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The Hidden Value(s) of Digital Art

03.01.2021 by M Donaldson // 2 Comments

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My Twitter feed (among the type of accounts I follow) is filled with chatter about NFTs, those “non-fungible tokens” that are all the rage among music’s early adopter set. NFTs, as defined here, are digital representations of art (visual, audio, etc.). Though the art itself isn’t exclusive, ownership of the NFT can be. Ownership is tracked and verified on the blockchain. 

We can look at this as similar to buying a skin or virtual item in a video game — a digital totem that broadcasts status within the game. Likewise, an NFT would elevate an owner’s status among an artist’s community of fans. The buyer of an NFT might also simply want to support the artist as a patron as NFTs, often auctioned, can have large pay-outs. Or, an owner could hope to turn a profit — one can resell an NFT at a higher price, adding a speculative aspect.

That’s probably a naïve explanation of what’s going on here. I’m hardly an expert or crypto-savvy. But what I do know doesn’t leave me bullish on the mass adoption of NFTs. It’s not the digital-ness that throws me off. I’m fascinated by the potential of intangibility and decentralization. However, I see NFTs, in their present execution, amplifying some age-old problems within the music industry.

News of NFTs reaping multi-thousand dollar sales makes them enticing to artists. This model seems a solution for those struggling under the streaming economy, as a single NFT sale could pay more than millions of streams. And plenty of unknown-to-me musicians have recently done well with NFTs, boosting the platform’s independent-friendly appeal. However, as many hopeful emerging artists learned through failed Kickstarter campaigns, the success of an artist’s NFT will depend on the size (and intensity) of a pre-existing fanbase. And as soon as known and established artists catch on, it’s likely music’s 1% will dominate, just as they do on Spotify. 

There’s also the inherent class-separation of fans able to participate. It will get easier to create and bid on NFTs (right now, you’ve got to be technically in-the-know), but those strapped for cash will continue to be left out. I realize patronage has always existed in the arts — the rich funding culture — but we should examine how this tradition’s preservation is not exactly a radical move forward.

in some ways, NFTs won't affect u at all bc the ppl who have $389k to drop on a grimes video are operating in a completely different social sphere. let's accept this for what it is – a revival of the patron class in the face of continued failure by the state to support the arts pic.twitter.com/dbbAU6gFEU

— the taint modern (@mssingnoah) March 1, 2021

I’m also alarmed by the environmental impact of NFTs (and crypto-tech in general). Just before COVID-times, we started to see a reevaluation of a touring musician’s carbon footprint, notably by bands like Massive Attack and Coldplay. That was encouraging, as was the quick acceptance of live-streamed concerts early on in the pandemic, pointing to an alternative to exhaustive tours. But NFTs, if widely adopted, could regularly expend the same amount of energy as hundreds of ongoing tours. Duncan Geere published an informative blog post that explains this in detail: 

A single cryptoart NFT involves potentially dozens of transactions. [Computational artist Memo] Akten analysed 18,000 of these tokens, finding that the average NFT has a footprint of around 211 kg of CO2 equivalent. That’s the same as an EU resident’s electric power consumption for more than a month, driving for 1000km, or a return flight from London to Rome. And that’s just for keeping track of who owns it — it doesn’t include the energy consumption used in the creation of the work, its storage, or the website it’s hosted on.

If you’re wondering how this amount of energy is possible from a digital token, check out this video from The Guardian about crypto’s effects on the environment:

Also linked in Duncan Geere’s piece is this blog post from digital artist Joanie Lemercier — she explains why she canceled a planned NFT sale and proposes some solutions to make the technology more sustainable. And Memo Akten, mentioned in the above quote, has created cryptoart.wtf, a tool to help us “get a sense of how much carbon is being emitted by the buying and selling of different digital artworks.” 

I do think there are possibilities in the NFT model. The attraction is that there are few rules, and the medium is ripe for creative tweaking and innovation. That’s exciting. It’s young (as is crypto), and we’re all still learning. But we shouldn’t let the glow of promise blind us when there are lingering systemic problems to solve. The application of new technologies should help us find our way out rather than digging us in further. 

Categories // Commentary, Technology Tags // Blockchain, Coldplay, Environmental Issues, Massive Attack, NFTs, Patronage

Red Bull Music Academy’s Closing and the Mirror Universe

04.04.2019 by M Donaldson // 2 Comments

Marc Schneider in Billboard:

Energy drink maker Red Bull is ending its partnership with consultancy company Yadastar, which oversaw the Red Bull Music Academy and its associated entities, including a radio station, event and festival series and online publication. As a result, RBMA and Red Bull Radio will cease operations in their current forms as of late October, Yadastar announced on Wednesday. […] Whether that means the ultimate end for Red Bull’s foray into radio and other types of music-focused projects Yadastar oversaw remains to be seen. A Red Bull spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Corporate patronage is always tricky, even more so in the current age when ‘brand partnerships’ are how some artists are able to maintain careers freely. But Red Bull’s embrace and support of usually electronic, often uncommercial music didn’t come off like a brand alliance. You can either see that as a savvy success in sophisticated brand management or a resource-draining failure. I bet Red Bull’s attitude steadily shifted from the former to the latter over 21 years. All I know is I’m a huge fan of the music history journalism on Red Bull Academy Daily — check out this Simon Reynolds piece on the North American ‘60s acid rock electronic avant-garde! — and many of the programs on Red Bull Radio — holy cats, this entire archive of Kirk Degiorgio’s Sound Obsession show! But I don’t think I’ve popped the tab on a can of a Red Bull drink in at least a decade. I’m not alone, and I’m sure plenty in C-level management at the company have issues with Academy fans like me.

