The Founder of Punk.Network, Ken Yang talks about the NFT digitalart with the artists
The first online auction of the Chinese offline digital art exhibition, “The Great Pythagoras”, officially opened on June 24. The auction invited Ken Yang, the founder of Punk.Network, the Buddhist gymnosophist and art critic Chai Zhongjian, and the founder of Theogo Art lab and co-founder of three gallery Ji Xiaofeng to conduct a live guided tour in the WeChat program “Zaiyi”. The live tour was hosted by the Theogo co-founder and digitalart broker Yali, in order to discuss the artistic value of the NFT with artists.
How to determine the value of art?
ken Yang: “It’s very difficult to judge the value of an artwork, but I personally think there must be a positive correlation between value and price. From a practical point of view, the practicality of art is not high, for some people, buying a piece of art seems useless. What we call artistic value is actually an understanding of art.
French Philosopher Danner once pointed a way Of understanding art. He said that to understand a person, a group of artists or a work of art at any given time, it was necessary to understand the social structure, thought, custom and cultural changes of the time. For example, the three tragedies of ancient Greece, Gasqueros, Sophocles and Oripides wrote these tragidies in the history background of that the Persian invaded the Greece. Greece resisted the invasion with the power of the whole country and various city-states, resulting in the birth of the culture of the creation of tragedies. The development last until the invasion of Macedonia, it led to the decline of the entire Greek and Athenian culture, so there is a time period for the development of art.
Take the art of NFT today as an example, it seems to me that the understanding values is whether the artwork can accurately reflect our current social structure and whether it can reflect the powerlessness, isolation, cultural deprivation and radical in commercial of individuals in modern life. This is the way artworks can show its value at this stage.”
Does digital art has the same value judgment as traditional art?
Ken Yang: “I think art itself has two parts, which is the parts of changing and unchanging. What remains unchanged is the process of artistic evolution. First of all, it must be a work of art, or have the form or behavior of the artwork. The part of that change, for example, is from the earliest rock wall painting to paper painting to later sculpture, behavioral art, installation art and so on, to expand the dimension of art, add updated media attributes. So we say that fiction is art, so is the film which is adopted from that novel. For example, there are a lot of video games now that go from characters selection to story line that actually constitute its own artistic style. If in the future, the game also becomes a form of art, we will also use a different perspective to appreciate the art produced in the game. Therefore, it can be a good answer to this question, the evolution of art is changing in people’s perception.
All those who have a bias against NFT art are immersed in the glory of traditional art and may forget the course of history. Changes in young people’s preferences will eventually develop to a level unacceptable to the elderly, so we can’t say that NFT art as an emerging art form will have limited future development, or that NFT art is of no value. What we only can do is we can perceive what good art is, emotionally.
What are the differences between Nft using block-chain technology and traditional art in the way of collection and purchase?
Ken Yang: From the traditional media domination to now we are replaced by what we call new media, those news agencies, digital newspapers are also building their own new media accounts, in such mediums even if the information is redundant, but the content of these UGC is also a representative of the existence of diversity. That is the same for the NFT, everyone can create, everyone can become an artist. In the present, we have reached a peak of the block-chain technology, from the characteristics of liquidity, authenticity and the natural financial attributes of block-chain, nft can extend a lot of financial transformation, these are advantages. Of course, there are also a small number of problems to solve, that is, its high cost of education, need to have a certain block-chain trading background in order to buy the collection of this art. But I believe that with the public’s understanding of the art of the NFT, there will be a one-stop, fool-like service provider in the next 2–3 years to solve these problems, and in fact Punk.Nework is doing this job.”
Buddhist gymnosophist and art critic Chai Zhongjian said, “Our past artworks was always exploring the past and origin of mankind, but the origin of mankind always has an end, backward exploration will eventually find that end. But we will have an endless future only if we move forward. We want to thank the advent of programming languages that allow us to break through the boundaries of the universe and explore the broader future.
Advances in technology have to some extent weakened people’s connections in the physical world, and created more time for people to retain and interact in virtual space. This has led to the more open attitudes and recognition of the value of virtual goods and services, and art as a physical expression created by the human emotional and spiritual world, will inevitably move towards digitalization with technology.”
The “Great Pythagoras” online auction live tour was successfully completed on June 26, more exciting content can be accessed through WeChat program, “Zaiyi” to watch live playback.
