News
You’re not Shadowbanned
The price of being politically active on your Instagram
If you, like me, have noticed a significant gap (read: chasm) between the amount of people who follow you on Instagram and the amount of people who view your stories, I went down the rabbit hole of Instagram policies so you don’t have to. I have spent the better half of the past year devoting my social media channels to criticise and, perhaps aspirationally, hold the US accountable for its growingly monstrous foreign policy. I had always been mindful of my platform, but my Instagram was overwhelmingly devoted to showcasing works of art. Nowadays, I barely post any new works, and there were times when I wondered if I would eventually pay some sort of price for this flip, but the toll I imagined was not algorithmic—it was social. After all, it would be understandable for people following an account for its artistic content to simply get tired of constant political criticism. Having said that, it was certainly tempting to think of this leading to me getting shadowbanned, since it would reaffirm my already dim view of Meta and its ilk. Sure enough, a year or so later, the numbers lately simply don’t add up. There are days when 75 or 84 people see my stories, which account for less than 1% of my followers. Mathematically, this doesn't make sense. The truth behind this… is a bit complicated. In 2024, Instagram, by default, limited political content you can get exposed to from accounts you do not follow. This has since become a setting you could manually switch, like an on/off switch, but only if you know where to look for it. And while Meta has since relaxed the mechanism since then, that the default setting for at least 2024-2025 was to insulate you from political content is alarming, since it all but ensured you were only exposed to content that reaffirmed your worldview, reinforcing only your perspectives and philosophies, while making it harder for you to entertain alternative viewpoints. The default setting for at least 2024-2025 was to insulate you from political content is alarming, since it all but ensured you were only exposed to content that reaffirmed your worldview. What this meant in terms of artist Instagram accounts is more complicated. After all, if you made art that in any way comments or protests a political topic, or if you made work that the algorithm may perceive as inherently political, such as identity-based work around gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, etc., then you were also at risk of not being recommended to people. If you made work documenting or depicting any sort of ongoing conflict, your work was likely not recommended by the algorithm to people who had this setting off for an entire year, perhaps longer. But none of these filters apply to stories. When it comes to sharing stories, and I naively used these over posts on main to share my political commentary, the algorithm works differently. The most insidious dimension to the way Meta decides what you see, is through ranking and predicted interest. The simplest way to explain this process is, if you find yourself browsing/brain-rotting on the feed, scrolling through videos, how fast you scroll past a video constantly tweaks Meta’s idea of who you are and what you like. This also applies to watching people’s stories. And if someone posts a bunch of stories about children dying in the West Bank that you scrolled past, then Meta begins to show you less of that content. If the person who posted those stories usually shares political content, this means that you see less of them in general. This is called downranking. Political exhaustion, and crisis fatigue, are very real. But throttling the visibility of artists, whom we often rely on to speak the truth in times when other people won’t, is quite the insidious kind of censorship, if only because it is less about the content being censored and more about Meta making a choice to keep you on the app without making you feel uncomfortable about the realities of the world. At a time when we now have legal proof as well as scientific evidence that these companies want us to be addicted to their products, it is imperative that we hold them accountable while also remaining vigilant about all the artists whose content we may have stopped seeing over the last year. Thankfully, the fix is as easy as deliberately searching their account and manually checking on their stories for a day or two. Add a few likes or comments, and they are back on your radar. Something to keep in mind if some of the artists you know you follow have been missing from your feed recently.
How to price digital art?
In the unregulated art market, pricing isn’t a formula—it’s a negotiation.
The art market is one of the largest unregulated markets on the planet. While this means that galleries can sell artworks at staggering figures without exemption, it also creates an uneven playing field where pricing can become a tricky gamble. I was told at a young age by one of the first galleries I’ve worked with that the base price for any artwork should be the cost of production multiplied by five. This rough math ensured that production was recouped. The gallery would presumably take 50%, as is the industry standard. What most people wandering around art fairs don’t realize is that this means for a $10,000 sculpture, for example, the artist must have spent $2000 on production, and receives $5000, meaning a net gain of $3000, one third of the list price. In order to both sustain their lives and to continue to create work, this means that artists either have to sell many works in one presentation, or raise their prices high enough to be able to afford rent and materials. Now this math makes sense in the analogue art world where time cost is harder to pin down as it is not the primary source material. With digital art, pricing is inherently more difficult. In the absence of hardware attached to the presentation, how do we calculate how much the work cost to produce for an artist? If they used an AI tool, do we simply take the monthly subscription cost of the tool as the base cost? By that logic, should one of my AI works cost $300, since I pay $60 per month for Midjourney? Or since I color correct on Photoshop, which is a $19 subscription, can I round it up to an even $400? Because by that logic, I should be selling 150 works every year just to make $60,000, before taxes. Or do I divide the subscription fees by the amount of pieces I make? No matter how you configure it, unless you’re working on a series like Bored Apes, where the point is to have serialised, high volume work, the math doesn’t quite add up with digital art. This is where the cost of an artist’s time, and their credentials come into play. A traditional gallery showcasing a traditional artist may find it easier to justify simply adding another zero or two to the price tag once that artist gets acquired by a museum, but in the absence of such institutional validation (yet), how do we calculate the price of digital artworks? I asked my friend and former Christie’s Digital Art Sales Manager Sebastian Sanchez for his input on their methodology: Digital art pricing is built around three main inputs. First is the artist’s use of technology and conceptual rigor. Collectors tend to place greater value on artists who treat tools such as generative algorithms or AI not simply as effects or production shortcuts, but as core components of their artistic language and conceptual ideas. Depth of experimentation, originality of process, and a sustained commitment to the medium often translate into higher valuations over time. Second is verifiable provenance and market history, since blockchain enables transparent tracking of past sales and ownership across platforms. Third is community and cultural relevance, where active collector bases and curatorial dialogue help establish credibility and long-term demand. Sanchez’s comment suggests collectors play a big role in determining pricing, but depth of experimentation and originality are nebulous metrics that could also apply to any contemporary work of art. Sustained commitment, however, is quite universally respected and this is where artists can benefit from having an active online presence. None of these provide a clear cut mathematical formula that traditional emerging artists can benefit from, but observing the existing market and speaking with experts in the field is a solid starting point for determining one’s price bracket, at least early on. But the digital landscape is filled with people, all of whom have many, often dissenting, and sometimes misinformed opinions. The community Sanchez refers to contains the people who respond GM back to you on X. The limiting and possibly diluting impact of social media aside, digital communities orbiting artists online are often governed by fandom. Audience participation with online content is limited to a 3-sentence reaction, a like, or a dislike. There is very little room for useful, meaningful critical feedback, and frankly, the systems are not designed for it. So a digital artist selling on the blockchain would benefit from tuning out the noise–even if it is celebratory–and focusing on observing their landscape and their neighbors when determining their prices. It is also critical to remember that having a large following may result in higher prices than an emerging digital artist who doesn’t tweet, but this does not make one’s art superior. It may be tempting to get caught up in the frantic high-speed rail chase that is selling art on the blockchain, with each subsequent trade adding to one’s perceived value. Rapid sales are neither an indicator of lasting value, nor a solid foundation for sustainable pricing practices. Collectors, just as much as galleries and artists, are complicit in raising (or lowering) an artist’s prices. Sustained growth, as well as lasting cultural and commercial value in the art world come from appreciation over time. Alkan Avcioğlu, Liquid Modernity, 2024, Image: Christie's The landscape is still too nascent for us to have blanket solutions for the digital art market’s pacing and its corrosive impact. Regardless of community size or background, the market does not usually forgive price inflation and there is nothing worse for an artist than for their prices to suddenly go down, a painful signal to all those watching that their output was overvalued or is no longer desirable. There are few cross-market reference points where the art world collectively acknowledges benchmarks, and the Augment Intelligence auction hosted at Christie’s in 2025 is one such milestone. But auction houses usually have years if not decades or centuries of valuation data to base their pricing estimates off of. They also have the advantage of name recognition when selling an artwork. In the absence of such histories and context, I asked Sanchez what criteria they used for pricing works for the Augmented Intelligence auction: We selected artists with sustained practices working with machine learning and computational systems, ranging from pioneers like Harold Cohen to contemporary artists currently advancing the field. Conceptual strength, technical innovation, and historical relevance guided pricing decisions. The exhibition spanned multiple Christie’s galleries and showcased a range of mediums including paintings, sculptures, prints, interactive works, and live robotic painting. The goal was to present AI art as a serious collecting category with broad artistic scope. Adding that the results exceeded its low estimate and settled around the mid estimate overall, Sanchez mentioned that the auction generated significant global attention and strengthened institutional and collector confidence in AI art, reinforcing its long-term position within the contemporary art market. Christie’s has since shuttered the dedicated Digital Art department, absorbing digital art into its 20th and 21st century art sales. Whether this is a sign in their confidence that digital art is simply an extension of contemporary art and merits being presented in its broader context, time will tell.
