Crypto Art Task Force
By Sparrow Read
The 4th group working under the umbrella of the Invisible Economy had its first meeting Thursday, September 10. Take a look:
As this was the first time this particular group of people has come together, we started off the meeting by asking everyone not just why they were here in this meeting, but (more importantly) why they were *here* in this space. What brought them to blockchain? What were they looking for that led them to become involved in all of this in the first place?
I must confess, this was a way for me to test a theory of mine that has been formulating over the past months from hearing many stories from people in conversations about how they got here. The theory goes something like this: there are many paths that people take to get here and a very diverse range of backgrounds, interests, and talents; but once here, people seem to find common ground and realize that in many ways they are not so very different in their core reasons for being here, no matter where they came from. Finding ways of allowing for all of this diversity while also agreeing on some shared values is the path we are on.
A few of the key reasons that seem to keep coming up are:
The community and inherently collaborative nature of the ecosystem.
The innovation and sheer abundance of creativity, the excitement, and enthusiasm around envisioning something different, and pushing boundaries of what is possible.
These are great places to start from! Making these clear and conscious will allow us to keep in mind what is important and ensure that whatever we do, it aligns with enhancing those aspects and ensuring they remain the beacon for future members of the community, as they were for us.
What actionable things could we do? We can take the output from the other task forces and discuss them here as a way of taking the learnings from there to a wider audience.
Topics that we’ll be looking at more deeply in future meetings are interoperability, governance, copyright issues and remixes, standards, education, and adoption.
We talked about collectors earning the right to collect, similar to how, on DADA, artists earn rights as they progress on the platform. A system that would enable artists to vet collectors in the way artists are vetted for curated platforms seemed like an idea that everyone would like to explore.
The best things were said by others in this 2-hour call, so I will leave the rest of this summary to just quotes from everyone else!
“There is a lot of value in the fact that we are all connected… we are all just one community, so the idea here is to give a voice to the community. I am an artist first and most, so for me we discuss these things from the point of view of the artist and from the point of view of art.” Beatriz Ramos
“The legacy system that we have in the government and in the enterprises is very much outdated. So I come from seeing that inefficiency and wanting to improve it.” Audsssy
“First of all, yeah, the community. But most of it is the enthusiasm and the creativity and the plurality of ideas and designs. It was very hard to try to control the community in one direction or another. It was just like an explosion of creativity. That’s what I saw. And what’s happening now in 2020, I think we anticipated this since 2016… That’s probably my greatest motivation. I just wanted to be a witness to this art form that is going to develop from these technologies.” Gus Grillasca
“For me, the real treat has been the community. I didn’t expect that. When I first started posting on Twitter, I expected to be lambasted for some of my opinions. But everyone was very friendly and warm and welcoming. So I thought, yeah, I want to do something special with these people. This is great!” Matt Kane
“I got into this because I missed being a part of a community that is visionary. It’s just grateful to be around kindred spirits!” Joe Chiappetta
“I’m interested in governance. I’m interested in the possibility of creating institutions which aren’t institutions, they’re owned collectively by those who have the greatest incentive to get the solution right and those who are most affected by how capitals and other resources are distributed within a community, an ecosystem, and scaling from there… to empower the ground up community-based art processes that are happening outside the frameworks of the existing institutional system.” James Simbouras
“I think we’re in a very important moment where we have the power to shape things. Because we’re small and because we want to think more deeply about things instead of just going with some kind of flow…” Lenara Verle
“To me, it is interesting to listen to each person’s view of how crypto art is changing the way people look at art.” Adriana Genel
“ I like the idea of upcycling where you can take something without value and through art, you can make it valuable.” Mr. Monk
“I really think that blockchain is a special new chapter in creativity… not just slapping new tech on an old system, it’s really looking at what this tech can inherently do to change the fabric of how we create with one another.” Kirk Finkel
“Throwing different people together to catalyze unexpected things has always been one of my greatest joys.” Karen Frances Eng
“Star systems have these very insidious ways of influencing systems in ways we are not even aware of.” Judy Mam
“Because we’re so attuned to numbers and stats, a number is such a narrow way of evaluating life.” Ilan Katin
“This is more of a jumble of ideas suddenly crammed together and how do we work together? So there is going to be all of this incredible drama that will take place. As we become more aware of this, we can learn how to play more appropriately with different mindsets and different ways that people think.” Jake Johns
“The reason I’m here is because I was welcomed. People reached out to me, talked to me, guided me. So the question for me is: As we grow, as we scale, and these conflicts come up… how do we keep this space open and inviting and welcoming to both collectors and artists?” Sparrow
“We say we want to give power to artists, everyone is saying that, but we’re actually taking power from artists because we’re giving the power to certain other groups. So to me it’s about: are we getting the outcomes that we’re saying we want to get.” Beatriz
“I’m in the rabbit hole!” Moxarra
Please join us down that rabbit hole! It’s really fun!
Lastly, huge thanks to Bea, Judy, and DADA for making all of this happen!
Thanks to Sparrow for guiding the group, taking notes, and being Sparrow. See you in two weeks!
