DigitWork I

NFT: Is it Art?

“There is a reality — so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. That’s what I’m trying to get down in photography… I have a vision of life and I try to find equivalents for it sometimes in the form of photographs”. — Alfred Stieglitz

Is it Art? Is it a photograph? After nearly 200 years of photographic image making, it seems naive to ask such questions. Now days, with the boundaries of contemporary art spread across an array of media. Asking if something is art or a photograph seems ridiculous.

However, if we go back a few hundred years the camera was merely a painting device. From within that historical view we discover something that instructs today. In the early days of photography the question was what do we call an image not done by the artist’s hand? Everyone knew that a photographer merely executed technical knowledge for a detailed record, better than could be done by a painter’s hand. Making a photograph was simply following the laws of nature and letting light draw the image.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, presented with the question of art, some photographers took a few steps back. They had accomplished the aim of all painting from the late Renaissance up to the early nineteenth century. The camera obscura was a tool often used by painters of that time.

The answer in part to this question was pictorials in photography. Photographs by Steichen, Demachy, Stieglitz, Eugene, Cameron, Strand, Evans, Colburn, Kasebeir, are examples of pictorial images. Pictorials were evocative and mysterious images that stressed composition and a soft focus to allow for the play of visual imagination.

The next step in the art of photography came when Alfred Stieglitz began shooting his cloud series and he titled them “Songs of the Sky”. Later, he replaced that title with the one “Equivalents”. Stieglitz explored the possibility for photography to create art that was abstract, rather than illusionistic of descriptive settings and themes.

What we call a photograph and what it has become over the last two centuries is interesting. The first photograph was a photogram, drawn with light without a camera or lens. Today a photograph can be an image of the gamma ray distribution of the Milky Way. It can even be something drawn with a certain kind of camera without light or a lens. With these 'synthetic' images the computer is the camera and there is no light or lens.

In some instances, new tools and materials are blurring the categorical lines of what we would historically define to be a photograph. Is it a photograph that is now displayed and viewed on a monitor rather than in print? Is it animated or does it evolve or move across the screen? Indeed, we have moved into the age where digital art works are "images" purchased for viewing on our iPads, Smart Phones and TVs, works that can be acquired now as unique NFTs. They are not, necessarily, physical works to be hung on a wall. We might call this new development of image making digitwork in the same spirit that Alfred Stieglitz invoked when he referred to the art of his pictorials as camerawork.

Within the context of Alfred Stieglitz’s equivalents, art is a way of knowing, at a place where meaning is born. There is a certain process that occurs for all of us when we encounter a work of art, at a particular moment where we connect in a unique way, where a greater truth is revealed. The nature of art can be thought of as the entire composite of moments, moments that enfold and unfold in whole or holy movement.

This movement, interestingly, is observable through the relational information exchanged through a work of art, between creator and viewer. For an art work to truly exist in a projected moment it must have at least: a creator, or conscious will from a higher dimensional order that issues the creation; and a viewer from that same order, to whom the creation must be shared. This mystery is partially explainable by the fact that life without others yields an isolated, lonely, and cold existence. Art can be thought of as a field with an ever-flowing exchange of discovery and meaning that enfolds and unfolds knowledge in meaningful relationships.

In the end, an artist’s works may divulge more information about the viewers than they do the artist who creates them. And why not, if we consider the true process of imagination; of creating images to communicate truth. It doesn’t matter what name or label we give to a work, but it does matter what function it serves. Is there meaning conveyed and new knowledge gained that brings the creator and viewer into a greater understanding of truth? That is the essential question, should we endeavour to understand it. The function of art is to communicate what eschews banality and excites the imagination; what motivates us to dig deeper and fly higher to gain truth.

Today when NFT artists work with various algorithms, filters, and visual modulators, they discover worlds that couldn’t otherwise be seen. They begin to understand the process at work and how an image can be achieved. Today, they are exploring worlds (moments) that exist implicitly, but only manifest through a particular approach using a unique set of instruments. The abstracting and pictorial process becomes quite mysterious as images and various incarnated equivalents reveal themselves on a stage that speaks to worlds more real than reality. When that synthesis occurs, something happens that transcends the boundary of both viewer and creator, in which a greater truth is revealed — art’s mysterious ministry.

This exhibition presents to the public, select NFT artists who are pursuing and achieving that ministry. These are artists who have a vision of life and who try to find a representation of it in the form of digital works. You will find here a body of work unique in its ability to connect with a viewer in a mysterious way. They are digit works that merge with a viewer In abstract and pictorial ways, speaking to worlds more real than reality.