With NFT Prices Cratering, Can ‘Phygital’ Art Keep Collectors From Walking Away? – artnet News

Could the noted rise of “phygital art—a contested and even loathed term—mark a renaissance for the battered NFT market?
Dorian Batycka, September 27, 2022
March 2021 will forever be remembered as the month that NFTs went kaboom, bursting into the mainstream when Beeple’s Everydays: the First 5000 Days sold to crypto entrepreneur Metakovan for $69.3 million. Suddenly, the art world was noticing and, overnight, NFTs became the mostly hotly debated subject of the year.
From SNL to Snoop Dogg, NFTs quickly took popular culture by storm. Athletes and celebrities aped-in; some shilled and rug-pulled their fans. Others made genuine contributions to the space, like when Grammy award-winning producer Timbaland made NFTs of stems to his beats—buyers were given the rights to remix and profit from them. 
Now, most of that initial hype has collapsed, thanks in part to the cantankerous crypto market. Pieces once bought for millions now barely muster a couple hundred thousand at auction. The auction platforms are not doing much better: OpenSea, the largest of them all, laid off 20 percent of its staff in July 2022. Sales volume is significantly down. An extremely muted sale earlier this year of generative art (digital art made with autonomous software) at Phillips showed that collectors are no longer as keen.
As the NFT art market faces a recalibration, what will become of the market for digital and physical art—the so-called “phygital”?
Damien Hirst with The Currency artworks, 2021. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2022.
“Phygital”—a term that causes a collective groan from many working in the crypto space—is an art form and market that has mushroomed despite the wider market calamity in the sector. Art star Damien Hirst was one of the first to take NFTs to the realm of phygital with his project “Currency,” a referendum asking collectors what they valued more: a painting or a NFT. He offered anyone who bought one of his thousand NFTs released for the project to trade it in for a physical work, surmising to destroy the other. The results are in: collectors preferred the physical works. Next month, Hirst will have to burn 4,851 corresponding physical paintings of an original set of 10,000.
But the preference—with 5,149 collectors opting for physical work and 4,851 for the NFTs—shows that there is still a bit of uncertainty around what medium dominates. And this uncertainty about the direction of the NFT space is felt well beyond this mainstream, meaning that the new trend towards hybridized physical-digital art has been taken up by tens of thousands of other artists, too. 
The reasons are not only financial, but aesthetic, too. “Though the word ‘phygital’ sounds like a bad case of indigestion,” noted Artnet columnist Kenny Schachter. “Until dedicated devices devoted to the display of digital art improve, my voracious appetite to accumulate is more readily satiated with hybrid NFTs that have a physical component.” The market is never far behind: the artist, collector, and curator is organizing an exhibition and auction of phygital art in December at Kunsthaus Lempertz in Cologne. Appropriately, the sale is called “Blender.”
Courtesy of Tiffany & Co.
If one looks to the top of the market, there are some signs that heavyweights are betting big on “phygital.” Yuga Labs announced a partnership with Tiffany’s & Co in August 2022. The sale, which consisted of 250 custom-made jeweled pendants, which were made available to punk holders, quickly sold out for $50,000 a pop. Noah Davis, the new brand lead for CryptoPunks at Yuga Labs, appears to be pivoting towards these types of partners. 
According to Shumon Basar, chief narrative officer and co-founder at the art startup and curatorial collective Zien, there may be new directions for art history, too. Basar told Artnet News that while he detests the term phygital, he believes some art created on the blockchain is capable of changing how we look at the organizational dynamics of art itself, as well as its capital flows. 
“64,000 years of art—from cave paintings to Picasso—have proven that when it comes to emotionally and intellectually moving encounters, sometimes a .JPEG is not enough,” Basar said. Zien, which was founded in 2020 with Peter Holsgrove and Zoe Nolan, is a WhatsApp channel dedicated to collecting contemporary art as “expanded NFTs”—in other words, “digital art with material presence,” according to Basar. After early experimental drops with artists such as Ed Fornieles, Eva Beresin, and Petra Cortright, Zien has recently relaunched with a new “season that will include Shezad Dawood and Jakob Kudsk Steensen.  
But, perhaps the tension between the plummeting crypto market and physical-meets-digital art is most clear in Polish-born, New York-based Agnieszka Kurant’s “Sentimentite” series, also produced in collaboration with Zien. The project consists of 100 NFTs shaped by a technology known as sentiment analysis, a software that is capable of looking into seismic historic events and mine them for data to be used as the substance of her art.
Kurant’s unique physical sculptures are made from 60 objects historically used as currencies, pulverized, then recast into physical sculptures, with buyers able to redeem an NFT for a physical work if they desire. The NFT, in this case, becomes a token holder or a receipt, and, crucially, as much a part of the work as the physical sculpture itself.
Agnieszka Kurant, Sentimentie, 2022. Courtesy Zien.
A bigger question going forward is perhaps what the relationship will be between physical art, NFT technology, and crypto markets at the end of this current crypto winter. Crypto art pioneer and collector Ryan Zurrer, the owner of Human One, Beeple’s first phygital sculpture that consists of a constantly updating 4-screen sculpture of an astronaut walking infinitely into space, is betting big on the fact that the NFT market as a whole—phygital and purely digital work—is not going anywhere.
The physical astronaut is only a shell for the NFT, which according to Beeple is the actual work. Zurrer also has a collection, called 1or1.works, that consists of over 1000 NFTs across “guilds” including music, metaverse, gaming, fashion, and art.
He thinks NFTs will outlast the crypto bubble, which has already burst. “Although this seems like an absolutely unimaginable outcome,” Zurrer predicts, “I believe that NFTs will eventually flip the entire crypto market,” he told Artnet News. “The total value of NFTs could eventually be worth more than major cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, combined.” (As a sort of foreshadowing, Zurrer had purchased the Beeple piece for $29.3 million in dollars, and not in crypto.)
Will NFTs go the way of beanie babies? Or will they become the bona fide currency of 21st century cultural production? The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. What is certain: artists of all stripes and genres will continue to use the technology at their disposal to inspire—and, hopefully, profit.

