NFTs as skeuomorphs: Weaponized sameness and fascist utopias

Abstract

In a much-quoted viral Gawker article, writer Dan Brooks (2021) describes NFTs-short for nonfungible tokens and used primarily to denote digital pop-art that operates as cryptocurrency financial instruments-as combining "the nuanced social awareness of computer programmers with the soulful whimsy of hedge fund managers. It is art for people whose imaginations have been absolutely captured by a new kind of money you can do on the computer." He deplores the aesthetic of NFTs alongside their environmental and economic destructiveness and describes their adherents as perpetual adolescents, immature and toxic, lacking in higher feeling, foresight, and taste. Other commentators have deconstructed the ways NFT art markets hurt artists (Dash 2021), operate as some unholy combination of a pyramid scheme or multilevel marketing scam and a speculative bubble (Olson 2022), and contribute to crypto's staggeringly pernicious environmental footprint (Tabuchi 2021). These critiques and others continue to be published and to garner widespread interest and approval.And yet. Over the course of 2021 and (perhaps to a lesser extent) 2022, visual artists, athletes, and other celebrities have created NFTs that have sold for enormous sums in Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies; NFT markets boomed, attracting investors and the already wealthy, but also plenty of ordinary crypto enthusiasts from outside the financial sector; and communities or clubs of investors aggregated around brightly colored, flashy collections like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks, or the open-source Nouns DAO (Figure 1). Through it all, the meme-influenced NFT art did exactly what memes do: it spread widely across the internet through processes of imitation and iteration, a form of creative recombination common to online communities and digital art.At the heart of the NFT art phenomenon is a tension between authenticity and reproducibility. Although the tokens themselves-the stable URLs or "receipts" on the blockchain-are eponymously nonfungible, their JPEG incarnations are eminently fungible. Right-clicking (copying, saving, and reposting) an NFT JPEG purchased (often at great expense) by someone else is a common form of public critique levied at NFT investors to dispute the originality of a given NFT. To me, this practice wildly misunderstands NFT art. Imitation and iteration seem fundamental to the ecosystem. Successful collections spawn myriad copycats. Numerous NFT collections that ape (with apologies for the pun) the Bored Ape Yacht Club have been listed by Crypto.com among the most-traded NFT collections. The Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Rumble Kong League, and CyberKongz are all more or less ape-related with recognizably similar art and stylistic choices. Zoomed further out, the NFT marketplace itself is clearly mimicking established art markets, including replicating many of the same flaws, from money laundering to speculative bubbles to collectors who are more investors in financial-instruments-that-happen-to-be-called-art than art lovers.Here, I want to t...

Some pig! Exchanging NFTs for the perspective of regeneration

“…Yet the digital images linked to their registration can be and are digitally copied all the time. Catherine Frieman (2022) has shown how this is both critiqued by those who want to burst the NFT enthusiasm bubble and also a means of spreading NFT owners' fame. Third, part of the attraction of NFTs, or anything recorded on any blockchain, is the promise of their permanence: blockchains, after all, are supposed to be an immutable, verifiable record maintained by a distributed network of computational agents.…”

“…NFTs are meant to be singular, immutable and permanent. Tradeable, yes, but in an 'inalienable possessions' sort of way (Weiner 1992), more like the Crown Jewels than a stock certificate (see Frieman 2022). Dallyn (2017) draws inspiration from Lucien Karpik's (2010) concept of economic singularities in his analysis of Bitcoin, putting the focus on the beliefs, institutional and infrastructural arrangements that make every Bitcoin unique while also giving them value in their circulation.…”

Insights from obsolescence: The interpretive potential of skeuomorphs

“…This emphasis on vestigiality or functional obsolescence is stressed by scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds (O'Hara, 2012: 288;Taylor, 2007). A further development is the application of the concept beyond material objectsto include any thing made by people which harbours vestigial features, including representations in the digital realm (Bowie, 2020;Meng and Leary, 2020;Frieman, 2023), concepts (Hayles, 1999) and literary practices (O'Hara, 2012).…”

Archaeology in 2022: Counter‐myths for hopeful futures

“…They are habitually and reflexively labeled as "imaginary" futures, in contrast to capitalist and colonialist ones that are naturalized as being more "realistic" attempts to foresee social possibilities (Fisher, 2009). Yet, the capitalist world is equally propped up by future-making practices no less imaginary (or perhaps better: idealistic) than those of anticapitalist or antiracist activists (e.g., Frieman, 2022). The apparent veracity of capitalist and colonialist interpretations of the past and present is dependent on the continued disempowerment and denigration of those being trampled by colonial and capitalist presents (e.g., Borck, 2018a).…”