Cryptokitties challenges our mental models of art
Before the 20th century, when television and the internet did not exist, it was not a simple task to view art. With no Facebook or equivalent available, American artists and their European predecessors gained recognition by having their work accepted and displayed at elite exhibitions and galleries held by art academies. With highly exclusive membership, these academies had historical influence on art instruction, exhibition, and taste since the 17th century in Western Europe. They had the power to make or break artists as a result.
By the early 20th century, American artists began questioning these existing power structures, looking inward to carve their own path. Groups, such as the Society of Independent Artists in New York, began to challenge conventional French salon-style exhibitions, claiming they would accept any work of art for display. It was under these circumstances in 1917, that a 30 year-old French-American artist, Marcel Duchamp, decided to pull off one of the most epic troll jobs of the time (before Twitter existed of course). Duchamp, under pseudonym “R. Mutt”, submitted a porcelain urinal titled “Fountain” to be displayed at the inaugural exhibition of the Society.
But even for avant-garde artists of the time, this was an assault on the conventional mental models of “art”, which assigned value to a piece only if it came from the direct efforts of the artist. It was rejected from display at the exhibition by board members at the Society, but subsequently stirred a debate on what could be deemed art — in this case a mass manufactured urinal affixed with a fake artist’s signature.
The May 1917 issue of Blind Man, an art magazine run by Duchamp and friends, had the following to say:
Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, and placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view — created a new thought for that object.
In its aftermath, the “Fountain” challenged the traditional notions of art as well as the role of authority figures who set boundaries on taste and the idea of “real” art. This was not the first time such a battle took place as artists like Claude Monet and the impressionists’ movement faced harsh critiques from the art salons of their day. However, Duchamp pulled off something rather unique by displaying “readymade” art, everyday objects outside of their context, allowing the artist to evoke a different perspective. He was defiantly extracting the power of taste from its fore bearers to the eye of the beholder to decide for her or himself. The idea that art can root from a unique concept rather than a unique object was radical, even to this day.
The original “Fountain” was thrown away as rubbish, but then authorized by Duchamp for replication such that there are over ten different “Fountains” displayed at various prestigious art museums around the world including the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Ironically, some have been valued at well over a million dollars and the dialogue around the piece has never ended. In a February 2006 Village Voice article, Jerry Saltz reflected:
Duchamp’s work relies on a leap of faith: that new thought structures can be formed based on things already in the world.
These new thought structures have influenced contemporary art by emphasizing spatial relationships and artistic context over the physical object. Of course, it is not uncommon today for people to walk into modern art museums and come away with the idea that “my child could do that.” But more importantly, Duchamp pushed the envelope for artists to express themselves outside of convention while allowing people to draw their own conclusions on what is or isn’t art.
The Provenance of Cryptokitties
This leads me to Cryptokitties.co, which in March announced a $12 million round of funding led by Andreesen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures. Cryptokitties is a decentralized application or dApp run on an open blockchain protocol known as Ethereum, the decentralized computing engine that stores and powers underlying transactions. On the Cryptokitties website, users and kitten enthusiasts are able to collect, purchase, sell, and “breed” digital kitties that each have different genetic attributes determined by the kitten’s parents and randomness (using the site’s algorithms). DNA as code.
More importantly, Cryptokitties.co relies on a tokenization model based on ERC-721 standards. Without getting too technical, this means that each cryptokitty is represented by a digital token that is “non-fungible” or put another way, each digital kitten is unique. In addition, because cryptokitty transactions occur on the Ethereum blockchain protocol, not the website, anyone can query the blockchain to prove ownership of each digital kitten. These critical features have made Cryptokitties.co one of the early success stories within blockchain, gaining a critical mass of users and resulting in over $23 million in kitty sales since November 2017 with some kitties being sold in excess of $100,000 (or >200 ether).
Prior to this point in time, any image on the internet could easily be copied whether via a screenshot or a ctrl+c command and it would be indistinguishable from the original copy. In this way, digital photography and artwork on the web has been largely trivialized or devalued particularly given the rise of social media (e.g. Instagram), relegating them to a lower, less financially valuable form of art. And although the issue of forgery also persists in the tangible art realm, skillful forgery requires expertise (Michelangelo forged art) while detection is costly and can even require technology.
