Interview with Beeple: The next era of NFT will focus on emotional connection and utility

Beeple predicts that “people will focus less on the underlying technology of NFTs and more on emotional connection or utility.”

Original title: "Beeple: The next era of NFT will focus on "emotional connection and utility""

After becoming a pioneer in the NFT art movement, Beeple converted the cryptocurrency obtained from the sale of NFT works into legal tender to achieve complete creative freedom.

Beeple's new project "HUMAN ONE" is the first combination of digital and physical sculpture. The auction house's Ryan Zurrer bought the work in Christie's evening sale for $29.3 million last year, and it's now in one of Italy's best-known museums - Turin's Castello di Rivo The Pantheon at the Leigh Museum of Contemporary Art, where it will be presented as part of a group exhibition.

Beeple and Decrypt had a conversation at the museum about the future of NFTs.

Covered by 4 slowly rotating LED screens in the 7-foot-high mahogany frame in the picture, "HUMAN ONE" depicts a dynamically evolving near-future landscape, with an unknown astronaut heading towards an unknown destination. It not only expresses the human desire for progress, but also makes people feel anxious about the future, and at the same time, this anxiety is uncertain.

"It's a hybrid of the digital world and the real world," Beeple told Decrypt.

Currently, "HUMAN ONE" uses the colors of the Ukrainian flag, but these colors can and will change. Beeple told Decrypt that he would like to see animated NFTs become popular in the art world. "I think you're going to see people take less of these immutable things and I think they're going to become a canvas, a living, breathing document that changes over time," he said.

"This artwork feels more like an ongoing conversation than a statement," he said. "A painting is a statement in time. It is possible if new meanings and understandings arise, but in essence it remains unchanged."

He explained: "HUMAN ONE" will continue to evolve. Our conversation now will influence this article. What people say may affect the work," he said. “I think you’re seeing this changing situation more and more in digital art. I think that speaks to the real potential of it.”

Beeple added that he is less interested in DeFi-related concepts, such as fragmented NFTs. “To me, these things are more about money and speculation, which is really not that interesting to me,” he said. “I’m more interested in innovation and possibility, being able to do something artistically that you couldn’t do before, rather than being totally obsessed with DeFi and stuff like that.”

He said that the NFT field can "learn some lessons" from the museum world, because museums have been used as art carriers for a much longer time. “I think this is something that we are not suitable to use in the NFT space, because people are too focused on current value and making money.”

He predicted that the NFT field will "split", it is not like a single field, more like a community group.

Beeple told Decrypt: "In the future, people will focus more on emotional connection or utility rather than pure wild guesses." He also predicts that people will pay less attention to the underlying technology of NFT. "The technology itself -- who cares? What can this technology enable us to do?"

Beeple's first NFT sale sparked interest in NFT artwork. Since then, attention has turned to headshot (PFP) collections such as BAYC and CryptoPunks , to which the art world is divided.

“I think PFP is very interesting,” Beeple said. “I hear that there are a lot of people in the art world who really don’t like it. They think it hurts the art field and confuses people’s perception of art.”

This, he said, was a "short-sighted" view. "I think we're at the beginning of the NFT use case, and anything that gets more people aware of the technology and normalizes it, I think is good."

For Beeple, he is keen to explore more practical NFTs. "What I do in the future will have some kind of utility to have these things, because these NFTs will be connected to real-world utility, and people will be able to use these things to achieve certain functions."

He is keen to make a "time capsule" NFT inspired by Andy Warhol, which will only work after his death. “I want to make a series of time-based videos, release them in 50 years, or release them in 100 years, and keep them private so no one knows what they are.” He added that other NFTs may be released depending on the situation. issued. "By posting videos based on what's going on in the world, I can do a lot of different things and still have a voice even after I'm dead."

In other words, he believes that whether NFT should have additional utility is not a "black and white" question. "I think there's going to be a broad range of use cases, and to me it's more about what is your personal preference for these things?"

Critics of NFTs should be mindful of the matter of personal preference, he added. "If you're not interested in something, laugh it off, or just ignore it," he said. “NFTs don’t need your support or your disapproval. I think there’s a sense of, ‘It’s not for me, it’s against me.’ These are all subjective judgments of personal preference.

Written by: Dorian Batycka