren, Guerlain, Grammy, and Art Basel Miami.

Annka Kultys is the founder and owner of Annka Kultys Gallery, a contemporary new media art gallery in London. During Covid the gallery launched [The art happens here], an online platform dedicated to showcasing digital art in its ‘natural habitat’. All the gallery artworks are sold with a blockchain registered certificate of authenticity. With its ground-breaking representation of Ai-Da Robot since June 2020, Annka Kultys Gallery has become the first gallery in the world to represent a robot artist.

Moderator:
Mimi Nguyen is an associate lecturer of MA Innovation Management at Central Saint Martins, University of Arts London. She is a Doctoral Researcher and MEng Tutor at Imperial College London, Faculty of Engineering, and the founder of Nguyenwahed. Her research on creativity and human-computer interaction has been published by Cambridge University Press, Design Research Society and TIME Magazine.

Machine-generated artwork from http://beeplegenerator.com/

About the MA Innovation Management at Central Saint Martins, UAL
Central Saint Martins’ bespoke MA Innovation Management course works with students who are passionate about developing creative strategies to drive innovation and transformative change in an uncertain world. Led with a strong sense of vision, this transdisciplinary MA combines theory and practice, mixing creative projects and fieldwork opportunities with lectures and rigorous writing assignments. It offers a collaborative learning community in which students from a wide range of fields – including design, business, science, policy, digital entrepreneurship and art ­– continuously challenge each other to transcend their limits as they learn how to lead processes of hybrid creativity and innovation. This course is part of the Culture and Enterprise programme and it collaborates with a wide range of partners internally and externally.
For more information, see the MA Innovation Management course page, or write directly to the course team ([email protected]) to express your interest.