Share
By Artnet News, Sep 27, 2022
By Vittoria Benzine, Sep 26, 2022
©2022 Artnet Worldwide Corporation. All Rights Reserved.var w = Math.max(document.documentElement.clientWidth, window.innerWidth || 0),
h = Math.max(document.documentElement.clientHeight, window.innerHeight || 0),
pagetype = document.querySelector(‘meta[property=”og:type”]’).getAttribute(“content”),
pagetypeurl = document.URL,
pagetypeforce = pagetypeurl.substr(pagetypeurl.length – 3);
isnewsletter = pagetypeurl.includes(“?page_1”);
w = pagetype + 20 * Math.round(w / 20), h = pagetype + 20 * Math.round(h / 20), googletag.cmd.push(function() {
googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“width”, w), googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“height”, h), 1 == isnewsletter && googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“isfirstpage”, [‘Y’, pagetypeforce] )
});
(function defernl() {
if (window.jQuery) {
if (jQuery(window).width() > 619) {
setTimeout(function() {

var cookieSettings = {
recentlyShown: {
expiration_minutes: 5
},
signedUp: {
expiration_days: 14
},
closedSignupBar: {
expiration_days: 5
}
};

var generalSettings = {
loadFontAwesome: false
};

if (!window.jQuery) loadJQuery();
var $ = window.jQuery;

function addCss(fileName) {
var head = document.head
, link = document.createElement(‘link’);

link.type = ‘text/css’;
link.rel = ‘stylesheet’;
link.href = fileName;

head.appendChild(link);
}

function appendNewsletterSignup() {
var signup =
”
//hide on mobile phones
+ ‘ @media (max-width: 575px){ #ouibounce-modal {display:none !important;} }’
+ ‘ @media (max-width: 767px){ .close-signup {top:0 !important;} }’
+ ‘ @media (max-width: 1199px){ #ouibounce-modal .description {font-size:13px !important;} }’
+ ”
+ ‘

