The object of study of this work is the impact of the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the art system. To do so, it establishes theoretical and practical analogies between natively digital (or digitized) images and printmaking techniques, which are grounded in reproducibility. Within the context of the almost unrestricted reproduction of digital works, the research proposes to observe in what ways the art system restructures itself through the connection with blockchain technology. Considering the artistic production associated with NFTs, especially since the first quarter of 2021, the work covers the aesthetic and sociocultural developments of the use of online platforms for the circulation of art. The issues of authenticity and poetic legitimacy that influence aesthetic experience are emphasized. The research employs a participatory and exploratory qualitative methodology, with data collection, bibliographic studies, analysis of works and platforms, and poetic actions. For this, it proposes experimentation with the digital medium through the publication of digital prints.
El año 2021 marcó un punto de inflexión en el desarrollo del arte digital. Cuando la obra de Beeple alcanzó sesenta y nueve millones de dólares en una galería de arte londinense, el uso generalizado de <em>tokens </em>no fungibles (NFT) en la industria del arte revolucionó la protección y transferencia de los derechos de propiedad intelectual. Los agentes ya no son intermediarios entre artistas y conocedores del arte y los servicios de <em>streaming</em> no lo son entre músicos y oyentes. Con la ayuda de la tecnología <em>blockchain</em>, los creadores pueden ser remunerados por la venta de sus obras en el mercado secundario y por su uso posterior. El potencial de los NFTs es enorme y va mucho más allá de las artes visuales, con las que se asoció en gran medida su uso inicial. Es por ello que la importancia de un marco jurídico adecuado para los NFT es evidente debido a que un gran número de personas desean entrar en el mercado internacional del arte digital: museos, galerías, artistas, músicos, empresarios, <em>inter alia</em>. El objetivo de este trabajo es brindar una respuesta jurídica a la posibilidad de trabajar con NFT en ausencia de una regulación legal especial. Se utilizan para ello métodos de investigación tanto sistémicos como comparativos, que incluyen experiencias internacionales de “tokenización” de objetos de arte digitales, así como bibliografía nacional y extranjera sobre los problemas legales del criptoarte. El resultado final es la comprobación de la posibilidad de la circulación de NFT en ausencia de una normativa legal específica y la necesaria formación de un modelo de estructuración de las transacciones como respuesta jurídica que cumpla plenamente con los requisitos del principio supremo de justicia que postulamos. <strong>DIGITAL ART. THE CRYPTO-ART MARKET THROUGH THE LEGAL CIRCULATION OF NFTS</strong> <strong>Abstract</strong> The year 2021 marked a turning point in the development of digital art. When Beeple's work reached sixty-nine million dollars in a London art gallery, the widespread use of non fungible tokens (NFTs) in the art industry revolutionized the protection and transfer of intellectual property rights. Agents are no longer intermediaries between artists and art connoisseurs and streaming services are no longer intermediaries between musicians and listeners. With the help of blockchain technology, creators can be remunerated for the sale of their works on the secondary market and for their subsequent use. The potential of NFTs is enormous and goes far beyond the visual arts, with which their initial use was largely associated. Therefore, the importance of a proper legal framework for NFTs is evident as a large number of people wish to enter the international digital art market: museums, galleries, artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, inter alia. The aim of this paper is to provide a legal response to the possibility of working with NFTs in the absence of special legal regulation. Both systemic and comparative research methods are used, including international experiences of tokenization of digital art objects, as well as national and foreign literature on the legal problems of crypto-art. The result is the verification of the possibility of the circulation of NFT in the absence of specific legal regulations and the necessary formation of a model of structuring transactions as a legal response that fully meets the requirements of the supreme principle of justice that we postulate.
[ES] Este Trabajo de Fin de Grado trata de cómo el arte ha pasado a un formato digital en forma de NFT (non-fungible tokens). De este modo, el formato de compra se ha trasladado a las criptomonedas, como por ejemplo Ether. Se mostrará por tanto el valor del Ether a lo largo del trabajo, ya que esta varía cada día, y se comparará su valor con el de otras criptomonedas muy conocidas. También se crearán algunos NFTs de ejemplo, mostrando el resultado final, al igual que el proceso de aprendizaje de estos, ya que hay de diferentes tipos. En concreto en este Trabajo se tratará de crear NFTs de figuras, como por ejemplo colecciones de alguna figura geométrica. Para este caso, se emplearán algunas librerías de tratamiento de imágenes para Python existentes relacionadas con NFTs. Además, se realizará alguna colección de dibujos en 2D. Por último, se mostrará cómo publicar los NFTs en el mercado OpenSea, además de indicar los diferentes tipos de NFTs que existen en ese mercado.
