Nothing will ever replace the unique experience of admiring an artwork in a museum, but that does not diminish the value of seeing art in books or on the internet. Sometimes museums have to close their doors for several days or even for several months and, in any case, there are millions of artworks that are just not suited to a museum environment. Metaverses offer numerous alternatives for experiencing art in a multitude of different ways.
“Metaverses will give birth to the best… and the most nebulous. Numerous fragments of this new dimension already exist revealing an astonishing potential for possible applications: while some Metaverses function as extensions to our very real world, others invent new universes governed by their own rules. The choices made by Facebook (Meta) and Sandbox are currently dominating the news, but many other forms of Metaverse are being constructed in different contexts, notably in the art world and around Artprice“.
Diving into the digital age…
Over the past ten years, virtual tours have gradually imposed themselves as an option in the art world. Today many museums, fairs, and auction houses offer virtual strolls through their exhibition spaces on smartphones, tablets, and computers.
This alternative access to art allows amateurs and professionals alike to appreciate works with highly enriched content and it, therefore, represents a complementary way of discovering (or rediscovering) an exhibition that satisfies a growing need for flexibility. The extraordinary demand for NFTs has indeed demonstrated that flexibility is key to the modern consumption of art. The platforms that allow the exchange of these digital certificates are accessible day and night, from any point on the earth, provided there is an internet connection.
Whereas virtual exhibition tours were originally created as photo-montages, new technologies now use 3D design software as well as Artificial Intelligence. The solutions developed, among others, by the Universal Art Museum, Genesis Penthouse or Spatial make it possible to “hang” an entire collection of artworks in a digital space with almost infinite scenographic freedom.
https://www.the-uma.org/en/
https://www.nftoasis.co/genesis-penthouse
https://spatial.io/
Welcome to the “other side”…
If these ideas remain relatively obscure to the general public, many of the most important projects in the NFT sphere suggest the imminent arrival of their corresponding Metaverses. This is already the case for Yuga Labs with the launch of its “Otherdeed for Otherside”.
At the pinnacle of BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club) fame and backed by its prestigious community, Yuga Labs organized the first sale of land in its Metaverse called The Otherside. The immense enthusiasm for the BAYC project and a very attractive mint price ($305 APE ~ $6,000) pushed the Ethereum Blockchain beyond its limits of use: the ‘gas’ fees soared and a fair number of participants were unable to acquire a plot of land despite having paid substantial fees. The designers fortunately committed to compensating users who lost their way in the sale.
The floor price for a piece of land currently stands at 2.55 ETH (~$2,500) while the last Ape sold at public auction fetched $3.4 million.
https://opensea.io/collection/otherdeed
https://www.artprice.com/artist/1011081/yuga-labs/lots/pasts/27/nft
Contemporary artist Takashi Murakami has announced that he wants to build a Metaverse which would be like the sum of all his projects,
murakamiflowers.kaikaikiki.com:
“Normally, 60 years old may indicate you are in the final stage of life, but as I said earlier, my artworks are designed so that their mechanism would start working after my death. So this is truly the start line for me.
I tried to recreate in the digital world a scene where the foot of Japan’s sacred mountain, Fuji, is in full bloom with cherry blossoms. I drew a delusional picture of a future virtual space where, along with M.F [Murakami Flowers], my various titles and business endeavors will be reconstructed in the digital world.”
Murakami’s project may well be somewhat nebulous, but, like many other Metaverse projects, it will no doubt harbor several fascinating surprises.
PR Newswire article by thierry Ehrmann
SOURCE: Artmarket.com via PR Newswire, Jun 15, 2022
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/artmarketcom-art-enters-the-metaverse-301568553.html
Copyright 1987-2022 thierry Ehrmann www.artprice.com – www.artmarket.com
Artprice by Artmarket.com: the Metaverse of the art-NFT market, with 35 years of unique experience in virtual worlds.
Based on available data for the first quarter of 2022, Artprice by Artmarket.com can confirm that the art-NFT phenomenon has become a durable part of the global art market on all continents, with an acceleration in sales and transactions in the second quarter of this year, primarily in response to the implementation of a more favorable legislative framework in the United States.
In an article published in Le Monde on May 11, 2022:
“The Art Market, despite a disastrous economic situation (editor’s note: all sectors combined), is extremely resilient”,
says Guillaume Cerutti, Chief Executive Officer of Christie’s, who applauds the auction in New York on May 9, 2022 where a portrait of Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol becomes the most expensive 20th century painting in the world, reaching 195 million dollars and bought by the famous art dealer Larry Gagosian.
Artmarket.com confirms that the analysis of Q1 2022 shows solid growth and suggests an exceptional year 2022, despite the economic situation.
All of the art market’s market-makers – notably the bulk of the planet’s art auction operators – now have specialized NFT departments preparing cataloged and online sales on a permanent basis. Similarly, all the major museums and art galleries are creating and offering their own NFTs.
The digital art created in the 1980s is finally coming of age with over a billion art-NFT enthusiasts actively pursuing creations in this medium at prices that are now very accessible.
Artprice has already identified over 54,000 artists who are directly producing NFTs for their buying public, and this is only the very start of a major paradigm shift.
According to sociologists, art historians and analysts, we are in the midst of major evolution that will definitively modify the structure of the art market as it has developed since the 1950s. This change is clearly confirmed by Artprice’s art market analysts, particularly its econometricians.
In its various reports on the Art Market, Artmarket.com has always indicated that it is impossible to understand the exponential growth of the NFT market without understanding the technological background to their existence. This ‘history’ includes Blockchain, cryptocurrencies and their cultural origin in the Cypherpunk community (period of data encryption – type PGP – at the beginning of 1990s).
However, all players in the art-NFT market – OpenSea, Rarible, LooksRare, Nifty Gateway, Superare etc. – agree that the NFT revolution will ultimately take place in the Metaverse. In other words, it is illusory to envisage growth and a sustainable future for NFTs without the development of the Metaverse.
The Metaverse is a set of virtual worlds. The term is regularly used to describe the future version of the Internet where virtual, durable and shared spaces are accessible via 3D interaction. Similarly, the Metaverse can be conceived as a set of virtual worlds connected to the Internet, which are perceived in augmented reality. Experts from the financial, economic, scientific and academic spheres are unanimous in considering the Metaverse as the natural extension of the Internet (Web 3.0).
PR Newswire article by thierry Ehrmann
artmarket.com via PR Newswire May 10, 2022
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/artprice-by-artmarketcom-the-metaverse-of-the-art-nft-market-with-35-years-of-unique-experience-in-virtual-worlds-301544121.html