South African-born artist and engineer, Conor Mccreedy has embarked on an ambitious non-fungible token (NFT) project whereby a 2m x 2m oil painting of the moon produced will be divided into 900 squares, each with an Ethereum token, through collaboration with a private Swiss crypto fund.
The recent popularisation of NFTs has heralded a new era for the art world. During a time where museums and galleries have been forced to digitise their collections to remain relevant to their audiences, a number of artists have taken advantage of this trend and moved their practise into the digital sphere. Mccreedy has made a significant step in his career by expanding to use NFTs.
Based in Switzerland, Mccreedy says the idea for the project came to him when realising that friends and collectors used images of his works as screensavers in addition to being on their walls at home. “The works have the power to dazzle both in person and digitally. Each NFT will be an image of the a fraction of the painting and is subsequently animated so the painting will quite literally come to alive on the collector’s screen.”
Each NFT is selling at $99 000. Should all 900 squares sell, this would be one of the biggest NFT sales in the world for a living artist.
The sale of Mccreedy’s NFTs will be hosted on a digital platform designated by CVVC Labs, founded by CEO Mathias Ruch, who is also the chairman of the Swiss Blockchain. The site has been developed to show and sell digital art. To date, 12 NFTs have been sold.
The platform technology provides the buyer with an added level of security in that each part of Mccreedy’s work that they can for the NFT is identified with an forensic watermark as part of their patented augmented authentication technology.
NFTs are accessible to the relevant owners by a digital key – if this is lost, so is the artwork. Along with the NFT, collectors of Mccreedy’s work will also receive a real key that has formed part of a collection of keys he has gathered from old monasteries across Europe. They will be dipped in #mccreedyblue pigment and be a physical extension of the digital artwork – an artefact that is both a symbolic and literal evidence of ownerships.
“Soon NFTs will change not only how art is bought and sold, but also what kind of art collectors seek out, and which artists they support. NFTs are poised to transform the art world and I’m excited to see where this goes,” concludes Mccreedy.