But note that forged art is not primarily off-putting because of visual differences to the human eye (unless the forgery is obvious). In fact, there have been notable instances of forged art passing enough muster to sell for millions and there is likely yet-to-be identified forged art being displayed and sold today.
What art collectors truly covet is the confirmation of ownership, authenticity, and uniqueness — qualities referred to as provenance in the art world — that enhance the financial value of the art work. A buyer places more value on the art if it is confirmed by a trusted third party as a true one-of-a-kind or limited production while rarely seeking empirical verification.
The innovation of blockchain is that it has the ability to imbue provenance onto a token via consensus mechanisms upheld by a distributed network of computing power (or miners) across the globe — no individual trusted third party required. In addition, the transaction data storing ownership, authenticity, and uniqueness of the token is chiefly maintained within Ethereum’s decentralized ledger and not the dApp. This separation also means when Cryptokitties.co and its developers shutdown, ownership and uniqueness of a specific cryptokitty can still be confirmed via Ethereum. Imagine if ownership of digital items in computer games like Second Life or World of Warcraft persisted even when the games’ servers were shut down and the developers quit.
Various developers and companies are already working on applying blockchain to attach digital markers to physical art works to track ownership, authenticity, and uniqueness. But for digital art, something more revolutionary may be occurring. Blockchain protocol provides the ability to invert the concept of Duchamp’s readymades on its head. Where Duchamp proved that artists could re-purpose mass replicable objects as unique art, blockchain allows artists to ensure their creations are unique even when they’re mass replicable.
While everyone can agree that cryptokitties are more collectibles than art (unless you consider Pokemon cards pieces of art), Cryptokitties.co is a live case study for how an open blockchain ecosystem can scale other digital assets such as art. For instance, many other sites have been created that leverage Cryptokitties.co’s open source code and provenance data within the Ethereum blockchain layer. This includes new market places to view or exchange cryptokitties, cryptokitty genomic indices, and even a simple game that allows cryptokitty owners to race their kitties.
The Future of Digital Art
Cryptokitties.co is not without its issues. The company behind it, Axiom Zen, will face challenges around scalability, dependencies on Ethereum (issues with the blockchain protocol may impact Cryptokitties), and even questions around the nature of ownership (is it code or the image of the kitten).
At the same time, ideas once difficult to imagine will become possible — digital art that can be traceable across the internet categorized by artist, type, and price; digital museums containing art from different owners around the world that can be curated or customized; frames linked to your purchased digital art; artists being directly compensated for their work by buyers. Improvements to the provenance of digital art will foster more artists to enter this space, opening up new economies and forms of digital art that will emerge (e.g., in combination with augmented and virtual reality technology). One website, Dada.nyc, has already created a decentralized marketplace that utilizes the Ethereum protocol in October 2017, making unique digital drawings available for sale.
Some of this innovation will not occur overnight requiring our mental models of art to shift in much the same way Duchamp challenged us to view objects differently. However, as our (or our children’s) concepts of digital art evolve, new and interesting ideas will emerge. For instance, art that is highly valued and scarce will be at their most liquid form ever. What happens when the next digital version of Van Gogh or Picasso can be bought and sold easily over the internet? How does the value of art shift under such an environment? Does it accelerate commodification of art?
Near the 100th anniversary of the Duchamp’s readymades, Aesthetica Magazine explored some of these concepts and interviewed Dean Daderko, curator of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. On art within the digital sphere:
Inherent in this discussion is the role of the artwork as a monetised item: its commoditisation both horrifies and intrigues but it is, as Daderko argues: “About communication, and artworks can communicate very economically, reaching large numbers of people with simple means.” The art market is but a method of disseminating art, and though it functions in a capitalistic way, it still serves its purpose: providing an outlet for the distribution of art to the greater masses
Perhaps if Duchamp was still alive, he would have given cryptokitties a wink and a nod.