Impulsada por algunas ventas extraordinarias, la fiebre de los NFT, esos títulos de propiedad garantizados y autentificados que permiten adquirir obras de arte virtuales, se ha apoderado del mercado del arte. Los NFT [siglas en inglés de non fungible token o activo digital indivisible], que aparecieron hace pocos años en el mercado, ofrecen sin duda nuevas posibilidades de ingresos a los artistas e invitan a los museos a interesarse por el arte digital. Pero, ¿se trata de una auténtica revolución o de una burbuja especulativa?
I am grateful to Scott Walden and Dominic McIver Lopes for their comments on “What's So New about the ‘New’ Theory of Photography?” Their responses come from opposite ends of the spectrum in recent philosophy of photography, and I shall reply to them in turn. Scott Walden, as will be apparent from his response, is what I call an “orthodox” theorist of photography, albeit a non‐skeptical one; so it is no surprise that he remains unconvinced by much of what I say new theory has to offer. What types Walden as an orthodox theorist is his commitment to a certain view of how photographs come into being, together with the further view (not thematized here) that our second‐order beliefs about how such images come into being impact our first‐order beliefs about what we are seeing, when what we are seeing is a photograph (Walden 2005, 263, 272). For orthodox theorists, “resolute” or otherwise, this is what explains photographs’ epistemic advantage over handmade images.1 Walden himself refers to these second‐order beliefs as knowledge, but that implies the beliefs in question are both justified and true, whereas I take them to be (at best) justified, but nonetheless false. What types Walden as a “non‐skeptical” orthodox theorist is that he thinks these facts are consistent with photography being art. And I agree, although it is not clear from what he says here that Walden recognizes this. The reason is straightforward: one can, as Walden suggests, turn automaticity into an artistic virtue rather than a vice. Indeed, many art practices (and not only photographic ones) have done so: witness the fascination with the aleatory, mechanical or automatic, in avant‐garde art since dadaism and surrealism as a strategy intended to undercut an overblown conception of the artist as a self‐present agent fully in control of all his or her artistic acts. Indeed, this cast of mind is one of the reasons a certain kind of artist turns to photography in the first place—so as to mine its automatism for the aleatory and anomic effects thereby made possible. An obvious example is the valorization of the uninflected or deadpan photographic document by various conceptual and proto‐conceptual artists from Edward Ruscha and Bernd and Hilla Becher onward. I doubt, however, that these are the kinds of photography that Walden has in mind, so consider a case much closer to the issues addressed in my article. In “The Aesthetics of Photographic Transparency,” Lopes argued that the affordance of clear or revelatory seeing are two kinds of aesthetic interest we can take in a scene as it appears through a photograph that we cannot always take in the same scene seen directly (2003, 445).2 The former arises from photography's capacity to isolate aspects of a scene difficult to focus on in day‐to‐day life, the latter from the ways in which photographic framing and the like can defamiliarize an everyday scene. Lopes associates both with a broadly “documentary aesthetic,” and both are consistent with orthodoxy being true. Modernist images by Lázló Moholy‐Nagy, Henri Cartier‐Bresson, and André Kertész exploiting a combination of dramatic framing, unusual points of view, and collapsed or truncated depth of field are good examples of the latter. Not only do such images exploit photography's automaticity for artistic gain, they implicitly leverage the folk theory underpinning orthodoxy to generate their aesthetic payoff. For it is only if one assumes a certain understanding of photography in one's audience that one will be able to trade on his or her delight in the fact that—since this is a photograph—it really must be possible for the world to look like this. So there is little dispute between us about this.3 The substantive issue between us concerns whether the underlying beliefs that Walden subscribes to concerning how photographs come into being are true. Here, or so it initially seems, we do disagree: I think the latter are false and that they are false because they rely on an impoverished understanding of how photographs come into being. More specifically, they are false as a general account of how photographs as a kind of image come into being, even though they may be true of how many photographs in genres that are important to us (such as vernacular, documentary, or press photographs) do come into being. The fact that the underlying folk theory takes what is true of the latter to be true of the whole is what renders it inadequate as a general understanding of photographic aetiology. Seen in this light, orthodoxy in philosophy of photography, from André Bazin through to Kendall Walton, consists of a gradual philosophical refinement of these underlying intuitions, intuitions that can traced all the way back to photography's pioneers.4 If new theorists are right, Walden and the folk implicitly endorse the same mistaken theory about this. To my surprise, Walden seems willing to grant this claim. Thus, he writes, while parodying new theory's focus on the “photographic event” as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of photographs as images available to visual appreciation: Such candidate items of knowledge might not be incorrect. After all, such things as automotive and telephonic events regularly take place. But merely highlighting properties instantiated by technologies being studied is not sufficient to foster understanding of those technologies. Instead, such understanding requires the highlighting of instantiated properties that either help users to interact