Blockchain's Future, Cryptoartists, NFTs and More

This interview was conducted in advance of the Instagram Live on October 15, 2022. Get in touch with the founder of Fresh Breath Africa here on Hive Hive account@globalfuturistic

How did you become a cryptoartist?

In 2018 I worked together with Hive account@juliakponsford from Canada in a social media company, and this is how I came into contact with digital art in general. She helped to build up the marketplace Hive account@nftshowroom from the ground and founded the Hive account@alienarthive collective. We reconnected a few years later during Covid lockdowns and I actually started as a collector. Immersing myself into one of my first collected pieces had a huge impact on my life, to keep my mental sanity when everyone was paralyzed. I was creating my own world by watching for hours the Musician in the Space and loop-listening to Jacob Gurevitsch and whatever helped me for my mental cinema and imagination. Soon I became active and created my first few pieces, I was very proud when my first piece of my Public Pleasures Vienna collection sold with the help of the Wilder brothers Phoenix and Frank. I think they influenced it by commenting and encouraging me on twitter. I was once joking that everything else during my cryptoartistic career sold more than my actual artworks, ranging from workshops, explanatory blogposts, invitations for talks, presentations and merchandise. I tried opensea which is the biggest marketplace once by trying to create an artistic persona hivedevil but it didn’t work out as I could never warm up with the communities there. I also was in an incredibly long conversation with the former management of Makersplace but this marketplace turned out to be a huge disappointment for me. So yeah, NFT Showroom became my homebase.

Why sciencevienna?

My art is very research-intensive! Apart from the emotional work happening in the background a lot of research and review work is done for positioning myself in the field. Be it deep diving into research of PFP NFTs and testing this in social media practice with my communities, clients and potential collectors, or about network science which helps a lot in identify funding structures. My last NFT “Black Mascara” for this year is based on Raye’s recent music video, after she left her record label. My piece is also a continuation of one of my bigger pieces “Godzilliqa” which also started out as my first auction 11 months ago. Some might call my style in sense of a patchwork carpet but it’s definitely full of crypto symbolism probably a trader will better understand than an art lover with university degree going to museums. It’s a lot about how my portrait representations make you feel and I’m really not trying to win hearts with shallow animal portraits or alike here but rather to relieve myself even if I have to provoke with it. My art is challenging. Luckily, I will be able to finish it on commission basis with full artistic freedom, but of course I’m restricted to the artificial intelligence I’m cooperating with for the very first time. There was a huge outcry on twitter already, that AI will kill creativity, but I still disagree. It just shows that people have a very limited understanding for the profession and realities an artist faces. We have limited resources and we have constraints as well. All the consideration regarding edition pricing are topics I still have not concerned myself after I'm planning on publishing a promotion video and during my actual minting in the next 2 months.

What makes art on blockchain different?

I think this is the natural process of evolution. In the past when we shared our work we often said: “Hey guys my paper/book is now available online”. Today we say “onchain”. We want to thrive with relatively few middlemen, we want to interact with our collectors as directly as possible. Many young collectors are intimidated by the historically grown institutionalizations and bureaucracy and somehow overlooked in the acquisition process. The traditional art world doesn’t do anything to educate and cater to budding collectors who can’t afford to spend more than €1,000 or €2,000. With crypto and one of its new instruments like fractionalization more possibilities came up. The different aesthetics and stakeholders aside, we build on the transition from web2 to web3. I profit a lot from my main profession as consultant as I’m knowledgeable of the technicalities, to know that the phrase “on the blockchain” is imprecise or I know what ownership actually means or where the reference point is pointing to if we say “onchain”. We need to understand where we’re coming from, which is web2 and a lot of projects are still centralized. I’m not taking up the cudgels for decentralization here, but for the future generations of cryptoartists that will have to fight for their hopefully better working conditions. Decentralization has its disadvantages as well and one can find a lot of counterarguments against Bitcoin but the fact that it’s here gives us one option more that was not there before. In short: Crypto, NFTs and a whole new art world will not disappear.

Short CV
Alex gained practical experience in science management and research funding ultimately leading him to become founder of the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem sciencevienna.crypto. He is active in advisory and lead consultant roles, obtained certificates on digital currencies and decentralized finance (DeFi) from the University of Nicosia, was member of the Viennese Academy of Data Science in Finance and has a strong background in blockchain based social media with its governance mechanisms. Since November 2018 he is partner of legaltech Coopérative Kleros, since December 2020 cryptoartist at NFT Showroom. He joined Volt Europa in 2021 by founding the DAO Crypto Devs and the working group EUR Biostasis, co-authoring and initiating several policies in field of economy innovation, future industries, security/defense and social equality.*