‘;

$(‘body’).append(signup);
}

var paywallPagesRegex = /^/subscribe|subscribe-confirm|my-account(/|$)/;

function initNewsletterSignup() {
// don’t show it on paywall-related pages where the user might be in the process
// of subscribing, or managing their account
if (paywallPagesRegex.test(window.location.pathname)) {
return;
}

// Append ouibounce to page
var ouibounceScript = ”;
$(‘body’).append(ouibounceScript);

// Add animation css
addCss(‘https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/animate.css/3.5.2/animate.min.css’);

if (generalSettings.loadFontAwesome) {
addCss(‘https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.min.css’);
}

// Check if ouibounce exist before calling ouibounce
var initOuibounce = setInterval(function() {
if (typeof ouibounce !== ‘undefined’) {
appendNewsletterSignup();

var $modal = $(‘#ouibounce-modal’);
SignupForm.init($modal.find(‘form’), function onSuccess() {
//hide form fields and show thank-you message
$modal.find(‘.form-row’).hide();
$modal.find(‘.newsletter-signup-thank-you’).fadeIn(‘fast’);

setNewsletterCookie(‘signedUp’, 1);

//after successful signup, hide the signup bar after 5 seconds
setTimeout(function() {
closeSignupBar();
}, 5000);
});

// Handler for close signup button
$(‘body’).on( ‘click’, ‘.close-signup’, function(){
setNewsletterCookie(‘closedSignupBar’, 1);
closeSignupBar();
});

ouibounceAPIaccess = ouibounce(
$modal[0], {
aggressive: true,
sensitivity: 50,
callback: function() {
slideInModal(‘Down’);
}
}
);

clearInterval(initOuibounce);
}
}, 100);
}

function slideInModal(upOrDown) {
$(‘#ouibounce-modal’)
.removeClass(‘slideOutDown slideOutUp’)
.addClass( ‘slideIn’ + upOrDown );

setNewsletterCookie(‘recentlyShown’, 1);
}

function setNewsletterCookie(cookieName, value) {
//exdays*24*60*60
var settings = cookieSettings[cookieName];
var expirationMinutes = settings.expiration_minutes;
if (!expirationMinutes) {
expirationMinutes = daysToMinutes(settings.expiration_days);
}
setCookie(cookieName, value, expirationMinutes);
}

function daysToMinutes(numDays) {
return numDays * 24 * 60;
}

/**
* Generic setCookie() method, used by setNewsletterCookie().
* There is probably no need to call this directly – use setNewsletterCookie().
*/
function setCookie(cname, cvalue, expMinutes, prefix) {
//default prefix is ‘artnet_newsletter_’
if (prefix == undefined) {
prefix = ‘artnet_newsletter_’;
}
var d = new Date();
d.setTime(d.getTime() + (expMinutes*60*1000));
var expires = “expires=”+d.toUTCString();

//console.log(prefix + cname + “=” + cvalue + “;” + expires + “;path=/”);
document.cookie = prefix + cname + “=” + cvalue + “;” + expires + “;path=/”;
}

function getCookie(cname, prefix) {
//default prefix is ‘artnet_newsletter_’
if (prefix == undefined) {
prefix = ‘artnet_newsletter_’;
}
var name = prefix + cname + “=”;
var ca = document.cookie.split(‘;’);
for(var i = 0; i <ca.length; i++) {
var c = ca[i];
while (c.charAt(0)==' ') {
c = c.substring(1);
}
if (c.indexOf(name) == 0) {
return c.substring(name.length,c.length);
}
}
return "";
}

function closeSignupBar() {
var $modal = $('#ouibounce-modal');
$modal.addClass( $modal.hasClass('slideInUp') ? 'slideOutDown': 'slideOutUp' );
}