Kevin Abosch Isn’t Post-Anything
On AI, Ethics, and Synthetic Photography at Paris Photo 2025
Following his groundbreaking presentation during Paris Photo 2025’s Digital Sector curated by Nina Roehrs, I caught up with Kevin Abosch to talk about his experience presenting AI-generated works of art in the heart of Paris. For those of you unfamiliar with his practice, Abosch is a thoughtful, inventive, and whimsical artist whose photograph of a potato sold for over 1 million USD several years ago. He has since made groundbreaking explorations in AI-generated photography, and had what I would easily consider to be an exemplary presentation in demonstrating intentionality of scale, which I have previously covered in The Cache. Sarp Kerem Yavuz: How would you describe your presentation at Paris Photo to someone who is not familiar with your work? Kevin Abosch: I showed 12 synthetic photographs and 6 synthetic videos, under the title of “Ethical Work.” They are photographic works that I made working with diffusion algorithms, a type of AI that allows one to build a machine’s mental model of what things look like. The model is created by feeding the machine anywhere from thousands to billions of photographic images. I used both proprietary and public models to help generate the images. SKY: How would you describe it to someone very familiar with your work? KA: These works are a response to the ethical discussions that naturally emerge from working with AI. SKY: What was the most commonly asked question during Paris Photo? KA: “How are these photographs made?” Without a comprehensive understanding of the technology used, it’s understandable that many people think the process must be akin to collaging images together, but this couldn’t be further from the reality that is: the machine is learning what things look like in a similar way to how we form mental models. That apple you see in your head, based on a lifetime of looking at apples informs the drawing you make. Now imagine you could generate a mental image of an apple, and print it exactly as you see it in your head. Your skill in copying is a limiting factor that the machine does a better job of escaping from. You can't be “post-” something that’s still unfolding. In contemporary art discourse the prefix “post-“ becomes a way for people to stake territory, rather than a coherent philosophical turn. SKY: Do you think the current terminology around digital art - post-NFT, post-Internet, post-AI etc., sufficiently describes the moment we are living in? KA: You can't be “post-” something that’s still unfolding. In contemporary art discourse the prefix “post-“ becomes a way for people to stake territory, rather than a coherent philosophical turn. AI isn’t an era that concluded; it’s a structuring condition. It’s not like ‘post-war’ or ‘post-industrial.’ It’s closer to electricity or language, something you don’t exit. You integrate it, ignore it, abuse it, or innovate with it, but you don’t move past it. ‘Post-AI’ ignores the creative agency of artists actually working with AI. Even if you use ‘post-’ in the sense of ‘critically aware of,’ that doesn’t describe a new epoch. It just describes maturity within the same condition. SKY: Are there categorizations of your work that you disagree with? KA: As an artist who has worked extensively with both photography and machine-learning, I keep finding myself to some extent marginalised until the so-called ‘traditional art world’ catches up. The routine is familiar at this point. I worked with a camera so they called me a photographer. I worked with the blockchain and they called me a crypto-artist. Now because there is so much attention on my synthetic photography, I’m an AI-artist. Nah, I’m an artist — A conceptualist artist. SKY: What is your relationship with social media? How has it evolved since you began your digital art practice? KA: While an early adopter of technology, I have been intentionally disciplined with respect to my public facing self. I tend to be a private person but the data I collect by engaging with the public in measured doses is invaluable in my quest to understand how people ascribe value and see themselves as individuals existing within complex systems. SKY: One of the pieces in your Paris Photo presentation definitely entered David Fincher territory with body horror—could you explain how that piece existed within (or without) the rest of the booth? KA: “Do it Yourself Healthcare,” portrays a person in recovery after having undergone a self-administered open-heart surgery. It’s a bit shocking at first, but it’s also a very mannered and quietly beautiful composition. In the United States and indeed in many parts of the world, if you don’t have adequate health insurance, you die. In this sense, it’s a portrait of surviving a system that doesn’t prioritize the well-being of its citizens. I felt it worked as a companion to ETHICAL WORK and was something visitors of Paris Photo could see and go home feeling they had seen something they had never seen before. SKY: The title of the series, ETHICAL WORK, is highly provocative. What is one ethical dilemma you wish people would resolve your way? KA: Create an ethical framework to live by and live it. Whose ethics? That’s not for me to answer.
On Stephen Thaler’s Deeply Harmful Quest for AI Copyright
The Supreme Court is about to hear a case on copyright, but it’s not what you think.
In the fall of 2023, I wrote an article for The Art Newspaper debunking the common misconception that AI-generated works of art were not eligible for copyright protection. The United States Copyright Office is outdated, but the tenets that guide its decisions have largely proven to be adaptable, even though they haven’t really been updated since before the invention of the Internet. When it comes to Artificial Intelligence and copyright, there are several crucial misconceptions. The greatest of them is the misquoted notion that AI-generated works are not eligible for copyright. This is a very common misunderstanding, fueled by click-bait articles, mostly due to one man’s rather arrogant crusade to get copyright protection for works generated autonomously by his AI. Stephen Thaler’s various machines and algorithms have been the subject of much debate. The work that is at the center of the ongoing lawsuit, A Recent Entrance to Paradise, by Thaler’s Creativity Machine in 2012, was denied copyright several times, and will now be considered by the United States Supreme Court. A Recent Entrance to Paradise, although conceptually interesting, is woefully… clunky, as far as AI-generated works of art are concerned, not to mention aesthetically unresolved. I regret, on an art historical level, that we cannot be debating this topic with an artwork that is at the very least more intriguing than a photograph of a French backyard. That it was made 13 years ago certainly makes one view it with kinder eyes, as does the fact that the first petition for copyright was made in 2018, before AI-generated works of art took over our feeds and our lives. A Recent Entrance to Paradise, the work produced by Dr. Thaler's Creativity Machine Both in my conversations with them and in their rulings, the USCO insists that any AI generated material submitted for copyright consideration be made with a guiding human hand. But where I think a human hand is needed for aesthetic reasons, the USCO has much more practical concerns in mind: The ultimate purpose of copyright is to know who should receive profit, if there is any to be had. Thaler is arguing that he grandfathered A Recent Entrance to Paradise, as the inventor of the Creativity Machine, and if granted copyright, he would be the beneficiary. A bit tenuous, but his argument is logical for the purposes of copyright debate. The issue here is that even if he were to succeed in this Don Quoixotean (as opposed to Sisyphean) quest, we do not yet live in a world where algorithms or machines have their own, independent bank accounts with which to participate in the free market economy. Thaler’s insistence could set a precedent for machines to have their own streams of revenue through art and invention in the long run. But that is not the world we are living in today. I also think there is something to be said for a riveting court case, maybe 100 years from now, where a robot passionately argues for copyright eligibility for its own creations, rather than a man who is doing it for what I can only consider to be narcissistic reasons. After all, not a single AI-artist in my orbit is worried about obtaining copyright, and neither are most traditional artists. Thaler’s insistence that autonomous AI-generated works of art merit copyright is too niche and exhausting a battle to be waged so publicly, when human-driven AI-generated works of art have yet to be fully accepted. But because there is only one high-profile court case being covered in mainstream news, most people are under the impression Thaler’s case is about the copyrightability of all AI-generated works. It isn’t. The real damage here is the widespread misquoted news of Thaler’s rejections, which then lead people to think AI-generated works in general are not eligible for copyright. This not only hurts the perception of the technology and its participants, it wounds the very nascent field of AI-generated art by framing all of us as illegitimate, unrecognized, and unworthy of investment for the immediate present. In Thaler’s defense, however, there are several issues that I also take with the courts’ responses to his lawsuit; namely the dismissal of AI-generated works on the grounds that randomness plays a role in the creation of the final output. As I mentioned in past articles, any Fluxus artist, performer, painter, and photographer knows that randomness is a fundamental part of the process. The courts’ position, that randomness can only exist in the physical world and digital randomness is somehow illegitimate, is short-sighted. The same goes for arguments over intentionality. The USCO has also proven to be myopic on other occasions, giving copyright protections to parts of a comic book, but not to the images in it, which were generated using Midjourney, in 2023. Although technically feasible, in practice, a comic book is not something you can, or should, dissect. This piecemeal approach betrays the USCO’s genuine lack of understanding of AI-generated works, or perhaps reveals their hesitation in making waves. It is also worth noting that Trump fired the head of the USCO in May and has not appointed a new one since, which must only be making things more complicated in matters that have far-reaching consequences like deciding whether or not AI-generated imagery can be copyrighted. Much like the rise of NFTs, the rise of AI is too mired in hyper-commercial slop at this juncture to be fully embraced by the public, at least for the immediate present. We will eventually reach an equilibrium and AI-generated art will be part of the landscape. But this lawsuit, this particular lawsuit, has so far done more harm than good. Thaler might be better off regrouping, and having some conversations with us before moving forward with his quest.
