Miami, Dec 1 (EFE).- Destroying a work of art to transmute it to the digital world in the form of an NFT is the proposal of Sublimart, which with a 5D scanning technology presented Thursday within the Miami Art Week, proposes to “deconsecrate” the physical piece of the creation process.
The Center for Visual Communication gallery, in the Wynwood neighborhood of this city in South Florida, United States, was the scene where Argentine Sebastian Wain gave a demonstration Thursday of this process of “creative destruction.” In it, a physical piece is integrated into the blockchain and becomes “a sublimated work of art” in the form of a Non-Fungible Token (NFT.)
The technology, called the Sublimart Machine, involves scanning a painting from multiple angles. Then, a laser shredder cuts, or “sublimates,” the object, in what they see as a ritual that leads to the disappearance of the physical work and the minting of a new NFT on a blockchain, with cryptographic proof that the creation now only exists in the digital world.
“The central point here is that there is a link between the physical world and the virtual world. We think that if an NFT cannot prove that it is something unique, it does not make much sense,” Wain, one of the three founders of Sublimart, told EFE along with his compatriots Ariel Futoransky and Natalia R. Janna.
He added that the result constitutes copies of a piece of art that no longer exists, except in the digital world, thanks to a “5D scanning” process that allows details of luminosity, transparency, different angles and textures to be obtained.
The digital work, which is unique, is then auctioned on the NFT sales platforms and the artists who have gone through this “ritual” will obtain 85 percent of the sale, he said.
The Sublimart Machine can scan up to three paintings a day, with an average size of one meter by one meter, and then the laser cut with which the piece is destroyed takes an hour on average.
“What is the work really? Is it what it produces in the artist or in the other, or is it the object? We propose to challenge certain established concepts,” said Janna, responsible for summoning the artists who have sublimated their works through this process.
She said that up to 40 paintings by about 10 Argentine artists have already made this transit. “Some of them are renowned,” said Janna, who called participants’ response “positive,” to the point that they are considering starting a podcast on these processes and with testimonials from the participating artists.
The resulting NFTs are “exhibited” in an immersive way in a gallery accessed with virtual reality glasses and that was available in the demonstration, which will be held again this Friday in the same Wynwood space.
Janna, also a dentist that has studied at the multidisciplinary art center of Mar del Plata, Argentina, said there is already the possibility of making NFT collections with artists from different parts of the world.
One of those enthusiastic painters who accepted Sublimart’s invitation is the Argentine Carlos Muslera, who confessed to being attracted to the idea of ”desecrating” his painting “Refraction” through this procedure, an oil on canvas that after a demonstration carried out today it was reduced to pieces.
“There is a kind of sacralization of plastic works that is detrimental to the art world, they are given a halo that distances them from people,” the artist told EFE, adding that he had “little physical attachment” to the works he produces and rather, believes the experience of creation itself is more important.
He said what Sublimart proposes is simply another creative process, like so many in the art world, although in this case the result is a unique NFT unlike others that are digital creations that are replicated without control.
“This whole process of destroying the artwork is like a special ritual that gives the resulting NFT a value that sets it apart from others,” he said. EFE
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