function loadJQuery() {
var script = document.createElement('script');
script.src = "https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.1.1.min.js";
script.integrity = "sha256-hVVnYaiADRTO2PzUGmuLJr8BLUSjGIZsDYGmIJLv2b8=";
script.crossorigin = "anonymous";
document.body.appendChild(script);
}

function checkCookies() {
//if any of these cookies are found, we don't show the modal.
var cookieNames = ['recentlyShown', 'signedUp', 'closedSignupBar','signup_cookie'];
var i = cookieNames.length,
found = false;
while (i–) {
if (getCookie(cookieNames[i]).length) {
found = true;
break;
}
}

if (!found) {
initNewsletterSignup();
}
}

var SignupForm = {
regex: {
email: /^([a-zA-Z0-9_.-])+@(([a-zA-Z0-9-])+.)+([a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4})+$/
},

// Init – Anything you want to happen onLoad (usually event bindings)
// ——————————————————————-
init: function (formElement, onSuccess) {
var ctx = this;
ctx.customSerializer();
if (!onSuccess) {
throw Error('onSuccess callback is required');
}

var $form = $(formElement);
$form.submit(function(e){
e.preventDefault();

var $email = $form.find('.signup-email');
var valid = ctx.validate( $form, $email);
if(valid){
// Hide the errors
$form.find('.errors').children().hide();
// Submit the form
ctx.submit($form, onSuccess);
} else {
// Focus on the email input box
$email.focus();
// Show email validation error and hide other errors
$form.find('.invalid-email').show().siblings().hide();
}
});
},

// FUNCTIONS
// ===================================================================

// Signup validation
// ——————————————————————-
validate: function( $form, $email ){
var ctx = this;
// Does the email match our regex?
return ctx.regex.email.test( $email.val() );
},

// Signup submission
// ——————————————————————-
submit: function($form, onSuccess) {
var ctx = this;
$.ajax({
type: $form.attr('method'),
url: $form.attr('action'),
data: JSON.stringify( $form.serializeFormJSON() ),
// dataType: 'json',
contentType: 'application/json; charset=UTF-8',
crossDomain: true,
timeout: 10000
})
.done(function(data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
onSuccess();
})
.fail(function(jqXHR, textStatus){
// Show signup failure error and hide other errors
$form.find('.signup-failed').show().siblings().hide();
});
},

// Extends jQuery with a function to serialize to JSON
// ——————————————————————-
customSerializer: function(){
$.fn.serializeFormJSON = function () {
var o = {};
var a = this.serializeArray();
$.each(a, function () {
if (o[this.name]) {
if (!o[this.name].push) {
o[this.name] = [o[this.name]];
}
o[this.name].push(this.value || '');
} else {
o[this.name] = this.value || '';
}
});
return o;
};
}
};

//show automatically after delay
setTimeout(function(){
var $modal = $('#ouibounce-modal');
//if there are cookies indicating that we shouldn't show the signup bar, then the modal won't have been added to the page
//and we can just return here.
if (!$modal.length) {
return;
}
//don't run this function if the user has already triggered the modal by leaving the viewport
if ($modal.hasClass('slideInDown')) return;

//position at bottom of screen
$modal.css({
top: 'auto',
bottom: 0
});

slideInModal('Up');
$modal.show();

},20000); //20 seconds

$(function() {
checkCookies();
});

}, 7500);
}
} else {
setTimeout(function() { defernl() }, 250);
}
})();

artnet and our partners use cookies to provide features on our sites and applications to improve your online experience, including for analysis of site usage, traffic measurement, and for advertising and content management. See our Privacy Policy for more information about cookies. By continuing to use our sites and applications, you agree to our use of cookies.
You are currently logged into this Artnet News Pro account on another device. Please log off from any other devices, and then reload this page continue. To find out if you are eligible for an Artnet News Pro group subscription, please contact [email protected]. Standard subscriptions can be purchased on the subscription page.
Log In

source