Art is Humanity’s Greatest Gift

NFTs are unlocking artistic creativity and launching a new golden age of art.

Edward Wong
The Dark Side

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Three stills from Zach Lieberman’s Blob Extrude Study #1

You just picked up your flat white latte from the barista and find yourself a little table to sit by and enjoy your drink. The man next to you is staring intensely at the blank opened notebook on his table. You notice that he is painfully concentrating on his thoughts and lack of writing, so you take a chance to free him from his obsession.

“That’s an interesting piece you are looking at — that pure, non-yellowing white,” you ask just to relieve him from his trance.

“I am actually writing a screenplay for a new movie project.,” he replied with a sigh of relief and then explained further. “Other than some tweaks I actually have most of it written already but the opening is always the killer. The film is about a poor orphaned boy who stumbles onto a troubled woman.”

“I think know that story, “ you quipped.

“There’s also this dashing guy and his trusty sidekick. And the boy finds a mentor who helps him find a mysterious form of power unlike anything he has ever known before. Then there is this really bad guy who threatens everyone and everything, “ he adds. And with that man suddenly scribbles something onto his notebook. He looks at it, and then admiringly reads it out, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

That is a fictional scene from how a writer could have written Star Wars. But if that was today, that writer can easily launch a collection of NFTs after each character: Hans Solo, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, R2D2, or even an NFT of the original storyline itself.

Although NFTs are all the rage nowadays, not everyone understands their true potential. Most people think it’s a marketplace for digital art and discard it as gambling or something that is only for the wealthy. I believe it’s the beginning of a new era for all content creators — bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, artists, storytellers, photographers, basically everyone who likes to share. Let me tell you all about why I think so and how content creators can leverage this opportunity. But first, let’s understand what an NFT is.

Not every project will turn into the next Star Wars, but surely there the next George Lucas is out there sitting in a cafe, and struggling to get their idea out. If you look to what blockchain technologies can do, they bring down barriers, because they let content creators interact with their fans and early adopters from day one.

Darth Grumpy

All this is now possible with NFTs and will be much easier in future as the technology matures. By creating a new paradigm, NFTs will jumpstart new creative expressions of art, music, literature, dance, and film. It will help early creators get some traction in their ideas as they will be able to get support and inspiration from likewise early fans.

Because of the NFT technology, early subscribers of an artist can enjoy special privileges baked into the NFT’s underlying smartcontract. Obviously as the work becomes more valuable, so will the NFT. The creator can retain ownership rights over their work and claim resale royalties directly without the need for any third party such as a publishing house, media agency or any other distribution platform.

NFTs can also be granted to special events such as first dibs in concert tickets reserved for NFT holders. How about access to special media events? Or even future NFT drops. Early fans are important to the creators especially when there work is relatively unknown and need that support the most, thus early fans should be rewarded as such.

Basically, NFTs allows a shift of revenue from marketers (or distributors), to consumers through trading and gives complete autonomy to the creator. This is why new NFT marketplaces like Artzioneer, which is created specifically to help spur the creativity and bring inspiring fans together. But the platform is not just an NFT marketplace but will also help artists to easily create and launch their NFTs. Artzioneer is an early member of the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI.org) to ensure authenticity of their listings in the developing NFT space.

Conclusion

While all the fanfare is about astronomical NFT prices, the interest is definitely unlocking the artistic creativity that is one of the basic tenets of humanity. Regardless of whether or not NFTs are a good investment (no one knows), its contribution for spurring creativity can’t be denied.

Art is like a good drug. It should open your senses. It puts you in the moment. It takes you to new dimensions and places that you have never even dreamed of. Stop, look and appreciate the amazing art that is out there and look forward to what is yet to come.

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Edward Wong
The Dark Side

Co-founder QuantDart. Co-founder Shanghai Futures Exchange. Former Treasury Architect at the Federal Reserve. World Champion Spicy Eater. Cat lady.