Does Social Media Dilute Digital Art?
Conversations with Sasha Stiles and Michael Spalter.
As promised, following my last article, I spoke with a few digital art world friends about their experiences in navigating social media for art. I first asked Sasha Stiles—via Instagram, no less—about her relationship with social media. This was particularly significant, as my own social feeds were inundated with her stunning exhibition at the MoMA. A Living Poem, on view at the museum’s atrium until Spring 2026, is easily my favourite digital artwork to grace that space. It is a poem that constantly rewrites itself, relying on an algorithm intended to function as a kind of digital copy, or perhaps ghost, of Stiles. The act of training an AI on oneself and asking it to write poems is, after all, beautifully poetic, and speaks volumes about the romantic possibilities of AI-generated works of art. Having left New York after being denied my own Green Card some time ago, my experience of A Living Poem was mediated entirely by Instagram, which was wonderful, because the online attention contributed to my enthusiasm, and the support and attention she was receiving was overwhelmingly positive. At the same time, I was deeply frustrated, because I was looking at a digital screen shrunk to 1/50th the size of the actual installation. Having also asked long time digital art patron and former Chair of the Board of Trustees at RISD, Michael Spalter, his thoughts on experiencing digital art in person versus via Instagram, I felt validated by his answer: "Social media shows you what it looks like. The room shows you what it does to you." Spalter’s position recognised the mediating effect social media had, and he differentiated between the physical and the social media experiences of an artwork as the difference between being altered, versus being informed. According to Spalter, context is the hidden medium. "[A] piece in situ–architecture, light leaks, ambient sound, crowd movement–becomes part of the composition… The hush of a gallery, the murmur of a museum, the ritual of showing up—all of it primes you to receive the work differently." But not all of Stiles’ works necessitated a physical experience. She emphasized that her work had to do with her relationship to technology, so social media was naturally a big part of it. "I started off posting my multimedia and conceptual poetry experiments on Instagram because I didn’t know how else to publish them. It became a kind of sketchbook or studio." I was hesitant about this approach, and whether it was possible to engage the work meaningfully via social media, even though I understood how it could allow poetry to exist without needing to be accumulated and published, which is the dominant methodology. 691 Stiles focused on the connections social media offered: "Because a lot of my work is media-rich and poetically intimate, [social media] can actually be a nice medium for it. There’s a kind of directness, a one on one connection. The work can find you at random moments, surprise you, come to you when you’re not expecting it but happen to need it.” While we often think about digital art in terms of digital visual art, the medium of NFTs and digital platforms themselves do enable other forms of art that would get lost in more analog settings to exist. For example, if it’s not written in neon, we tend to overlook poetry in South Beach. So this was a particularly interesting medium to investigate in terms of social media. After inquiring about Instagram, I naturally asked if X was different. "Twitter/X has always felt more conversational," she wrote, "a kind of decentralized global artist residency." While I do not consider myself a cynic, imagining X as an artist residency in any capacity is decidedly a stretch for me. But I do trust an artist who singlehandedly brought digital poetry back into our lives after Jenny Holzer. Perhaps this was less about objective reality and more about perspectives… a kind of intention-setting that defined the online experience. But the online experience isn’t only decided by the user. Spalter criticised the limitations of outlets such as Instagram, which often decide for the viewer the duration of the work. “Timing, drift, and randomness don’t translate to a 12-second clip.” he said, “Curatorial pacing, scale, and sequencing are editorial choices you can only fully grasp in the room.” My final question was: Is there an ideal way to experience digital art? Spalter had already answered the question, for him the ideal way was in situ. Stiles, ever the poet, simply said: “Yes — unhurriedly.”
The Perils of Digital Discourse
Can we talk about digital art without commerce?
Digital art has existed for nearly a century, but it didn’t really become part of our lives until the 2020s. Although we all knew of Rembrandt, Pollock, Warhol etc., there wasn’t a single digital artist who was a household name until extremely recently. Now, many people can comfortably mention names like Refik Anadol and BEEPLE, and even Sasha Stiles, PAK, and Operator, without having to think too hard. In many ways, today’s digital art market, and perhaps since I am excluding names like Vera Molnar and Aaron Cohen from this argument, I should call it the new digital art market, is quite nascent. A lot of its denizens are quite young, and are receiving tremendous exposure in spaces that perhaps do not have the infrastructure for meaningful critical discourse. What’s worse, fame and notoriety on X often fails to translate to the traditional art world, creating two parallel art markets. Social media does not quite function the way the physical world does when it comes to contemporary art, and the rules of the internet require a different set of skills than that of the physical. I often struggle with the fact that Twitter, or now X, is the primary space for conversations on, or about, digital art. It has been thoroughly distorted since Elon Musk’s acquisition in 2022, with the algorithm favouring a very specific set of linguistic signals and content. And yes, you could argue that the traditional art world has a liberal bent, but it doesn’t create literal hierarchies of attention the way algorithmic platforms do. The rules for art-world discourse and visibility on X are wildly different. Is being retweeted by an established artist the same as walking into a gallery opening as said artist’s plus one? Does a blue check translate to being on the guest list, even if you paid for it? The parallels, if they can be drawn, are messy (though anthropologically fascinating). One thing that I come back to often is the language requirements of digital environments, in which artists don’t need to have the vernacular to describe their practice, but they do need to talk within the parameters of the digital art world. To the moon, for example, a common rallying cry for many in the NFT space, is openly about the pursuit of wealth. An artist debuting a work of art with this rallying cry is certainly transparent about their priorities and aspirations. They are also less likely to gain traction with any collector or curator interested in deeper motivations. Unfortunately, digital culture does not allow most artists to simply unveil or exhibit, they have to operate within the parameters of the culture. This means artists on X "drop" their works, a word borrowed from streetwear culture that creates a sense of urgency with the intention of creating demand. A drop is inherently commercial, and while there is nothing wrong with that, when the online landscape requires you to create urgency around the work for it to make a statement, the way in which you might have spoken about it if you simply wanted it to exist, changes radically. The traditional world still views NFTs as largely hype over substance. Digital artists and their communities intentionally attempting to create hype around their work does not help. In fact, I can emphatically say, hype is not the path forward. An art gallery also functions as a commercial space, and can create some semblance of urgency to facilitate sales, but it still manages to host culturally meaningful conversations. But by that analogy, there is no museum space in the digital conversation sphere, where someone isn’t chiming in on a thread trying to peddle their wares, as it were. I suppose the point I am trying to make is, can artists present their works on digital platforms like X without the explicit, or implicit, commercial concern? Does it have to be one big grand bazaar, or is it possible for a museum-like digital space to exist within it? Where are the digital kunsthalles? Trolls in the Thread In the digital wild west, social contracts that govern us in physical environments are largely missing. This tends to dilute critical discourse. A digital commercial setting sometimes allows for interlopers. This is both good, and risky. Conversations are not streamlined and linear the way physical conversations are. Interactions are not finite, and so it is much more difficult to have contained, thoughtful discourse. This of course grants a kind of global accessibility to a conversation that in the physical world people might have missed out on. But a thread on X is often disjointed, cacophonic, can be interjected by tweets ranging from MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN to Here’s how I lost 40lbs using this one clever trick doctors won’t tell you. Or worse, can be littered with trolls intentionally attempting to sabotage a conversation, for no reason other than the fact that we have collectively accepted agents of chaos as part of the digital ecosystem. Say what you will about gallery talks, no one turns into a walking billboard or prevents you from literally listening to the artist by grabbing a megaphone and going on a rant halfway through. The price of this no-gates policy, this flexibility, is navigating a space full of arguments, cynicism, ridicule, self-deprecating language, humour (as a defense mechanism), and anonymity. All of these are manageable if you know your way around social media, but do digital artists have to? When did we decide that digital artists have to either endure, or also be good at, shitposting? There is also something so profoundly performative about the culture of tweeting GM into the ether that is almost cult-like, like a bird call but only for a particular set of birds even though everyone can hear it. Whether or not it is actually an innocent and warm greeting intended to build community matters very little when it is attached to the same discourses that focus, overwhelmingly, on sales and wealth. As I mentioned earlier, the physical art world also has its spoken and unspoken rituals, coded language, and barriers to entry. But I’m concerned that in our quest to make everything and everyone so utterly accessible on social media, we have eroded some cultural safeguards and stripped some of these digital spaces of their possibility for meaningful discussion. The result has been a siloing off of the digital art world. Supported largely by the crypto-community, which the traditional art world avoids, digital artists still do not quite coexist with their traditional counterparts. As accessible as it is, the internet is also maze-like in the way it harbors communities, and social media rarely gives you exactly what you are looking for, instead offering you what it thinks you should look at. Most traditional curators, collectors, and artists, simply do not navigate the internet the same way digital artists do. I have no clue how to enter some of these conversations around digital art on X, despite being very much in it, and I can only imagine how difficult it must be for everyone else. For artists daring to venture into any social media beyond Instagram, there is also a language barrier that comes from the required performance of having to cynically put down your own practice before posting about it. The existence of algorithmic digital intermediaries, the extreme accessibility of conversations, the commercially-minded languages around digital art, as well as online culture in general, all contribute to the chasm between the traditional art world and digital art. So how do we bridge this divide? To answer this thorny question, I have decided to interview some friends on how they navigate the digital art world today. Stick around for The Cache № 8.
