The Future of Phygital Art
Can NFTs be more than pixelated cyber punks?
we3 met the founders of Arttaca.io, a new curated NFT platform that puts the art back in NFT art.
Walking down the Charoen Krung Road, Bangkok, you would find an NFT exhibition “hidden” in a solemn space on the 5th floor of an old building. 9 photographers from around the world were exclusively showing their latest work, not only in the physical exhibition but also as freshly minted NFTs.
On the right side of the room, a yellow-pages-like photobook catches your eye. It was surrounded by a series of photographs, A5-printed, arranged nicely on the partition behind the book. Kenji Chiga, a japanese photographer created this project — compiling telephone scam stories in Japan, hence the yellow pages alike book. He printed and bound the book by himself; and when collectors purchase his NFT, they will also receive the book.
Explore further and you’ll come across a black-and-white print of a child with a machine gun bullet belt over his chest, an Indonesian soldier holding up the kid’s hand, as if directing him on how to pose for the picture. This is the work of Indonesian photographer Rony Zakaria, and the work is his story of censorship in Indonesia.
Born under Soeharto’s “New Order” dictatorship, he was told to be “careful” about what he was saying, because back then, even “the walls have ears.” So, his newest work here is his reflection on the impact of the regime, and how he viewed the history differently, 25 years after it ended. For those not familiar with the mass killings in Indonesia in the 60’s, an award-winning documentary (still banned in Indonesia today) called “The Act of Killing” interviews death squad members from the dark period when Soeharto overthrew Soekarno for the presidency, leading to the murder of over a million Indonesians.
This NFT exhibition doesn’t “feel” like an NFT exhibition. There are no TV screens or QR codes leading to NFT marketplaces. This feels like … real art. It was mostly printed, with short summaries about the works written by the artists.
Founded in October 2021, Arttaca.io seems to put the art back in NFT art. In the same way that galleries cater to a variety of tastes, so do NFT marketplaces. It’s about more than selling photographs as NFTs — they’re developing emerging artists and photographers from anywhere by awarding grants, as they did with their first exhibition at Charoen Krung.
The idea of Arttaca.io firstly came from Michael Lau, an award-winning and published photographer working under his middle name Ted Lau. He is a serial entrepreneur and has a deep passion for photography and fine arts, when Ted met Daniel Huete, a Spanish-born photographer who currently resides in Bangkok the two decided to team up.
“I see NFTs as a very interesting technology and how it can have real life uses… how it can be developed in a more meaningful way rather than just PFPs (ProFile Pics). A lot of PFP projects, outside the OGs like BAYC and Crypto Punks, might not be as valuable as they are right now in two, three years, because they don’t really have meaning and storytelling behind it,” said Lau.
Outside NFTs, the traditional art world has their own problem: proof of provenance. As shown in a Netflix documentary “Made You Look: A True Story about Fake Arts”, a lot of works auctioned in big name auction houses are fake. With traditional arts, the provenance might be faked, altered, or destroyed, but that problem can be solved with the immutable nature of blockchain. That’s why Lau and Huete wanted to develop a platform where everyone benefits, that can protect the artists, the collectors, and even future collectors.
Arttaca.io isn’t just any NFT marketplace. They’re branding themselves as a curated platform. And in the future, they are planning to start a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization — check out page XX for more about DAOs) for a community-based curation.
“It’s not just about NFTs. It’s about the craft,” added Huete, “We started this because we wanted to do something for the artists. If you look at OpenSea and other marketplaces, they do so little for the artists (other than selling the art for profit). Then what else do the artists get?”
Arttaca’s vision is to bridge the gap between current NFT collectors and photographers who might be skeptical of the new art world. NFT collectors nowadays mostly view NFTs as investments to be “flipped”. They buy the work not because they like it, but because some famous people did and they want to make bank.
Flipping Out
Huete and Lau want people to buy the work because people like it. That’s why they fund artists in whom they see the potential to produce quality work. On their marketplace, they also hide the last sales price. That means Arttaca.io isn’t the place to go if you’re looking to buy and flip. One thing that stood out in the platform is this idea called NFT+ that will be launched in the first quarter next year, where they combine NFTs and physical work like prints and books to add a new dimension and a complete art experience. So, when you buy the digital version, you will get the physical art that complements it, like Chiga’s yellow pages work.
“Even if you use VR all the time, you still have to live in the physical world, right? We’re not in cyberspace completely, yet. We see NFT as an opportunity to intercept with real life. So, we came up with NFT+, where we attach a secure QR code to [art] pieces. They’re gonna be a part of the NFT metadata,” explained Lau.
However, with their refreshing approach to photography NFTs, one thing they need to tackle now is how to build the momentum and gain the audience they need to keep the project sustainable. Currently, Arttaca.io is using their own money to award the grants, and taking a percentage of the sales profit to start the next grants. They are also planning to market themselves to a bigger audience through introducing the Web3 community with good quality art pieces as well as getting more photographers to learn about Web3 tools, and lastly, doing physical exhibitions, instead of going into the metaverse.
“It’s never going to feel the same when you attend a digital exhibition in VR or in the metaverse. Nothing can replace real conversations with the artists and other visitors in the physical realm. More importantly, we feel like NFTs will never replace prints,” added Huete.
The Bangkok exhibition ended on 31 October. The second exhibition is currently running in Bandung, Indonesia until 16 November. They’re also planning to enter the Arles International Photo Festival in Paris, one of the biggest photography events in Europe, to introduce more photographers to Web3. Beyond the exhibition, they’re planning photography workshops — not NFT workshops — as well as collaborating with various photo festivals, photographers, and already looking towards their next grant in 2023. Check out more information about this new photography NFT movement and collect the available artworks at https://arttaca.io/, join their Discord server to meet the community, or give a follow at their Instagram page for latest news https://www.instagram.com/arttaca.io/.
Whereas in a time when the initial NFT gold rush seemed to have stalled, with monthly NFT sales down 90% percent since its peak at the beginning of the year, and even Jack Dorsey’s NFT of his first-ever tweet, which sold for $2.9M, now has a top bid worth just $97, the world of fine art seems to be slowly warming up to the Web3 space.
Previously, the traditional “art society” might not even recognize NFTs as ‘real art’. But maybe, the realization is growing that NFT is not a new artistic medium, but a new fintech tool to bring transparency into the art world through blockchain ledgers. This bodes well not only for the coexistence of fine art and NFTs, but suggests there is even the potential for these two worlds to enrich one another.
At the Crypto Connect Expo in Palm Beach, Florida, back in August, a group of fine artists attended a conference which was about leveraging NFTs to further the commercialisation and protection of their fine art. Another case, a tattoo artist named Keith McCurdy aka Bang Bang, sold the first rewritable tattoo as an 1/1 NFT for 100 ETH, or around $100,000 back in June. He used Web3 as a way to bridge tattoo culture’s desire for individuality with the provable uniqueness of NFTs.
With Arttaca.io, Lau and Huete are using Web3 to help traditional artists solve problems like royalties and provenance. Finally, the early adoption of NFTs might be full of PFPs and flippers, but it might mature to being a technology that can solve real problems for real art, instead of just remaining an instrument of hype and profit.