Ed Gillett in The Quietus:

… however gentle Red Bull’s advertising may have been on the surface, it’s self-evident that those holding the purse strings would have expected a meaningful return on such substantial investment. RBMA’s vast trove of learning and experience may have functioned as a public good, but it was not incorporated or owned as one – ultimately, if and when it no longer made financial sense to Red Bull’s owners for it to exist, then its importance to a wider community of artists and listeners could never have been enough to save it.

In this, RBMA reveals the uncomfortable truth that many of the most influential nodes in our collective network of globalised underground music, whether news sites subsidised by property developers or streaming platforms funded by venture capital, rely not only on the creative communities who provide their content and create their value, but also on the continued indulgence of wealthy benefactors, whose priorities can and will change. In Red Bull’s case, an expectation of the eternal good will of CEO and owner Dietrich Mateschitz might be viewed as optimistic, given his widely-publicised and noxiously reactionary political views.

Is a reliance on (or an optimistic holding-out for charity from) corporate patronage keeping grassroots artistic communities from forming? What will happen to the community around Red Bull Music Academy? Is it shattered? Will we all go home now that the money isn’t there? Or, more importantly, do we need that money to maintain an influential and productive community?

I look at dublab which has independently operated as an online radio station — and, yes, a community of artists — since 1999. Sure, they list RBMA as a ‘programming partner’ (I don’t think there’s any funding involved), but the organization is, for the most part, listener and event supported. There’s a culture based around dublab, very much tied to the Los Angeles underground. They don’t have the impact of a Red Bull Radio but imagine a dublab in every city with an underground music scene. Now imagine all those stations and communities networking and supporting each other. That’s powerful stuff, and a CEO’s supposed altruism isn’t required.

Let’s circle back to the high-quality content RBMA, and its contributors, have gifted us. In the paragraph above I mentioned two favorites: the Simon Reynolds article and Sound Obsession show archive. I hope you aren’t reading this after October, clicking those links, and finding dead web pages. That’s another worrying problem — art becomes ephemeral when it’s subject to and owned by a corporate patron. If Red Bull is ready to wash its hands of the expense of artistic charity, what further incentive is there to keep the content online?

Terry Matthew in 5 Magazine:

We like to think that information, which wants to be free, will also propagate on its own: that once released, a document or story will be replicated in so many places that you can never take it down again. The internet is forever, we think – but it’s not. According to a New Yorker story by Jill LePore about the Internet Archive, the average life of a web page is about a hundred days. […]

Carter Maness brought this up four years ago about the fate of thousands of blog posts he’d written while employed by AOL and other media companies. “We assume everything we publish online will be preserved,” he wrote. “But websites that pay for writing are businesses. They get sold, forgotten and broken. Eventually, someone flips the switch and pulls it all down. Hosting charges are eliminated, and domain names slip quietly back into the pool. What’s left behind once the cache clears? As I found with that pitch at the end of 2014, my writing resume is now oddly incomplete and unverifiable.” Maness published this story on The Awl, itself defunct and starting to show visual signs of code decay.

Of course, this isn’t solely a problem of corporate patronage. dublab could cease operations tomorrow, the entire site and archive vanishing into the digital ether. And it’s not just a digital feature either — there have been repeated stories of film history destroyed in warehouse fires. But things do get messier if RBMA claims ownership of its material and Simon Reynolds can’t re-post his article on his blog, or Kirk Degiorgio isn’t allowed to upload his Sound Obsession archive to another site. That’s where the subject of patronage matters the most — when reproduction is possible and warranted, but the dual roadblocks of sponsored ownership and digital obsolescence realize a mirror universe where the artwork never existed.

🔗→ Red Bull Music Academy, Red Bull Radio to Shut Down
🔗→ What Does Red Bull’s Corporate Exit Means For Underground Music?
🔗→ 404: The Internet Has A Memory Problem

Categories // Commentary, Music Industry Tags // Capitalism, dublab, Kirk Degiorgio, Patronage, Red Bull, Rights Management, Simon Reynolds, The Digital Age

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8sided.blog is an online admiration of modernist sound and niche culture. We believe in the inherent optimism of creating art as a form of resistance and aim to broadcast those who experiment not just in name but also through action.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a curious fellow trying his best within the limits of his time. He once competed under the name Q-Burns Abstract Message and was the widely disputed king of sandcastles until his voluntary exile from the music industry.

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