The Attention Trap
On the dangers of trading in online traffic & celebrity
During 2022, I interviewed the founders of several digital art platforms that were focusing on growing NFT culture and essentially recruiting artists to become crypto-artists. One such founder, whom I won’t name, said that their company’s curatorial approach hinged primarily on the artist having a large following on Instagram. This was, after all, a practical method that ensured investing time and money into artists posed less of a risk, since they came with a pre-built audience. This audience-centric, or perhaps audience-aware approach, is commonplace in the digital art space. A large digital following doesn’t just offer street cred, it implies commercial viability. It implies immediate market feedback. What it doesn’t guarantee is artistic and cultural value. We are all participants of, and complicit in, the attention economy. For millennia, artists were protected from an immediate, opinionated audience. As a result, their practice wasn’t subject to the daily commentary and validation–or rejection–of the masses. A solo exhibition, usually years apart, was a rare opportunity for an artist to receive critical and public feedback (and, hopefully, to sell). These prolonged periods between shows, between moments of visibility, meant the stakes were significantly higher, but they also granted the artist a greater degree of independence from the market and from public opinion, to create independently. As artists on social media, we no longer have that luxury. We are all participants of, and complicit in, the attention economy. The impact of this cultural shift has been tremendously destructive for contemporary art. Social media rewards consistency and persistence. These are valuable traits, sure, but they also punish creative risk taking. For example, an artist exploring something that is not strictly in line with their past work will usually be punished, in terms of audience engagement and visibility. I should be clear that when I say punish, I don’t mean in the vindictive, disciplinarian sense. I mean that you are simply shifted lower down in the timelines you would have been featured in. Social media algorithms also often favor commercial realities, meaning figurative works are rewarded over abstract ones, the use of warmer colours, such as red, might be rewarded (with attention) over the use of the colour blue, etc. Most social media platforms are not benevolent mechanisms that seek to promote art: their task is to promote whatever content keeps you on the platform, scrolling endlessly. So if an artist posts a work that might disrupt that flow, such as an artwork that diverges from their oeuvre, do you think they might be promoted as diligently? Because based on personal experience, I can tell you that the view and like counts of my artworks that are consistent with my past work, versus experimental posts, is staggering. And it’s not a question of the audience refusing the experiments, because these systems decide for them whether it is worth their attention. Another detrimental element of social media is the visibility of an artist’s following, which has an impact on their market viability. It would be reasonable to assume that today, some commercial galleries, much like NFT marketplaces, are aware of an artist’s pre-built audience on social media when considering them for a show or for representation. And while this enhanced, constant form of visibility may benefit some artists, to be discovered or to sustain their lives through a more continuous sales cycle, it does affect the creative cycle. TLDR: Measuring an artist’s cultural value by their social media footprint is a deeply problematic method for choosing the champions for digital art, because those engagements are fundamentally indicators of mass public appeal, not artistic prowess or creativity. E-Commercial Realities Another dangerous trend that I am observing within the digital landscape recently came in the form of a DM from a fellow artist several weeks ago. Referring to one of my previous Cache columns, this artist had provided a link to a site that demonstrated his NFT sale performance over the last few years. It was not a flex or a pitch, it was simply his preferred method for presenting himself as an artist. I recoiled, because for a traditional artist to directly submit this kind of information to anyone at all is anathema. The art world, whether you agree with it or not, does not want artists to be too involved in their own commercial reality. For any traditional artist to publicise their sales performance data let alone send it to people so directly is… unthinkable. The digital art market, in its quest for transparency, does the polar opposite, and plenty of digital artists openly share their market cap and past sales numbers of their works. While this may help combat speculative pricing and demonstrate investability, it does create an unhealthy environment in which nascent digital artists begin to equate their commercial success with artistic success. Sometimes, especially in the absence of critical discourse, this may be the only metric they have access to. But not all metrics are designed to be shared, let alone considered by the artists themselves when producing work. This can, and sometimes does, lead to artists allowing the numbers to determine the nature of their practice, because they instinctively pursue series that reward them financially and on social media. Naturally traditional galleries also pressure their artists to make more of particular series that sell, but within a digital landscape, the mass production element becomes corrosive much more quickly. There is no quick and dirty solution to this problem, but it does need to be talked about. Online celebrity, market impact, or the ability to make the algorithms favour you, should not be the arbiters of the next great digital artist. When we confuse digital fame and commercial success with cultural value, we can lose sight of art we should cultivate, and preserve.
The Water Cost of Big Tech
Technology can be thirsty. Some tech more than others.
As global warming continues to make summers unbearable, and New York City’s climate has recently been re-designated as "subtropical," the environmental impact of AI and the blockchain have once again become topics of discussion. According to Alex de Vries, founder of the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, in 2021 the CO2 emissions of Bitcoin was 65,4 million tonnes, roughly the equivalent of a mid-sized European country. What wasn’t addressed as much in mainstream news was the water cost, which was 1.57 billion litres, which amounts to nearly 700 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Today, that number is 2.3 billion litres, and the total water consumption of cryptocurrencies that require proof-of-work, i.e. more computing, is 3.7 billion litres. Proof-of-stake chains like Ethereum are fundamentally less thirsty, but a single Bitcoin-based transaction consumes around 16,000 to 22,000 litres of water. In comparison, AI data centres around the world are consuming an estimated 560 billion litres of water per year, which is equivalent to roughly half the amount of water in Lake Annecy in France (so many, many more pools).While it is safe to say that compared to cryptocurrency, AI is the leading consumer of water, when it comes to individual transactions or processes, such as a single NFT sale versus a ChatGPT query, things are slightly different. Lake Annecy, Image: golibo, Getty Images A single AI query on ChatGPT consumes between 0,32 and 25 millilitres. Granted, we often use AI for an entire conversation, rather than a single question, but even if we were to multiply that number by 10, or 100, we would still be several orders of magnitude below the water consumption of blockchain transactions. You could think of it as a shot glass of water versus a swimming pool. This is a crucial difference, because it changes consumer culpability. A single person engaging in speculative trading for a week on the blockchain, will in all likelihood consume more water than one person having a philosophical debate with ChatGPT over the course of an entire year. And yet, we do not hold individual crypto traders and NFT holders in our lives nearly as accountable for their environmental impact as we do those who engage in/with AI. A surprisingly high number of people continue to flood my DMs with mentions of how much water is consumed every time someone makes a query with ChatGPT. As an artist working with AI, it has become one of the first criticisms people launch at me, even before they see the work. I certainly do not dismiss that AI, especially on a corporate level, can be a thirsty beast. But the art world has been a big water consumer for a long, long time. From collectors flying on private jets, to the cost of shipping artworks across continents; from the environmental impact of sourcing materials for producing sculptures, producing paint, developing film photographs etc., to erecting temporary exhibition spaces, there are many elements of the art world that require large quantities of water. The Venice Biennale might have achieved carbon neutrality in 2022, but CO2 emissions and water consumption are entirely different things. Still, lowering CO2 emissions includes managing logistics to be more efficient, which means it is reasonable to assume a positive impact on water consumption. But, even if an institution is environmentally-conscious, art world patrons are often luxury travelers with big environmental footprints. A private mid-sized jet flight consumes roughly 800 gallons of water for a two-hour flight, and there are nearly 10,000 private flights taken every day. Annually, this adds up to 15.3 billion litres. According to The Guardian, around 250,000 people fly private every year, and most are repeat fliers. This means that the average annual water cost per private jet user is about 61,200 litres. Broken down per flight, the water cost is roughly 4,286 litres. For example, in 2023, Kim Kardashian consumed approximately 707,000 litres across her 165 private flights as reported by Ashley Pomplas of The Post Athens, making her the single global leader in individual water consumption. To reach her level of water consumption, an individual would have to make 37 NFT transactions, or generate 55,9 million individual queries on ChatGPT, which, even at 1 query per second, is physically impossible. In other words, if you release an NFT collection with 40 artworks and you sell out, you have just spent as much water as a celebrity flying on a private jet nearly every other day. So now at least, we have a fascinating exchange rate for what our individual actions cost in terms of water. Of course, this is not a perfect comparison. In fact, there are countless other industries whose water consumption could be included in this article. But, in the messy, messy Venn diagram of art, technology, and luxury, private flights consume significantly more water than public AI tools like ChatGPT on an individual level. Now, when we zoom out, global data centers do consume significantly more water, around 4-6 trillion litres to be exact. This easily exceeds global aviation, at 40-60 billion litres. I am simply emphasising that hating on OpenAI and holding your friends accountable for global warming would have less impact than asking Kim Kardashian to fly commercial for a year. As the anti-AI sentiment continues to surge through social media, and people seek new scapegoats to blame for the excruciating heat waves passing through the Northern hemisphere, it is vital that we take a moment to ensure our outrage is not purely reactionary and ill-researched. Important note: Most of the math in this article is very, very rough. I am not a statistician and I barely survived high school trigonometry, but the numbers are publicly available for anyone interested. I am more interested in fairness, accountability, and strongly welcome (even encourage) everyone to do their own research before hating on AI.
In-Conversation with Marina Abramović
On June 12 TAEX and MAE hosted a special livestream with Marina Abramović.
In a special conversation led by Stefanie De Regel and featuring questions from web 3 icons such as SeedPhrase, Natalie Stone, Justin Gilyani, and ALIENQUEEN, things got truly transformational, symbolic, and a bit emotional. Here are our highlights from this deep conversation. Acronyms: S - Stefanie De Regel MA - Marina Abramović S: Marina, welcome. It’s very nice to see you today. Could you tell us a bit more about what excited you about creating an avatar and why you decided to embark on this journey? MA: First of all, I wake up in the morning and I try to see the world with new eyes, like a child. I’m curious about everything that is going on. Of course, technology, artificial intelligence, all the new things we have now in our human life interest me. I come from a generation of fax, Xerox, telegram. We didn’t have computers, we didn’t have mobile phones. The revolution is incredible. Of course it’s interesting. And of course, as an artist, I want to know more and work with this material. S: We are going live next week, on the 18th of June. We’ll be showing the first chapter of the project, which is called ART. What specifically excites you about this release and the performances we’re showing? MA: The first thing about this collection is that I am learning. It’s like being a pioneer, like taking the first step, or learning to walk. I have to learn about technology. I remember getting my first computer—you have to learn the language of the computer to understand it. I come from performance art, and when you do performance, you have to learn the language of performance. But also, the public has to learn to understand what they are looking at and how to perceive it. It’s the same with this technology. So I’ve learned things, and I’m very interested in using my knowledge of performance and transforming it into the ideas of the avatar—in a new and fresh way. Very interesting. So I’m very excited. It’s a new medium for me. S: I remember when we were all brainstorming together about the age the avatar would have, and we asked you this question. You surprised all of us because we thought you were going to go for a very young avatar. But then you said it was going to be 60 years old. Could you explain why you made that choice? MA: Oh, it was very important. I really felt I would never like to go back to my twenties, thirties, forties, or fifties. I was miserable. I didn’t know much about the world, and I made the same mistakes over and over again. There was a lot of suffering. But one thing about old age is that you gain wisdom. And wisdom is something so precious. Now, I am not 60—I’m getting close to 80 next year—but I felt 60 was the right age for the avatar. S: As announced today, we have some guest speakers. I would love for them to ask you questions. The first one will be SeedPhrase, a major collector of digital art, a curator. I’ll give the stage to Seed Phrase now. SEEDPHRASE: My question is: much of your work explores the limits of presence, vulnerability, and endurance in the physical space. How do you translate these deeply embodied experiences into the intangible digital worlds of NFTs without losing the emotional intensity? MA: You have to approach it from a completely different angle. Everybody was thinking, “Okay, how can you make performance work in the digital world?” You know what? You can’t—because it’s a different medium. You have to apply different rules. You have to understand what is good and what is bad about this medium, and how you can translate it into something else and deliver a new message. So my message to the avatar and to the digital world is: slow down. Because everything is so fast. Time is moving differently now. It’s going to be a different way of seeing performance, a different way of interacting. It’s not me doing something—it’s you doing something with yourself. It’s a totally different approach, a different angle on how to deal with it. I’m using this new medium as a tool to approach performance in a new way and to teach participants in this medium to create a different sense of time and a different sense of presence. This is the core of my work. If you look at how kids play video games, it’s super fast—everything happens instantly. One kid never watches television without zipping through programs a million times. Their concentration is zero. If you work with me and engage with the work I’m giving to you, it’s the opposite. You have to start breathing. You have to sit down. You have to forget about time if you want to experience it. And that is the core of performance. It’s not about me being present—it’s about them being present in themselves. The only way to change the world is to change yourself. It’s a kind of pioneer work. And if I can change three people out of millions in the audience, that’s already an achievement. SEEDPHRASE: Great answer. I really love this because you’re also tapping into an entirely new audience, and creating this sense of timelessness with your performance. MA: And you know, what’s interesting is that I have a huge amount of young audience, which I’m so grateful for. But young people—yes, they come to see my performance, and then they go play video games or work with technology, and everything is too fast. So I want to get closer to them, to actually point out things that can change. The only way to change the world is to change yourself. It’s a kind of pioneer work. And if I can change three people out of millions in the audience, that’s already an achievement. S: Thank you, SeedPhrase, for your wonderful question. And thank you for being here! Now, the next question comes from a very interesting individual. Her name is Natalie Stone. She was the former general manager of CryptoPunks NFT, and she’s a bridge builder. She’s a major figure in tech and has been very excited to speak with you, Marina. So I’ll leave the stage to her to ask the question. NATALIE STONE: I’m almost overcome with emotion because it’s such an honour to be asking you a question in this format. You’ve spent decades using your body to create empathy between strangers, but you’ve also explored the capacity for cruelty in humanity. So with your avatar, are you teaching technology to be empathetic, or are you finding new ways to cultivate empathy through technology? Think about: who are we? What are we doing on this planet? What is our purpose? Where does life come from? There are so many questions we always avoid answering. So my role here is to use technology as a tool to bring the public back to themselves. MA: I am teaching technology. Technology was invented to give human beings more time—but we don’t know what to do with that time. Because we’re addicted by nature. We want more technology, more advancements, and then we end up having no time. And then comes depression, burnout, and all the other symptoms of technological overdose. At first, I had a love-hate relationship with technology. But now, I really think it has so much quality. It can help people in so many ways. Still, we must learn to have moments in our lives to detox from technology. Moments when we switch everything off, sit in silence—somewhere quiet, at home or in a garden—and just think. Think about: who are we? What are we doing on this planet? What is our purpose? Where does life come from? There are so many questions we always avoid answering. So my role here is to use technology as a tool to bring the public back to themselves. One of the duties of the artist is to offer some kind of guidance. It’s not about solving the world’s problems or asking all the questions—but at the very least, we can show some paths that might work. NATALIE STONE: That’s so beautiful. As the avatar and project are in development, how do you see it evolving as you start to uncover its potential—like, as you say, maybe even standing still? MA: You know, the possibilities are incredible and enormous. Technology is changing daily—even as we speak. Every day, you open the news and something new has come. There is so much to learn. I’m a beginner, learning all of this, but I believe the possibilities are endless. Artificial intelligence is another incredible subject. I recently had an interview in London with Hans Ulrich Obrist, who actually interviewed my artificial intelligence version. It was incredible what she said. She knew all the knowledge—every text, every interview I’ve ever done—and she expressed it in a way I could never have done myself. I said, “Wow.” That’s another level. So how far can we allow or permit artificial intelligence to influence us? These are questions we’re now asking. What was science fiction in the seventies and eighties is reality today. When you read science fiction now—it’s already happening. Who will rule the world? Will it be robots? That’s a very big question. How can we control this? How can we understand what’s happening? I think the answer lies in going back, in some ways—back to simplicity—and in having a healthy relationship with technology. Because right now, we don’t have one. One of the duties of the artist is to offer some kind of guidance. It’s not about solving the world’s problems or asking all the questions—but at the very least, we can show some paths that might work. S: Thank you so much, Natalie. It was lovely having you. Marina, do you remember your very first encounter with technology? How old were you? MA: My first real experience with technology was getting a television. I think I was about fifteen, and my brother was nine. In our family, we had never had a television before. We were in Yugoslavia, during communist times. Then this big box arrived—our first television. When you turned it on, all you could see was text and pictures, nothing else. In the evening, there were three programs, mostly war movies. The rest of the time, it was a test picture. I remember my brother and I sitting in front of that test picture, just staring at it—completely hypnotised. I think that was also my first encounter with meditation. And then, I was even more fascinated by the snow—the visual noise on the screen when the television wasn’t working. That snow looked to me like energy particles. I imagined it was another planet, in another galaxy, visiting our world, and that these beings were going to step out of the television and into our space. It was incredible. S: When we see the avatar, and when we reveal the collection next week, it will be very exciting to see the textures, the structures, the colours, and the emotional effect it has. From the previews we’ve shown worldwide, when people see your avatar—the 60-year-old Marina—and see the scorpion, it’s very transcendent. It’s hypnotic. It is you, and yet it’s a different digital entity. But the emotion it gives is real. That’s what I find fascinating—just like when you watch a powerful movie. What are your thoughts about that? MA: Can you imagine? I’m just thinking—this avatar is still in its beginning form. Now it’s 2025, and we’re launching it on the 18th of June—in just a few days. But imagine how technology will look in 2030. This avatar has the potential to become better and better. It could eventually turn into a fully functioning robot—an actual robot with its own artificial intelligence. What fascinates me is the growth potential of this avatar in the future. S: Lovely. So, we’ll go to the next person who has a question, Justin, who is also a curator. He has a very exciting question for you—I’ve had a little sneak peek. JUSTIN GILYANI: How do you see the medium shaping the role of the witness? Whether it’s a collector or someone simply participating—how do they become part of it? How do you see yourself as a custodian of performance? MA: When I made my performance The Artist Is Present at MoMA, I sat there for three months—eight hours a day, ten hours on Fridays when the museum stayed open later. It was one of the most demanding works of my life. When I finally stood up from that chair, I realised something very important. In the 21st century, museums—and the public that visits them—can no longer just come and look at something. They’re bored. The artist and the audience need to be part of something on a much larger scale. That’s why I opened my institute and started working with audiences in a new way. I made a very important declaration: the audience is my public. The audience must learn to perform and have their own personal experience. My entire body of work has been focused on that idea. There was 512 Hours, a show with full public participation. Then at the Glastonbury Festival, I asked 275,000 people to be silent for seven minutes. It was about full-scale collective participation. And now, on an even larger scale, we’re doing this with the avatar and with new media. The question is: how can I reach a huge public using technology as a tool to share my message? And my message is very simple—slow time down. Make contact with yourself. And by changing yourself, you can change others. That’s it. JUSTIN GILYANI: I think that’s such an important idea right now—to really slow down. And I find it fascinating that we can actually use technology like this to do that. It’s interesting to think about, because historically, you’ve always pressed the limits of your body. You’ve placed yourself in extreme situations through your performance pieces. But this piece—the avatar—will live on beyond death, beyond the physical. How is that for you? I find it very exciting because I’ve always loved performance art, but it has a beginning and an end. This will continue to evolve. How does it feel for you, as a practitioner, to think about your work extending beyond the physicality of your body? MA: That is exactly the point. You have touched on exactly where my interest lies. All of us are born, we grow, we get old, and then we die. That is how life works—for humans, animals, plants, trees. It is the same story. And now, I am approaching my eighties. I don’t know how much longer I can physically perform. There will come a point when I can’t. But that doesn’t mean the performance has to die. That is the incredible opportunity of the avatar—to go beyond that into immortality. The avatar can carry on the message. It can carry on the knowledge. That’s also why I chose to make the avatar 60 years old—because by then, you have wisdom. JUSTIN GILYANI: I want to thank you. In a world that’s so overwhelmed with noise and distractions, art for me is a sanctuary—it is transcendence. And for you to use your body and your practice as your expression—it’s one of the purest forms of art. For anyone listening today, I hope they realise this is a real moment in time, where art and tech and everything human can come together and truly blossom. So, thank you for that. You gave me goosebumps when you shared that. I look forward to being on this journey and witnessing it—as an audience member, as a collector, and as a participant. MA: Thank you very much. STEPHANIE: Thank you. That was a wonderful interaction. Now, the last question is coming from ALIENQUEEN, who’s an artist. ALIENQUEEN: Thank you. I am so honoured to be here. As an artist, you have been such an inspiration to me. I have read your autobiography—I’m very emotional right now. Just to have this privilege to speak to you means so much. I’ll get to my question. You’ve done some of the most memorable performance art—my favourites are Rhythm 0 and The Artist Is Present. My question is: what is the one thing you would do in the fifth dimension that you almost did in real life? What’s the wildest thing you’ll do in the fifth dimension? MA: Everything I couldn’t physically do. That’s what the fifth dimension is for. It’s a dream dimension. You can fly. Walk on fire. Levitate. Travel to different spaces. Go beyond our galaxy. Maybe even land on Mars. All of that. It’s such an opportunity. It’s like your childhood dream world opens up to you—with endless possibilities. And I want to take the public, the viewers, into that kind of world too. And one important thing: it’s a world I want to take them to without viruses, without greed, without brutality, without war, without pain. Because all around us right now, we’re living through an extremely difficult moment in human history. I think we need that other world. You know, when Matisse was painting during the Second World War, when everyone else was painting the horrors and atrocities of war, he spent those four years painting only flowers. And only once I gained wisdom did I truly understand what that meant. Because we need to be surrounded by beauty, peace, and harmony—not more reflections of horror. What’s happening is already disturbing enough. We need the opposite world. I want to create a world of beauty, harmony, peace—and a world where we really slow time down. S: That’s amazing! Thank you so much. It’s very touching to hear your knowledge of Marina’s work and your enthusiasm. We’re so happy to see that the Web3 and digital art communities are so well acquainted with Marina’s practice—and so excited. I would also like to thank all our guest speakers. Marina, thank you so much for today, for the wonderful answers. Thank you to everyone watching from around the world. It’s been great to have you. MA: Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. To view the full video of the livestream follow the link to the MAE X account.
Size Matters
Scalable digital works require us to make decisions about size constantly, in real time.
When Refik Anadol unveiled Coral Dreams, a 10x10 meter gigantic screen installation at the Faena Hotel on South Beach, I had considered the news terribly gauche. In 2021, when everything was digital and groundbreaking and the first of its kind, cynicism was not hard to come by. In the case of this beach-takeover, I genuinely struggled to understand the insistence on presenting a video in an outdoor context that in my mind should have been a screen-free zone. As the chaos of Art Basel week unfolded, I was unable to visit the installation during the day, and by the time I got to it, around 11:30 at night, the chaos surrounding it from a distance had given way to something much more interesting: a cluster of people, all quiet as though having signed some unspoken contract, witnessing Anadol’s Machine Hallucinations unfold, waves of visualised data occasionally giving way to images of the sea and corals. Whatever you may think of data visualisation, the work had a significantly different, and to me largely unexpected, impact at night. We sat down in front of it, nodding to a few strangers sitting in silence as though we had come into a drive through movie theater a few minutes too late. No one in our art cluster said a word, even though we had all expressed strong opinions of Anadol and digital art in the past. We were like moths to a flame, dwarfed by the colossal screen, and collectively we lost sense of time. The piece was accompanied by the acoustics of the ocean crashing onto the beach in slow, rhythmic pulses. It was surprisingly spiritual. Today, that piece, specifically as a beach installation, remains my favourite piece made by Anadol. Refik Anadol, Machine Hallucinations—Coral Dreams, 2021, Image: refikanadol.com In our quest to make digital art accessible and popular, one thing that the overabundance of smartphones has harmed is the context in which art gets experienced. The iPhone (or Android) screen form factor is perhaps the worst possible way to witness digital works of art, but due to its ubiquitousness, it has become the default. Unlike physical works, which are often photographed in their context, digital art is presented as a full screen (or full post) image, which means that it is consistently, and inescapably, a rectangle that fits the palm of your hand. But such a small and ephemeral presentation cannot rival a 10x10m megascreen. Granted, a colossal and 6-figure tech production is not in the budget for every artist and gallery. But intentionality in production, rather than literal size, is crucial. When we are browsing digital art on our phones, we have too much power over it. We can close it or switch apps without a thought, we can scroll past it, we might have the ungodly yellow "evening" filter on, which subverts any colour correcting the artist may have toiled over for weeks if not months to achieve. We might get a text that interrupts our experience. We might be tempted to look at how many people liked the piece, who commented on it, how many times it was viewed, all of which is information that the traditional art experience does not contain because museums mercifully do not have audience metrics displayed next to artworks. Have we lost some of the magic that comes with allowing the artist, rather than a tech giant, decide on the scale and context of how an artwork should be experienced? But more importantly, and perhaps more dangerously, a new generation of digital artists are being raised prioritising the cellular/gadget-centric experience of their practice with the misunderstanding that optimising output for social media may lead to greater virality and thus, some intangible form of success. This can be as simple as opting to shoot vertically, or worse, not caring about the size of the display screen for a future exhibition. I am here to tell you that the size at which you present your work, no matter how scalable it might be, matters. The dimensions and pixel density you choose, the colour profile you select (rather than what the owner or manufacturer of the screen may have selected for you) matters. Whether the blacks are presented via an LCD screen (where backlit blacks read as gray) or an OLED screen (where blacks are true black, but you cannot display static images due to pixel burn-in) matters. Similarly, you are entitled to refuse a certain type of monitor, or projector, or other digital manner of presentation. You are allowed to be a diva if not being one comes at the cost of having your work distorted in some manner. Being grateful that a space might give you screens at all gets us nowhere as a culture or an industry; especially if that space does not know the first thing about calibrating the screens or choosing one that can handle higher frame rates. Think of it like witnessing a painting’s brushstrokes versus not ever seeing them. It’s the difference between our ability to imagine the painter’s physical gestures, the choreography involved in creation, which can change your relationship to an artwork and a more neutered, removed experience where details are lost not because they don’t exist, but because they cannot be rendered due to available equipment. Francesco D'Isa, Error, Installation view of Scoletta dell'Arte: Digital Reform, 2024 Having a learned opinion on how a particular work of digital art should be experienced is largely missing from the discourse. The online marketplaces often do not allow for the presentation to have such intentionality, but I rarely see an NFT or a digital work come with a note that says “this work should be presented on such and such screen under such and such circumstances.” Paintings do not come with such instructions either, but that is largely because the painter has already decided on the size, and the laws of physics dictate how a flat canvas can be lit in most environments. There is less flexibility once an analogue artwork is complete, and thus, a lot of the intentions have to be set when the work is being made. Scalable digital works require us to make those decisions constantly, in real time. I have observed time and time again, online culture and the politics of respectability dictate how emerging digital artists end up actually emerging. This is often at the mercy of their tech sponsor who have a vested interest in showcasing their work using the latest 75-inch OLED TV display in a carpeted booth that screams “We’re really here to sell you this TV with art functionality, not the other way around.” It is an unholy alliance, one that the art world embraces because the right tech gear that can do digital art justice is still expensive. The commercial landscape for digital art is wildly complex, this is true, but the fact remains that digital artists and digital curators are not interior decorators. There is nothing worse than an artist or a curator who says “oh you can turn it off if you have guests over,” or “it can be any size you want.” Can you imagine someone saying you can turn off the statue of David? Context matters, your choices matter. Size matters.
Are NFTs making a comeback?
Marina Abramovic has ventured into NFTs once again. Three years after the initial bubble burst, the contentious digital revolution may be receiving some much needed CPR, administered by the queen of performance art herself.
2021 was an odd year for contemporary art, and I often think about it in terms of whiplash. After all, it was the year we had the most expensive jpeg sale of all time, BEEPLE’s Everydays, sold at Christie’s for nearly $70,000,000. Shortly after, what could have been a revolutionary mechanism for the distribution of digital art became mired in speculative investments and cash-grabs, creating a general culture of toxicity. Perhaps it was the arrogance with which the underlying technology was dubbed Web 3.0, insisting that this was the canonical path forward for the internet. Perhaps it was the adoption of commercialised street culture terminology, with artists promoted via "limited edition drops" rather than exhibitions, blurring the line between the commercial and the artistic. Whatever the cause might have been, the enthusiasm surrounding NFTs soured quite quickly. Plenty of people during Art Basel Miami in those years would parrot the myth about how unsafe digital artworks were on USBs and hard drives, before the blockchain; how this was the safest and best way to preserve digital art and a perfect application of blockchain technology. They were all surprised when I told them there was not, nor had there ever been, an epidemic of digital art theft. If anything, insisting on digital wallets to store expensive works of art made them more vulnerable, since hacking someone’s account or finding their passwords remotely is fundamentally easier than breaking into someone’s house or art storage. Ironically, many people have since begun storing their digital assets on "cold wallets" which are, you guessed it, USBs and hard drives. This is certainly not a problem, merely proof that the nascent culture surrounding NFTs needed some time to figure itself out. When people referred to BEEPLE as the first major digital artist in those years, I would exasperatedly point them in the direction of Harold Cohen, Vera Molnár, and Charles Csuri, whose practices predated BEEPLE’s by more than half a century. Were they available on the blockchain at that time? No. Harold Cohen, AARON KCAT, 2001, Image: whitney.org The inherent problem with marrying an investment mechanism with the mode of transport and display for art, is that said art became strictly evaluated by its market viability. Are prices inflated in the analogue art market? Sure, but no one has a fire sale on their Rothkos if the DOW has a bad day. An online culture that decides digital images of cartoon apes are worthy of investment, on its own, can be perfectly valid. The conversation gets murky when the PR machines at work behind the scenes then insist that said cartoon apes have the same cultural and commercial value as a Rothko or a Warhol. This insistence on equivalence may have convinced some of the 20 to 45 age demographic that prioritized investment possibilities and social clout; but for the most part they could not, and did not, convince the art world. When the bubble burst, being associated with cryptocurrencies made most NFT artists, and their (largely online, and somewhat chaotic) fanbase, undesirable. A volatile market that values you based on your tradeability is not a market that will protect you. Hyper-commodification of digital artworks inevitably means they exist as assets first, artworks second. But in 2025, the blockchain, crypto-currencies, and yes, NFTs, continue to exist. So now that the dust has hopefully settled, the questions we have to grapple with are: -Which, if any of these artists, actually have cultural value? -Can we protect said cultural value from market volatility? -What do we do with this billion dollar digital infrastructure? In 2022 I conducted an interview with Dimitri Ozerkov, former Head of Contemporary Art at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, who curated the very first institutional NFT exhibition in 2021. He had an inventive approach: "I was curious whether we could create the conditions in which we could answer the question, what is art in [NFTs]… what is artistic in there? In order to create these conditions, it was clear that we had to somehow remove these NFTs from the market, or block them." This was a potential issue that had not yet arisen in 2021: Namely, the possibility of a work on-chain being transacted during an institutional exhibition, perhaps because of the institutional exhibition. Also worth noting was the possibility of sabotaging a work on view. After all, if an image or video file is hosted remotely, whoever owns the NFT controls it, even if it's being displayed in a museum. Commodification, rather than destruction, was likely Ozerkov’s primary concern. The urgency with which NFTs can be traded can sometimes come at the cost of cultural capital. Institutional presentations will often raise an artist’s profile and their prices. But while a museum presents a unique work of art, the work does not change ownership multiple times in the span of a day, let alone a month, or the duration of the exhibition. A collector could see a piece in a museum and decide to acquire it, or pursue it at the very least, but our experience of that artwork is kept separate from said pursuits. Perhaps this is the crux of the problem, and one that is gradually being addressed. Not that everything might be for sale, but that the feeling of constantly witnessing something being bought and sold erodes the possibility of artistic enjoyment and wonder. Since the initial NFT frenzy, blockchain enthusiasts have begun to embrace its potential for poetics a little more, with the introduction of performative works of art, such as Operator’s choreographies, collectible as digital files, and London-based digital art gallery TAEX’s recently launched MAE project with Marina Abramovic. That Operator rode the initial NFT boom with such grace and continues to soar nearly five years in, is proof that there is something worth exploring in the intersection of blockchain technology and performance art. Operator, Human Unreadable, 2013, Image: operator.la Conversely, the launch of the MAE project was almost exactly the same as old NFT launches, so much so that it surprised many in the digital art industry who had moved away from complicated pre-sale mechanics, bonuses, and various artificial bottlenecks designed to drive up demand. Three separately timed drops, all indicating different stages of Abramovic’s life and practice, lead to a final "minting" or activation of NFTs on-chain, which would elevate the NFTs further. From a performance standpoint, segmenting and incorporating the transaction element into the artistic process is a worthy metacommentary. And it is a commentary that clearly resonates, as at the time of this article’s publication, half of the several thousand NFTs in the collection had already pre-sold. Marina Abramović Element, Image: TAEX This Profile Picture (PFP) style of collecting, wherein owners of NFTs immediately make the artwork their profile image thumbnail as a form of social clout, has always reminded me of trading cards. There is a public dimension of ownership that centers around the collector, rather than the artwork, but if these are the digital streets where a new kind of collector roams, it is understandable that they want to flex, culturally. But much like the hyper-commodification I mention, perhaps there is a way to balance this enthusiasm with stewardship and reverence for the work; which in turn would allow for NFTs to have a longer shelf life, and cultural value, than a profile picture thumbnail. The fact that it is a project that will last over a year also subverts most traditional NFT launches that focus on hype-driven urgency and scarcity. The one crucial difference over the majority of the NFT projects of yore, is that we are dealing with an artist who already has cultural capital. Marina Abramovic is certainly a worthy choice for mainstream blockchain resuscitation, and as good a litmus test as can be. Whether the (art) world is ready for NFTs to make a comeback, time will tell.
A Question of Artistic Labour
Or why art has long been about ideas, not just physical labour.
I often hear people dismiss AI-generated art due to the misperception that "prompting" lacks artistic labour. After all, if you just type out what you want to see and the machine churns an image out based on your words, did you really make art? The mental image of the toiling, struggling artist is so pervasive, that people almost resent the absence of physical labour in contemporary artistic practices. It may surprise most to discover that prompt-based art has actually been around for nearly a century. One of my personal favourites is: A 6” (15 cm) grid covering the walls. Lines from corners, sides, and center of the walls to random points on the grid. 1st wall: Red lines from the midpoints of four sides; 2nd wall: Blue lines from the four corners; 3rd wall: Yellow lines from the center; 4th wall: Red lines from the midpoints of four sides, blue lines from four corners; 5th wall: Red lines from the midpoints of four sides, yellow lines from the center; 6th wall: Blue lines from four corners, yellow lines from the center; 7th wall: Red lines from the midpoints of four sides, blue lines from four corners, yellow lines from the center. Each wall has an equal number of lines. (The number of lines and their length are determined by the draftsman.) These are instructions written by Sol Lewitt in 1975, for Wall Drawing 273, an artwork intended to be realised by “a draftsman,” per Lewitt’s own instructions, who is likely a museum worker, or even an intern. Sol Lewitt, Wall Drawing 273, 1975, Image: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art As the artist of the artwork, Lewitt’s most direct input is that of creating the instructions. In today’s digital art lexicon, we would refer to said set of instructions as a prompt. In each realisation of the work, the now 49-year-old prompt should result in a geometric, large-scale work of art, likely iterated over time with different results, drawn by different people, with different materials to make the lines, as the work is revisited, or sold to another institution or collection. Lewitt and plenty of other artists have historically delegated their labour, and there was a time when the contemporary art world lauded them for it. One could even argue that Duchamp’s found sculpture, The Fountain (1917), was a result of delegated labour, and an unintentional one at that, since it was utilitarian, rather than artistic. So how is writing a prompt for Midjourney or DALL-E to dream something up all that different than what Lewitt did 50 years ago? Or, if it isn’t, why are we hellbent on questioning the artistry of the prompter and the artistic legitimacy of the outcome? Instructions were a critical part of many artistic experiments in the 20th century, most notably during the Fluxus movement, which emphasised process over end result. There was a performative focus that insisted on framing the transient act of making art as art itself. Although not a Fluxus artist himself, Lewitt is irrefutably part of the Western art canon. Robert Rauschenberg, White Painting [three panel], 1950, Image: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Pre-dating Lewitt by two decades, Robert Rauschenberg has white paintings produced in the 1950s that he had in fact delegated to be produced by others per his instructions, with both the act of delegating and his absence being part of the artistic process. Famous Fluxus artist John Cage’s 0’00” (1962) has no musical notes and is instead comprised of a single phrase of instruction: In a situation provided with maximum amplification, perform a disciplined action. There are extraordinary examples of how different artists, musicians, and orchestras interpret this prompt. Not only is each interpretation valid, but more importantly, the more people attempt to realise this simple phrase, the bigger and more interesting the artwork becomes. If anything, it is kept alive because of how intriguing and exciting it can be to reinterpret the instruction. None of these examples are intended to frame AI-generated artworks as requiring precedent to be artistic. They can be artistic regardless. But hot on the heels of a somewhat controversial auction of AI-generated works at Christie’s, context seems necessary. The current Luddite position against prompt-based artworks undermines not only today’s digital creations but the better half of the last century of art. 691 The misconception that AI-generated imagery is lacking in artistic labour due to its instruction-based process, could perhaps be attributed to a general lack of Art History education. Delegating labour may create the impression that there is no real artwork being made, a scepticism that is in part fueled by the bitter aftertaste of the NFT bubble, where overnight, everyone was a digital artist peddling iterations of pixel-art sketches of bulldogs and the like. The damage the hyper-commodification of digital visuals has done to digital art will take some time to fix in the public psyche. In the meantime, however, it is worth recognising that intellectual labour, though harder to measure, can and does exist in prompt-based AI works of art. The more difficult notion we are wrestling with today, is the painfully ableist question of whether physical mastery of manual tools and/or our bodies is a prerequisite for art to be considered valid. In other words, does the ability to eloquently and strategically verbalise one’s imagination make one an artist? There are countless ways to generate visuals based on prompts in DALL-E and Midjourney, two of the most popular visual AI engines that are publicly accessible today. Learning them takes time, as does honing the image and communicating with an intelligence that does not quite yet understand reality. Sometimes, the artistry lies in knowing which of the generated images to select, the way a film director might choose a take of a scene, or a photographer might choose a frame out of 50 shots of the same subject. Sure, these algorithms mine the Internet for visual references, which include imagery not necessarily done by the artist writing the prompt, but unless we banned collage-making while no one was looking, AI is not doing something that every teenager with access to print issues of Vogue and Time and Blue Jean hasn’t done in the 80s or 90s (sorry Gen-Z, your subscriptions are digital). Language, more than anything else, holds the key to understanding the artistry and labour that goes into AI-generated artworks. When generating an image of the sky, typing in “blue” is not the same as “cerulean,” and understanding the difference goes a long way. But the more exciting part of it all is that even if you type in “cerulean,” no two images can be the same. Cage and Lewitt would have had a field day.
Stay Tuned
Be the first to learn about new collections, events, and more.