A developer-artist named Dovetail has come out with a new NFT series called Moon Lake. I thought I would explore what this series is about, but I warn you: Dovetail has purposely made something that is almost impossible to see clearly, unless you are using a specific browser.
Moon Lake is a series of ten compositions that were listed on OpenSea under their own contract earlier this week. The compositions are two layers of image compositions that explore the idea that what an artist intends to convey with his imagery is often thwarted in digital art by the media the artist uses to present the images.
In the case of Moon Lake, Dovetail takes a previously created digital image of an existing physical work and then renders a second “layer” of it that you can click on to see in a browser. That animated layer is rendered in PNG format.
On its face, it seems gimmicky -- just another right click left click reference, or “wow, you can see two images if you click on the first one.” But that’s not why Dovetail did it, and when you start investigating it as an NFT, it achieves its power.
See, the trouble with digital art is that digital art does not have a home in the digital world. For all the talk of a metaverse, there isn’t a single standard for resolution, graphics, presentation, storage, or ANYTHING. Now, why that is is open to conjectue -- I have my ideas, and so does Dovetail -- but what it says about NFTs and art, and artists on the blockchain, is pretty amazing, in my opinion.
Here is ML #2, which is a composition of an Xcopy piece. It’s the only one in the series that is based on a CC0 original digital art work.
I’ve always thought of glitch art as being just an aesthetic way of presenting animation. It’s cool. It’s funky. It’s edgy. And XCopy is known for this kind of glitch style. But Dovetail is really careful in this choice. Because you would think that a contemporary piece of digital art would have no problem being seen in all file formats and screen resolutions, browsers and on any tech device. Go look at ML #2 in Chrome on OpenSea.
Now, go look at the same link of ML #2 on OpenSea in Safari.
They are completely different. I am not posting the images here, because I want to FORCE YOU to go look at the difference. And therein lies the point of art on the blockchain, and the real discourse that Dovetail is inviting as an artist. He is illuminating the force field of capitalism that has been erected around the open web.
Why would an artist intentionally make art that is impossible to see in a standard way in different browsers?
Why can’t artists make art that is easy to see in multiple browsers?
Who is making technology?
Who gets to say what art is seen and what art is not seen?
Who the fuck do artists think they are, anyway?
Earlier in the week, on Twitter, I explained a little of what Moon Lake is, but I will now offer a more precise description here, not by talking about the art, but by talking about the concept behind it. It is fascinating.
So… These are art pieces that are governed and verified by a smart contract. The smart contract has code in it that governs or authorises HOW the image should be rendered, and verifies where that is happening, and who holds the art that needs rendering, among other things.
The NFT / smart contract doesn’t care
- What browsers have which standards
- It doesn’t care who owns exchanges and what kind of information about the smart contract they make as part of the provenance and description on the site
- about memory chip costs; about screen sizes
The smart contract cares about nothing. An NFT is simply code. An artist like Dovetail uses the NFT then, for what? To just market and sell his art? Okay, sure. You can make money by buying a Dovetail token and then trading it on the secondary market. But you still have this problem of image resolutions, broken graphics, PNG snafus… So what is going on?
This is conceptual art.
Dovetail is creating a performance of frustration. He is taking the idea of an NFT and its permanence and immutability as part of the blockchain and forcing that concept and information to collide against the subjective appearance of visual art in its medium: technology, or the worldwide web.
In psychology, a person is said to have an affect, or the subjective tolerance and response that brings about its interaction to stimuli.
In this Moon Lake series, Dovetail is using a conceptual art strategy to, in a way, pretend that art has an affect. Meaning, that art exists in a world it inhabits and is also shaped by, which alters constantly how art appears and how we interact with art. This bizarre anthropomorphism of art is really not that bizarre (though it is), when you consider how often we do it, and not just in the technology art world.
We call people who have the same kind of PFP avatar as we do, “Fam,” meaning we put them in the category of trust and family. We look at the Mona Lisa and we wonder about her mysterious smile. We project these attributes on to art.
Do we do the same thing with technology?
Why:
- The lack of standardisation in browsers and machine / devices to help visualise art?
- The passage of time and the erosion of technology effectiveness, leading to broken and disused machinery, code standards, etc.?
- The apathy, in a way, of the platform generators / constructors who are not operating in allegiance with what works best with art?
Theory: the people who make these things are just in it to make money, and where you put your values, you create value. Art is not valued, but it is appreciated. It’s necessary, but it’s not needed. The focus on greed and money making in NFT and blockchain industries has led to the impediment of art.
Dovetail has made art that will be visible even after that mania has passed. He has made art that truly is timeless, because no matter the circumstances of its rendering, the code that the smart contract controls will always be there.
And this is really where I have come to understand the point of Moon Lake.
The point is that Dovetail wants holders of the NFT and those just looking at its image piece in a browser -- for an NFT is NOT its image -- to look at the smart contract and the language and objecthood of the NFT to understand that an NFT is something very special.
It is not just a token that you old and claim you own a piece of art.
It’s a meta-tag for a conceptual art MOMENT. It’s a universal placard like you see at a museum next to a picture, but instead of just telling you about the art, it’s giving you a pass into “consciousness” and awareness about the art piece.
It’s a carte blanche of code that allows you free access to anything someone else owns, which gives you the authority to conceive why is this NFT piece here. Unlike traditional fine art, which is sometimes locked away in private homes, or whose provenance is not easily found, all of the information you need about an NFT piece is online, open source and available.
Anyone, regardless of money, can ask: “Why am I looking at this? What will happen to the image related to this NFT piece over time? What is its existence?”
This makes an NFT an Ontological Object. It enables an open source view of how we "ARE” in relation to art and how our sense of self and being is created by our interaction with technology and aesthetics.
The NFT’s very existence is to perpetually, immutably, verify that it is true, and what it verifies is true, no matter what is happening in the affect field of its art. No matter what happens through the cycles of tech time. No matter what greed is doing to technology structures and social class.
For, this NFT “moon” that rises and falls and changes the shape of what it influences over time will always push and pull. It will always cast its glow over what we look at.
The NFT is the art’s moon. By it’s illumination, we see the art, and that makes the NFT the art, not the art. The fact that the NFT holds the code to the art makes it more important to the timelessness of the art than the metaphors, visual cues and aesthetics that encode the shaping of the digital art object.
Art Made by Computers, Stored and Verified by a Computer, Immutably
When we started to examine and use Ethereum and the blockchain, we saw there was a new type of currency, a new type of computer. We said that code is law. If the NFT is the art’s moon, and if the NFT is the art, that means something.
It means that:
While Art is a context and a subtext,
then Web3 is a liberation of art away from money, by being rendered using programming language that creates money.
While the world may change and make some art disappear or change format, or become unhidden, even, the one thing that will stay the same is the smart contract that ensures that the artist’s intent is the same as the day he created it. No museums needed. No lighting. No computer even.
Thus, where it is written:
Art is code.
Art is law.
This idea about the NFT is the essence of the Hidden Renaissance, a book I am writing about artists and onchain art on the blockchain. It will be out in October. You can reserve a copy of it by buying the St. Choppio book reservation token on Rarible. Proceeds from the sales go to Pauly0x, the artist who created the image on the token.