with those technologies or designers to augment or improve those interactions. The properties highlighted by the new theorists in relation to photography are as inert in these respects as the ones imagined highlighted in relation to cars and telephones. (Walden 2019, 309; emphasis added) Either Walden thinks the fact that existing folk theory (which new theorists take to be the basis of orthodoxy in the philosophy of photography) is wrong does not matter, or he thinks that if it does matter it only matters to the wrong people. If I have this right, I do not know what to make of it: if philosophers are not in the business of correcting false beliefs, what business are they in? Walden seems willing to grant that the beliefs in question are wrong, only to respond not in terms of philosophical debates, but in terms of engineers (those who have a detailed technical understanding of how a given technology works) or practitioners (those who only need to know how to use the technology in question). But besides being an odd demand to make of philosophers—why should what philosophers do be of service to either camera engineers or camera operators?—this smacks of moving the goalposts. For the debate at issue concerns not how to help engineers or snappers, but what competing camps of philosophers believe is sufficient for a photograph to come into being. And this matters—which is to say that it matters philosophically—because if we get this wrong it pushes much of what photographers do in harnessing photographic technologies for artistic ends beyond the domain of photography proper. That should worry both theorists of photography and philosophers of art alike. In a certain mood, I am inclined to agree with Walden that calling what follows from taking such considerations seriously a “new theory” or “paradigm shift” may be guilty of over‐egging the pudding. For it can seem that recalling our attention to the fact that photography requires harnessing the capacity of light to mark sensitive surfaces, yet cannot be reduced to natural causality (because additional imaging processes are required to make the results available to visual appreciation) is little more than a reminder of what we (should) already know. But it bears noting just how widespread the relevant and, if new theory is right, mistaken assumptions are. They arguably recur at several points in Walden's response, notably when querying the need for new theory as a response to Roger Scruton's skepticism. Take the (terrifying!) painting by Norman Rockwell resembling one of Walker Evans's 1936 photographs of starving Alabama sharecroppers that Walden asks us to imagine. This is an intuition pump that presumes the truth of orthodoxy: that it succeeds is to be expected if the latter really is just a formalization of the intuitions underwriting folk theory of photography. But given that new theorists dispute that painting represents a bona fide, noncontentious contrast class to photography, this cannot be assumed without begging the question. It is worth pausing to consider why new theory arises from responding to Scruton in particular. Scruton's skepticism crystallizes a powerful pattern of thought that permeates even nonskeptical, everyday thinking about photography. Just how standard is easily overlooked, but a continuous line can in fact be traced from Scruton back to the nineteenth century. Take the debate between Robert Demachy and Frederick Evans over the competing merits of the painterly gum bichromate process versus the straight print or the tussle between Henry Peach Robinson and Peter Henry Emerson over the respective merits of pictorialism and naturalism. At stake in both is whether straight (unaltered, noncombinatory) prints from straight negatives permit sufficient judgment and control to be art. Essentially the same divide was apparent, within two decades of photography's invention, in the competing responses of Elizabeth Eastlake and Oliver Wendell Holmes to photography's treatment of detail. Where the former chastised photography for its mindless lack of selectivity, attributable to the absence of human mediation and transformation, the latter celebrated the beauty that results from according equal attention to the marginal and seemingly unimportant.5 The fault line throughout such debates is whether “pure” photography—photography in which the formation of the image bypasses the mental states of the artist—could be art, or whether photographers must choose between sacrificing photographic purity in order to make art, or give up their pretensions to making art as a cost of maintaining their photographic purity. Taking this longer view, there is little in Scruton, or many of his critics, that is not already present in Eastlake and Holmes circa 1857–1859. Scruton merely reheats the skeptical side of the debate, and he can do so because the intuitions on which the debate turns remain common. Lopes recognizes this, and The Four Arts of Photography sets out to demonstrate the falsity of every premise in what he calls the “skeptical argument.” My own view (2018a, chapters 2 and 3)—and this is where I depart from Lopes—is that this focus is mistaken and may represent the new theory's Achilles’ heel to date. Mistaken, that is, not in the sense of being wrong so much as being misdirected. My own view is that new theorists ought to take Walton rather than Scruton as their stalking horse and for two reasons: not only is Walton's conception of photography immeasurably richer than Scruton's, it also speaks to both its epistemic and its aesthetic capacities. This is what makes Walton a representative of “non‐skeptical” orthodoxy on my taxonomy: his theory accounts for the epistemic privilege dear to orthodox thinkers, but it does so in a way that does not rule out its artistic significance. For Walton, as is routinely overlooked in the rush to contest the counterintuitiveness of the transparency thesis, photographs are not simply transparent; they are also pictures. That they are enables them to function as spurs