Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, Dr. Sarah here with the Dr. Random podcast. And I want to encourage everyone to like and follow the podcast. But also I want to encourage everyone to please go check out my art website, Sarah laveroniart.com S A R A H L A V as in Victor E, R O and as in Nancy e as in edwardartart.com there you will find some of my original works of art, my paintings, my photography.
You can purchase originals that are still available, but you can also order prints. I highly recommend ordering prints on metal canvas from my website. They just look amazing.
And you can also order merchandise such as coffee mugs, pillows, and tote bags.
So thanks again for listening to the Dr. Random podcast, and I hope everybody will go check out my art.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Grazzi.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Dr. Random podcast. I'm Dr. Sarah, and here's the deal. We don't do boxes here. Every episode is different, every conversation has its own flavor, and no topic is off limits. If you're looking for predictable, this isn't it. But if you want real conversations, honest takes, and a touch of intellect in the best way, you're in the right place. This is Dr. Random podcast.
Hello, I'm Dr. Sarah and I'm here on the Dr. Random podcast. And today we have a special guest, Fer Caggiano. She is an artist, which I love. We connect on that. And she's an artist, a creator of the arts, and she is also a Web3 consultant and Fair Casiano. She wrote the book NFTs 101.
And she just has some, you know, amazing wisdom behind this topic. And I find it so interesting. And I think some people, I've kind of heard, like, oh, they think, you know, that it was something a couple years ago, but I feel like this is still a, you know, current thing to talk about. And I feel like you can also use it in a way that I'm going to discuss that I found in my research that actually can be used in a different way in preserving the arts digitally. And so far, I'll kind of let you take the floor for a little bit and maybe kind of introduce yourself, talk about you. And I know you're joining us from Brazil right now.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: And I just think that's really cool. It looks beautiful there. And, yeah. So go ahead and take the floor and kind of tell me about your book, what got you into NFTs, and, you know, just kind of dive in right here.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Okay. So for those who don't know me, I'm Fier Kajian, as you introduced me, and I Am originally from Brazil, but I'm also a US citizen. I used to live in the US and that's when I first came across NFTs, which was in 2021.
My career as an artist is over 20 something years since I started and I joined NFTs in 2021 and kind of like put my traditional art on the side and I shifted most of my attention into the digital realm.
And it's interesting because I was actually having an exhibition in a museum. It was a two story museum with a solo show, 42 pieces, all 30 by 40 inches. Like a very, very prominent exhibition in in the Low country was in Charleston, South Carolina where I used to live.
And during the exhibition I had someone coming through the show and asking if I had the pieces available as NFTs. And first I was like, I don't even know what that is. Can you spell that so I can do some research?
And after that, you know, I looked into it a little bit and I wasn't convinced. I was like, well, I don't think this is for me. But several people asked about it for, I don't know, a few months straight. I kept getting asked if I was doing nft. So I was like, well, I'm going to check it out.
So that's when I started my career as an NFT artist, besides being traditional artists and gallery owner and all of that stuff.
But I have to say that everything shifted a lot during these years and that's where I think the conversation will get interesting because I've been a speaker at NFT NYC three times and one of those years I actually spoke about preserving the art in the blockchain. So that is a topic that really interests me.
Yes, I relocated back to Brazil in January last year. So it's been a year since I'm back here and you can see I'm living in a rural area. So my apologies for my connection.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you're sounding great so far and you know, I'm still a little unclear, maybe the audience too. Which I will ask when you're, when you say you're actually creating art as an nft, can you describe that a little more? Because it's funny what you're talking about, how you were approached about NFTs. The minute I created for my art business and I launched my website and my social media, I was bombarded with people asking, is this yours?
I want it as an nft. And I was like, yes, it's my art. I'm like, whose else would it be? And I was Like, I painted this, and I was so confused. I was like, why am I getting all these messages, people asking, is this yours? And I'm like, yes.
And then they were like, offering me crazy amounts of money, and I didn't understand how it worked. And then I was told it was a scam and a fraud. So it was very confusing for me. So I think to clear up the difference, like, you know, I'm posting images of art. I created my oil paintings and my digital photography. But I know that there is a difference when actually you create, there's a separate way to look at it where you're actually creating art as an nft. Correct. Can you kind of describe that?
[00:06:12] Speaker B: Yes. Well, those are actually two topics that you approached. So first, I'm going to talk about the scam, because it's something that I think people should be very much aware of, since crypto is what I'd like to call the money from the anarchists. You know, we don't have a ruler, we don't have a police. We don't have someone that will come and say, okay, this is your wallet. So I'm going to punish you because it's a number on the blockchain. So you don't have. You don't really have a way to police everything. Like, there's, of course, there are ways to track things, but one of the things that make it very, very appealing for scammers is because it's hard to track.
