An Artist’s Outlook Towards NFT’s on Tezos
Looking through the lens of select artists using Tezos as their platform of choice for minting and distributing various artworks.
Lately, hic et nunc (latin for “here and now”) has been gaining a lot of attention and popularity over its relatively short time span. This popularity is in conjunction with all time high contract calls being crushed each month on the Tezos network.
Something seems to be clearly working, right?
Meet Jon Burgerman
To figure out just what exactly has been propelling this momentum, I decided to reach out to one of the earlier adopters and popular artist on the hic et nunc platform, Jon Burgerman. Jon was kind enough to offer his perspective on a few things surrounding the platform and his thoughts around the NFT landscape in general.
Feel free to browse some of Jon’s collection here as well.
What are some of the pros/cons in your opinion with using Tezos as comparative to other protocols such as Ethereum for minting your artwork?
I feel less pressure and more at ease to experiment and play with stuff on Tezos and H=N. I think the big thing is that I certainly feel less guilt with XTZ, with regards to the carbon footprint. The miniscule gas fees also helps enable me to try something new out and not worry or care if it sells or how people will respond.
Not having a huge financial or environmental cost is quite liberating and I think because of these things it’s brought together a lot of like-minded people. It’s created a bit of an atmosphere where everyone is sharing the same mindset with it being playful and experimental. It’s been a joy seeing so many creatives just being themselves and, well, creative!
In terms of cons, the hic et nunc site can be a bit cumbersome and bit flaky. You can think you have minted something but it won’t show it has failed unless you check your transaction. So, it’s not really as user friendly compared to what I’m used to but even that could be perceived as a positive in that you have to do a little bit of work and things aren’t as instantaneous as we’ve been spoiled to expect in that respect. I don’t mind it at all, it’s part of its charm!
It kind of reminds me of the old internet, before it got too bloated and ruined by big multinationals.
There’s no easy search functions at the moment and no real way to organise your collections. At this early stage that’s kind of ok because it means only dedicated people are on there. We need to have a bit of patience while it’s in its nascent stage. It would be good to see some of these things developed over time.
One of the joys or pleasant surprises with using the platform is seeing some of these issues get fixed and working better than the day before. Everyday it seems to get a little better!
What are you most excited for and really want to see developed in the short to intermediate term?
I really like the NFT space in general, where digital art can be tokenized, shared, sold, and traded. This art now has a means of existing, being sold, talked about and used in a different way than it ever has before. This is massively important and beneficial to the arts in general.
It feels like some of the ground is being taken back from Facebook, Instagram and others. Discounting the monetary aspects (collecting/buying) these works can exist just for the sake of the Work outside of the umbrellas of the Facebook’s of the world. That is pretty huge.
I think in the future it would be really fun to communicate with buyers directly without having to use another platform like Twitter. Having the ability to click on someone’s wallet and send them a message would be neat as opposed to leaving a sort of digital breadcrumb for them to track you down with.
I’d like to have the ability to see where all my works are at any one time. With NFT’s we have the benefit of being able to track this stuff but it doesn’t seem like any particular platform has an easy way of accessing that kind of information.
I really feel like we haven’t scratched the surface with what we can do with NFTs and it;s currently hard to exploit them (unless you’re from a programming tech background). So once that gets streamlined we can really start to have a lot of fun.
What other stuff have you been working on that you would like to share?
My practice was primarily in the physical realm so trying out NFTs that bounce between digital and physical has been really fun for me.
An example — I’ve been pairing physical drawings with digital versions of the artworks as NFT’s. So if you buy the NFT I will send you the original drawing in the mail. Two for one!
I’ve also been able to do surprise editions too. I did a cereal box that came with a toy. People who bought the cereal box NFT were later sent a surprise to their collection afterwards — which was me manually finding their wallet and sending them an additional ‘toy’ NFT as the toy inside the cereal box.
I also sold a physical envelope recently and I never disclosed what was inside of it. I was interested in not selling an object or digital artwork but rather selling the anticipation of what it might be. I think I sold the buyer an experience. Hopefully it didn’t turn out to be a disappointment.
I’m always trying to come up with fun little interactions and experiments like this. I don’t think, for me, any of these would have been possible on a platform other than H=N.
How can I get Involved?
If you’re an artist looking for cheaper alternatives and a more eco-friendly platform for minting your NFT’s, then look no further. As a lot of other artists have been rapidly onboarding and using very popular platforms such as hic et nunc, there are some clear benefits with choosing these platforms.
- The cost of minting an NFT is merely cents.
- Since Tezos is LPoS (liquid proof of stake), it consumes significantly less energy as compared to PoW (proof of work) based protocols.
- Clean NFT’s are here and now.
It’s easy to get started and there are a wide array of resources at your fingertips.
Looking Forward
When we look at the growing NFT landscape not only around Tezos, but in general, it fits into this macro scheme of digitizing things that normally exist in the physical form. In a way, we’re also beginning to see platforms like hic et nunc start to become perpetual experiments of sorts. This is aided by the increasing organic growth around these platforms and the lack of employees, traditional revenue streams, and open-source nature.
What we’re seeing is a structure that encourages people to contribute not for the sake of monetary reasons, but for the betterment of the platforms. The future of these platforms are in the hands of you, see what you can do and can create!