to the kinds of imaginative capacities and projects in which Walton grounds the significance of pictures in general, thereby securing their aesthetic significance. While, unlike pictures in general, the fact that photographs are also transparent allows them to function as a significant means of learning about the world, thereby securing their epistemic significance. Because it accommodates both, I have argued that it is Walton's theory rather than Scruton's that new theorists should be cutting their teeth on. Be that as it may, new theory does, as a matter of historical fact, emerge from taking up Scruton's challenge that photography cannot be representational in his Walden is to question Scruton's of artistic and I think he might much For the can be made more broadly than the conceptual art. is art not only but also and, the aesthetic That is, there is art that a understanding of art in the service of and or the is also a of artistic practices the that we but that do not so function in their being one obvious there is not only conceptual art, but a of and practices that to their to rather than there is Scruton's yet conception of what it is to take an in a of art. It is much more to as out a than as the and of a Indeed, that it is, is one reason about the of to art as a of human made for routinely of this underlying one Walden representational art of the kind Scruton has in mind cannot be in order to focus on the many kinds of art on kinds of aesthetic that can, Scruton is to his For this is a response that Scruton's while Walden and I may agree that the can use automaticity in the service of her art without that are representational in Scruton's we as to the significance of this Walden is that this does not matter are to make art they this response Scruton to the condition that Walden new theory must in order to that responses to Scruton but which it to automaticity in Scruton's of is the only that is Walden with For Scruton, this is true by photographs are as being transparent to their rather than their because they have a relation to those I Walden may agree with this, but I Walden may it And this is why the considerations Walden new theory seem to the The philosophical debate concerns what a theory of photography. I that either designers of or or their users are given to over photography's This is a philosophical and it only arises given a certain conception of photography's This is what new theorists are taking issue and to my mind it is Walden may believe I think because I the question of to according to new we should the images on the of either or his in But I this, Walden, not as a of new theory's but as a challenge to its lack of to as to how we should photographs photographs are to in photographic This should it turn out (and it that many photographs are the of more than Walden thinks this is not to matter If that be between that being I the of Walden's we do and respond to certain photographs of ones and we are than to the way we about many That there is a to like with like in such so it is worth what is the of or and one out on this need not so as about automaticity to the It need only that the way in which the photographs to which are routinely on on come into being, by their without obvious or from the way in which handmade images come into being. Indeed, this may even be for the kinds of reasons that Walden has attention to And such a in this may be in beliefs that are yet nonetheless when My response to Lopes is in because there is between Lopes and I are in these debates, even if I have issue with the of his own of the new theory reply consists in of a more for new theory intended to demonstrate its over its of the I has to more he does so by making clear of the underlying assumptions his own to these The latter are Lopes in The Four Arts of photography the challenge to the orthodox assumptions underpinning the because only photography is with orthodoxy being true. What Lopes calls photography a of practices that the processes and of photography and, in so takes issue with by up to photograph is an image that by This is way of the or natural that is are of photographic art, but these are with the latter being only photography orthodoxy is a way of this it is to is not on its But natural on its is a condition of being a cannot be a This response is because the premise assumes the truth of orthodoxy when its truth is what is in question. It is nonetheless because it to widespread intuitions about the of photography. Because Lopes takes such to be if theory my response to own such in of what he calls Lopes we think of this on the of philosophy of The a of about the natural The of is not to the natural world is to it is to make sense of the first‐order and of the of the of art is not to directly with artistic that to and it is to take the of first‐order art and as for this the philosophy of art asks not is art must art photography) given how it is in the relevant first‐order he it is to So photography is at a technology for making images by from a of a light it a of artistic only by being to the that the as This is because the are one kind of a kind that it by of an with this understanding of Four Arts a of photographic as In so it takes the of art critics, and theorists as the for and philosophical consistent with that to of or and the so Lopes But one might whether this of what he is up to his of that Four Arts by a powerful pattern of thinking that skepticism about photography's as art. Lopes such thinking and the of his with of photographic art that to of its in turn. This as I have is both and The question I to in light of is whether it his The skeptical so is that only a have come up This is not to that it may a if and folk theory about photography, but rather to that its formalization is to how the and field is This requires the artistic world at than those up by the relevant first‐order a it is whether of the field be to art critics, and theorists as a philosophical of their first‐order way of the for of as to one as and turn