On NFTs

I wrote and illustrated an article on my current relationship with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for Sequencing, a publication by Fulcrum Arts.

In particular, I tried to unravel the concept of "value" in the NFT conversation, starting from the code in the ERC-721 standard and ending in the usual capitalist realism.

But 0 is not nothing, value is not meaning, and an NFT is not an artwork.

0 is worse than nothing. 0 is a value that signifies worthlessness, unlike nothing, which signifies nothing. I would rather be nothing than a worthless something.

Unfortunately, the premise of an NFT is that there is never not something. Its intention is to seal the existence of the something that has a value. As a result, there is no longer nothing. Where there was nothing, there is now obsessing over what one’s art is worth. The absence of nothing is why the token evangelists cannot see the objection to all this added value. They believe in something.

The calculator, in case it needs to be said, displays the flattening of artistic gestures into a sum. This is performed equally by the NFT implementation and by its surrounding discourse.

Read the article.

9.16.21

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