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April 03, 2021



" An artist can also create the equivalent of limited edition prints by creating a fixed number of NFTs that are identical except for ownership information."

Gary, Good ideas. Two problems I can see with using NFTs for non digital art.

1) transformation from real-world to digital form is hard to standardize. Changing the focus of the camera or the magnification for a picture can result in multiple hashes for the same art, and NFT/blockchain cannot fix that problem.

2) Short of destroying the real art work, possession of the real art can change, and break the NFT.

Just some thoughts.

Gary Robinson

Hi Sri, nice to meet you. "" An artist can also create the equivalent of limited edition prints by creating a fixed number of NFTs that are identical except for ownership information."

Gary, Good ideas"

Just to be clear, that's not an idea of mine, that's already being very actively done on OpenSea and elsewhere.

I agree with your comments about associating physical art with NFTs. I don't think that's the future of NFTs. BUT, I do think that as things stand right now, a non-digital artist who publicizes her work by creating NFTs for it may be able to make sales she wouldn't have had access to otherwise. Not sure about how effective it really would be for marketing, but I do think it's plausible that it could help.


Hi Gary, Good to meet you. :-) Lynne forwarded me this article, and I was curious about how this could work for non-digital art. Being a software person, I have no idea of the non-technical side of this concept, but was interested in how provenance could be established if the source material was not digital.

I understand that art purchases made as investment, provenance of valuable art is mostly about securing the investment. But I am unable to comprehend the value of NFTs outside of provenance, from the art viewer side of the equation.

I think this is mostly due to my ignorance of the art domain, but I cannot see why a viewer on the web would care if they are looking at a real or a copy of some digital, if access to view the art is universal. I am sure I am missing something obvious.

Gary Robinson

Why would a viewer care if he was looking at the Mona Lisa, vs a copy that was good enough that he couldn't tell the difference? A collector would pay a lot more for the original Mona Lisa than for a known copy, no matter how accurate. Same with NFT's, with the only difference being that it would be literally impossible to distinguish the one not backed by the NFT. For an average viewer, though, that difference is moot, because they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the Mona Lisa and a really great copy.

So I think the key is that some people are collectors. They would care. People who only want to see the image wouldn't.

That being said, I think it IS possible for the NFT to be digitally signed in such a way that the true buyer could be sent a private key that would unlock the full resolution image, and anybody could see the image in less resolution. I think there is stuff like that being done, where anyone can see a rough version of the artwork, but only the buyer of the NFT gets the key. If Lynne wanted to do that, I could look into it.

Gary Robinson

Also, the first purchaser gets to know he's supporting the artist! That would matter to some people, such as myself...

Gary Robinson

I also had the thought that maybe I missed your point completely and ranted nonsense in my last comments! It hadn't even occurred to me: Why would somebody want to view the NFT-backed identical copy of a digital image if they are NOT a collector??

I can't explain it, but I do note that I'd be far more likely to go view the real Mona Lisa than a copy that was, to my unsophisticated eye, exactly identical to the original. Maybe a lot of people wouldn't feel that way. I don't see a logical reason to want to view the original in such a case, but my feeling is that I would.

Gary Robinson

Upon further reflection, it seems like it's for the same reason I'd go pay a museum to let me see a rock sample from Mars, but wouldn't go to so a rock sample from an iron-rich American desert which would be visually indistinguishable to me from one from Mars. There's just something about something being "the real one".

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