Interpretively, almost everything can be called art if you choose to or are able to see it that way.

Typically, when people say, “art,” they generally mean illustration, design, or performance. Those are, perhaps, the most common forms of art.

However, this week, we would like to analogize “art” to creating. Overall, art is creating. If seen as such, then one may be able to better appreciate how artistic all forms of creation can be. The forming of an idea is art; the story of our life is art. The building of a community is art; creating a technology is art. Something as unsexy as structure, uniformity, and logic can all be art. Our civil evolution is art.

For us to get to where we are as people today: that’s thanks to art. Art is so intertwined with everything we are and do, there’s no surprise that web3, as it is, is destined to involve art, and NFTs are fated to have front-facing illustration.

Art, as pertains to NFTs, began as a vessel to explore supply & demand economics in conjunction with permanence, immutability, and proof of ownership.

What separated digital art from physical art before this was digital art’s replicability, piratability, and lack of means to prove ownership (namely for the creator), which meant that physical & fine art would perpetually hold greater and incomparable value in our increasingly digitizing world, while digital art stagnates and digital artists remain enslaved to hourly contracts, commission-based freelance, and can only derive value from creating physicals, limited prints, & selling instruction–not from the art itself.

The blockchain solved these very issues by creating contractual scarcity, immutability, and legitimacy: a match made in heaven.

With some of the major advantages of physical art technologically-matched, all that’s left is the individual’s preference of format: physical or digital, and in a world where digital means convenience, digital means accessible, and social is digital, argument can be made in great favor of the latter or in surety for the value of creating the option.

With true rarity made possible by an immutable sublayer contract forever locking in the quantity of a specific art item in existence and the surface layer illustration being unchangeable, the blockchain officially gave artists the ability to create ownable, rare, portable, and easily appraisable art for sale, which came to be known as NFTs.

It’s a powerful narrative for an artist to be able to say that the only legitimate pieces are ones connected to [this smart contract], and “there are only [this many] of them in existence.” The NFT art collection that launched & tested all of this is what some may know as Cryptopunks, of which there are exactly only 10,000 in existence and none of which (at the time of writing this article) are for sale.

Values derives from significance and this applies to art as well

The value of the Cryptopunks collection comes from its legacy and is only modified by its supply and legitimacy, not defined. Alas, a scarce supply and the ability to prove legitimacy & ownership do not matter unless the art piece itself matters (& is desired). This is incredibly important to understand.

Many people seem to think that making something limited drives demand. It only does if there is a demand or value to begin with, which can include but is not limited to: beauty of the piece, renown of the artist, suitors of significance, and further.

Art that does not bear value to its audience or its owner(s), regardless of supply, will not have great value.

Luckily, NFTs are a double-whammy: surface layer art plus underlayer contract-dictated rights, benefits, & utilities.

When the art fails to carry the right kind or amount of value, the contract layer, which can hold value, too, can compensate if significant enough, but that will be for another conversation.

Art in the NFT space now sits in three main categories:

• Collectible
• Relatable
• Use-heavy

was alone in a City that did not seem to care. I wanted to flee, but where could I go? The City was all that I knew, everything I had ever known. I had nothing else and no-one else, just one more casualty of a conflict that had spiraled beyond all control. Another victim without rescue, seeking salvation that would not be found. I gave up looking, and I did what I could to survive. The streets I walked in isolation, the shimmering glass returned solitary reflection. The days were long; the nights were the longest.

I was still a child when I came to know of the Resistance. It was the road I chose to walk. The last vestiges of youth and innocence, I left far behind.