The big hype was triggered by the auction of the first gif, the Nyan Cat. Ten years ago, Chris Torres put the Nyan Cat online; the video has 1.8 million views on YouTube. In March, he sold the running cat with the pastry as its body for almost 600,000 dollars on Foundation.
In mid-March, the auction house Christie’s auctioned off an NFT artwork by the digital artist Beeple for an incredible 69 million dollars.
The art scene here in Stuttgart has also jumped on the hype. The Galerie Kernweinecreated the House Flip in cooperation with the digital artist Nasty Files. A mega action with which they pose burning questions: Is there a true value of things? And is the digital value of a building the same as the physical one?
By auctioning off the NFT, the founders of the Kernweine Gallery are trying to acquire the physical gallery for sale. The sale is taking place on the opensea.io platform – at the same price for which the building is being traded on the Stuttgart real estate market.
With this campaign, the Galerie Kernweine and artist Nasty Files not only want to draw attention to the development of the real estate market and the preservation of a diverse cultural landscape, but also to the increasingly blurring boundaries between the digital and analogue worlds.
We think it’s a super exciting thing, because for the first time a democratic auction for digital art is possible and the artists have the chance to actually earn more with their work than likes and views.