So what happens very often is that they approach artists or, you know, like, people that they find vulnerable, especially artists, because we love to share our art. And it's such a huge compliment when someone says, okay, this is beautiful. I want to buy it. Of course we want to sell it.
And they take that advantage over our fragile state in that sense. And they scam us by saying, okay, like, my funds are locked. I need you to send a small amount. And they take screenshots and they say that that's, you know, the huge amount that they have, and they're going to put, like, a big offer on your piece and all of this. But that is not very different from the traditional business because I. I used to have scammers approaching me as a traditional artist as well. And a very classic scam was very similar.
And they would say, I have a budget. I want to buy your art. Help me choose. And then they say, like, oh, but sorry, I'm traveling. I can't use my card. And you have to cash this.
I don't know, like, one of those checks or Whatever, and I'll send an extra amount just for your trouble. But they would ask you to pay something to make that happen.
So, same same thing. You have it on the traditional industry, but then you have it on NFTs as well, because, you know, it's just another way of scammers to act. And there are several ways that scammers are acting right now. But I'm not going to dive into this. I just wanted to say that it's very sad that it happens, but it is true and it happens to everybody. So you have to be very, very careful.
Now, when I say I create art as NFTs, it's something that over the years it developed this, this concept developed in my mind differently because first, when I started working as an artist putting my work on the blockchain, I would get my whole catalog of art and I would photograph them. And the same way that I would sell prints, what I would do is that I would sell editions, or I would sell my art as one single JPEG and say, okay, this is my art. And there you go. So I had a catalog of paintings that I had already photographed.
So it was kind of like using the blockchain as a new marketplace to make a sale.
But as you dive into the whole technology, there's so much more than you can do that I started developing art for the blockchain, so you can look at the blockchain as a new medium. So, for instance, it's not only a possible way to sell digital art as animations, because this is my favorite part of digital medium, because I have a TV in my house which, you know, a professional frame TV which has no glare, it's beautiful. You won't even tell it's a digital screen unless you know, because it's like, the quality is amazing. And I like to have animated art because otherwise I could have a print, but I also can rotate the collection.
But again, when you talk about the possibilities of having animated art, you can also have art that responds to something. You use the technology. So it's like you use your mouse and you put around the screen, and then it will change the art according to your interaction. You can set. Like, for instance, the art will change at the time of the day. So you buy an NFT that is a landscape. Landscape. And then in the morning, it's the morning view. In the evening, you know, you get the. The sunset and then a night sky. So you can do that using the technology. So I find that brilliant. And there's like so many ways I could discuss how the technology can work as a medium. But I just wanted to say that that's the shift that happened in my mind. First I was using the blockchain as a marketplace, and then I understood that it could be a medium.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Yes. And in my research for my dissertation, you know, I did it on the digital artifacts of the religious paintings, which I've talked about before in the podcast on the subject of Jesus. And I was just going to kind of read over some of my findings, which is kind of what we've already discussed a little bit, but I kind of wanted to go over it. So digital artifacts designed to be used in instructional settings and the purpose of being produced and stored for preservation purposes are strongly even more protected in virtual communities through the use of NFTs.
So. And I'm sorry, this is kind of a tongue twister in. Net and I forgot to grab my glasses this morning, so excuse me, I normally use my glasses, my reading glasses. So in Net, no graphic analysis. Blockchain and NFT technology merged with art to create the protection needed for digital artifacts facts of paintings, including the subject of Jesus. So basically, NFTs provide artists assurance of the authenticity of digital art and protect works of art.
And the new technology of NFTs offers new perspectives on preserving art. And NFT means non fungible token and NFT meet the study goals for digitizing art to fulfill the preservation needs of ancient art and Today's Art. And NFTs represent digital assets of physical digital art, audio files, collections and objects and games.
And as we already kind of discussed a little background on NFTs, they're traded online, usually in cryptocurrency like we discussed. Correct. And in smart contracts on the blockchain. And the artist can proven transfer ownership of digital assets in the form of any photo, image, video, audio file, artwork, or even a ticket to another buyer. Which I thought was interesting. I found that in my research.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: But.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: And it says if an artist wants to, they can be entrusted to obtain royalties each time a sale is made. And I know you and I had discussed this before and digitizing the works of art with this with, say, for instance in my study with the subject of Jesus can be done with NFTs by converting them into codes.
And digital artifacts produced in or transferred to virtual environments can easily be transferred over long distances. And NFTs solve the issue of digital artifacts of paintings being copied or reproduced in virtual environments without the artist or owner's control.
And blockchain technology guarantees authenticity and ownership of digital works through NFT ownership and the reason why the works of art, you know, any work of art is precious is because it's due to the rarity value and the community that, you know, admires works of art and holds value to them. And so basically the NFT art is an art museum in itself, like we just talked about. