Art and Creativity: Will NFTs Render “Conventional” Art Irrelevant?

With the NFT craze blazing along at high speed, I sometimes wonder what the impact on ”conventional” art is going to be?

Public art: Bronze otters in our downtown area

To be perfectly honest, art has always been a ”tough sell” which also means there's a finite number of dollars, euros or yen available to spend on — or ”invest” in — art.

So if all this money is now flowing into NFT’s, to what extent does that mean that the money is flowing away from conventional ”hard copy” art?

Of course, it's easy to argue that NFT’s are being regarded more as a type of investment than actual art, but is that actually true?

I don't know for sure. I suppose only time will tell.

"Decay"

Part of me would like to say that I don't really care (on a personal level) about current developments in the art world, and that NFT's are actually a good thing because a lot of artists and creatives are finally getting their due and experiencing a chance to make at least a semblance of a living through creativity.

And that’s certainly a long overdue development, in my opinion.

On the other hand, I'm an artist who works in a medium — stone — which really does not lend itself to becoming an NFT. Which feels like it leaves me with the choice of either being stranded out in left field or being required to change my art to fit the conditions.

Have I just become obsolete?

"Summer Storm Rising"

NFT’s are definitely fascinating to me, but at the same time functionally irrelevant to what I do, as a creative.

This brings up a very old question that exists mostly on a philosophical level, namely whether technology needs to adapt to human needs or humans need to adapt to technology. To which we can then add the cautionary note that if we need to adapt to technology, how is the technology actually serving humanity? Aren’t we just (even if silently, by being passive bystanders) just agreeing to become enslaved by that technology?

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend! Please leave a comment if you have an opnion about this topic!

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