Signe Pierce looks to blockchain technology to digitize the art economy

Signe Pierce is a multimedia artist whose work spans performance, photography, video, photography, video art, art direction, GIFs, and web-based art. In 2013, she gained recognition with her award-winning short film American Reflexxx. Her latest project? Tokenizing her work on Foundation — her latest collection dropped in June, featuring still life images from her “Jangular Lilies” series.

Sara Reynolds and Maggie Valentine of she256 spoke to Signe over Instagram Live last month. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

How would you define art futurism?

I like to compare it to the idea of art history. We often talk about hierarchal perceptions of art through a historical gaze, so I spent a lot of time thinking about how to bridge the consciousness gap people have and why digital art must hold just as much importance as classical mediums. Art futurism is about evolving your perception of what art is, what art can be, how it’s bought, collected, traded, sold, exhibited, and coveted.

For me, art futurism involves getting it out to the people. I want it to be something that everybody values and understands. Partially through the commodification of the art world, we have come to think about art as this pretentious, old-guard thing that you can…