“Aging Crypto Buddha” aims to cause controversy against the current situation of NFT art.
About Aging Crypto Buddha
“Aging Crypto Buddha” is an ever-changing generative art that interacts with a blockchain. Each piece will age as time passes or their ownership is transferred, and eventually nothing will appear there.
While the generative art itself is not unique anymore because there are already a lot of such works in the scene of the NFT art, “Aging Crypto Buddha” becomes conceptually unique by fully utilizing the mechanism of NFT in order to directly involve the ownership into the artwork.
Antithesis of the current misunderstanding of NFT
“Aging Crypto Buddha” will age as time passes or their ownership is transferred. This works as an antithesis to the current situation of NFT artworks, since it contradicts the nature of NFTs, i.e. its permanence.
One of the most common misconceptions about NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is that a work will never disappear and will exist forever, once it is bought.
The transaction history of the token (a.k.a ownership) itself is recorded on a blockchain, therefore the ownership exists forever.
On the other hand, most of the artworks in the common marketplaces record only their metadata such as their title, image URL, etc., on the blockchain, while the works themselves, including images and videos, are stored in a centralized storage that can be deleted or changed anytime. Even if IPFS is used to store such media data, the data can be deleted.
Of course, no one can doubt that on-chain artworks like CryptoPunks exist permanently. That is why they worth!
The Concept of Aging Crypto Buddha
“Aging Crypto Buddha” stores its generative animation artworks in a centralized storage in order to recreate the non-permanence of the common artworks of these days.
It uses a unique smart contract storing information on how many times each piece has been transferred in the past, with which they become gradually invisible. This transaction information is recorded on the blockchain, so no one can tamper with.
We described that the passage of time is also a factor of change. This is calculated from the time of the viewer’s device, which can be easily tampered as they wish.
These two contradictory pieces of information, one impossible to falsify and the other possible to falsify, are intertwined in “Aging Crypto Buddha”. Through them, each work continues to change, moving towards death every second.
This instability is the essence of Aging Crypto Buddha, which implies the current state of NFT. The fact that the network is Polygon, the motif is Buddha, and the patterns and colors are generative and constantly changing, all also serve to such instability.
While the work is dying, the ownership of the work nevertheless continues to exist. Aging Crypto Buddha will continue to be inscribed on the blockchain as an extremely unstable entity, criticizing the current situation of NFT art through this unstable state.
The place of NFT Art in the Art History
The relationship between art and ownership has been closely linked since ancient times. The emergence of NFT, which strongly ties this relationship together, can be a technological innovation that will be etched in the history of art.
The appearance of NFT has the potential to revolutionize the way art should be in the future, just as Marcel Duchamp dismantled how art should be.
Seurat, René, Sisley and other painters pursued the method of additive color mixing with pointillism, which led to Impressionism. Kandinsky and Mondrian developed a new field of art by focusing on composition. Perret and Corbusier created a new architectural style by using concrete. As they created new styles of art, there should be some style and experiences that can be realized only with NFT. I believe that it will encourage more interaction between artists and viewers (owners) than ever before.
Looking back on the history of art and considering how to place myself in the middle of this trend, Aging Crypto Buddha was created.
I hope this article will help you to take a fresh look at “Aging Crypto Buddha”.
