I'll be up-front, I can't stand social media, be it facebook, twitter, instagram. I'll watch youtube videos on subjects I like or where I can learn, or twitch streamers to see people kind of like me that program games. But I mainly watch those because it's non-intrusive. I can lurk and stay hidden without needing to read everyone's opinion. I don't care what you ate, where you were/are, what you did, said or thought. Flip side is, I can't imagine why you would care about what I do. Who am I to impose my shit on you?
When I started streaming my game/project development on twitch about two years ago, it was a way of trying to stay motivated to work on my project (and you know, lock-downs), and it's worked well for me. I don't have many viewers, but those that come are like me, coders and artists, and as uncomfortable in the real world as they are online.
My current art project has reached the point where it needs to exist outside of my head and computer and it’s time for it to meet other people's eyes and heads, otherwise it’s only art-therapy, not art. 20-25 years ago as a young, aspiring painter, I went city to city with my portfolio, walked into galleries and tried to... I don't know what exactly... get a foot in the door? What I know now is that most times, when I did get a show, someone else's foot was in the door, and they let me in, introduced me, vouched for me. And there are always funky galleries/off-spaces that accept anyone who comes through the door and seems at least somewhat responsible. My first show was like that, and it was great—sold some paintings, got a huge confidence boost, and it opened a few doors.
Now, the world is different and I'm behind on the social-media-communication-networking thing. I can't just walk into instagram and get some stranger to look at my art. Or worse Twitter where nothing is tangible, and any idea above 160 characters is too much. I can’t seem to find a door to stick my foot in, and I want someone to look at my art!
That’s just part of the problem though. There’s the actual art-medium in which I chose to work vis-a-vis the contemporary art scene, and the manner in which I make my work singular and unique by using NFT's. As far as I know, I’m doing this in a way no-one else is.
On the medium, I'm making a painting that lives and evolves on its own. Basically it's a video game without a player, just the npc's. Presented like a painting but without ever being the same image. Here’s the challenge: trying to explain the mechanics behind it to people that don't know what a video game consists of, let alone the npc's in them, and digital arts have already been defined and categorised by the contemporary art world.
Digital arts consist mainly of dynamic and/or interactive art generated with code, paintings or drawings done with computer programs hand drawn with pen tablets, or AI generated images... but not video games. Either there is a public accord that it exists as a multitude online, or it is printed out onto a canvas, or it is physically tied to a very large and/or complex object.
From there, I throw nft's into the mix, and things get really strange.
So let me back up a bit. My project has been coming into existence for about 7 years. I started with a basic thought: make a "painting" like a video game that no one can play, then find a way to make it a singular object, one owner. Then two childhood friends and I started to discuss physical art and nft's (which they introduced to me), but realised it was more complicated than it was worth, and other entities could do it better than us. But that rabbit hole we dove down brought me this, tie my non-player game (npg) to an nft in the code, and boom, problem solved.
Nft's are still a mystery to me, but I'm slowly getting my head around them. What I can clearly see is that while nft's are still in growing-pains (as with the whole crypto world), they have an incredible potential. And that potential lies well beyond art.
But nft's in their current state present their own problems. Either people don't know what they are (maybe an initialism like lol or wtf?), or see them as a useless receipt for a jpeg, or the crypto-bro thing, which I daren't even look into yet.
I'm an artist because communication is hard for me, art is how I can express myself. The only moment my art means anything is when it goes elsewhere, other than my storage (physical or digital). I've created a work of art that I'm proud of, and its creation helped me do and say something, but now it's done, I've expressed myself. Now you need to see it.