out to be the of a art. the fact that and their respective as directly and as of on the one and as of the of on the as the two artists in am thinking of and on making for what they are up so that they can be to competing sets of So here we have with directly one to such as aesthetic and the the to these and so through what they take to be the results of first‐order are to be as a art. It is to know what to do with this. Either my own of the relevant first‐order is (and I am that it is or for the of that I am if Lopes is justified in the field as he does, this he either need to that the first‐order is by kind of or grounds to But either to his of making sense of the of first‐order And this is not an all of the of photography, as they out of the a of and artistic to say here on way of the there will be as if not between practitioners of as there will be between practitioners of what is to be same art. that is true, that the present a philosophical of first‐order by the of and may difficult to If this that what it is to take first‐order as for second‐order may be than to suggests, when first‐order is as it so In such it may for second‐order to take a on matter of within first‐order debate, thereby the between Lopes while his own about first‐order in is reason to that about good for conceptual (2018a, And I But my question what the worry at the If philosophers do not have the to with the results of art and in order to with the first‐order field why they have the to be of what these same and In this need not be a are good reasons for it may one given of his own this to one the question between us is whether new theory's of the much epistemic privilege of photography to the photography's epistemic privilege is a of how it is with all the for understanding photography as art that this in my response to Walden, Lopes is that I think this the for new the and of photography's epistemic it be a to its artistic at the cost of the former the of photography are from photography as a technical process for making images by their to Because the in question are the are with this of what makes the of photography of photography that practices will be to as in a of or photography is with knowledge of the world, the in question will be epistemic lack of or to and so But this is a fact about the practices that such of photography it is not a fact about photography can be seen from the that the of photography, to just one This is a of The fact that the of such has to be with the of if out in field cannot be as they can in a by as as might that to the of photographic technology their being Indeed, they are. these also that a of art those to the and of photography, are given that much of what they their and on does not as photography where to so In a recent about the new Lopes to the of the turn to its is that new theory Lopes should with to even for epistemic of photography, in of a theory that the of photography's epistemic to the that photography and photography in terms of from a a given need the of such no longer turn on to be to the of the capacity to of on the of the in question. That can without thereby an epistemic may be seen from the of to kinds of or in certain of and photography to of the Because in these can be to of can of the and need not an epistemic photographs about the photographic events in their and about the about which those events This is a fact about them of the that So what makes one kind of photography more than is whether it of whether it is to the of a but whether it in an a as for the If Lopes the challenge new theory will be to in a how such a must be to of photographic I that on this question to if there is of we have a is to orthodox of photography's epistemic that is for I to
This thesis will take issue with Citibank's purchase of Banamex and its art collection in 2001 as a point of departure to discuss how legislation on national patrimony is changing as Mexico opens up the cultural sector to foreign and private ownership. I will contextualize this change through a review of Banamex and Televisa involvement in the cultural field since the late 1960s. I will also examine how the adoption of neoliberal economic measures has encouraged the participation of the private sector and the shift from a state funding system towards a model of transnational corporate philanthropy. In this context, I will argue that the emergence of corporate philanthropy in Mexico is a direct result of the re-distribution of finance capital that accompanied Mexico's neoliberal turn. For most part of the twentieth century, the Mexican state was the sole sponsor and manager of cultural matters. This funding system began to change in the late 1960s when private citizens and corporations began to invest more openly in the arts as the one-party-rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) began to decline. In the late 1990s as Mexico integrated to the global economy, a need to update this form of management became urgent. Encouraged by the possibility to democratize and decentralize the state's funding system, new state cultural apparatuses that promoted private intervention were established. However, within the framework of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), these newly formed state institutions did not legislate in favor of protectionist measures in the cultural field and rather opted to continue espousing a nationalist rhetoric (without a legal backing) while opening up the sponsoring and ownership of culture and national patrimony to an increasingly transnational private sector. This situation gave rise to debates about the privatization of culture, the inefficient legislation in cultural patrimony, and most importantly, the new role that the state should adopt in handling cultural matters as Mexico's political environment moved towards a democracy aligned to neoliberal economics. I will address how Banamex and Televisa, two of the first corporations to invest in culture and develop cultural foundations, became protagonists in these debates.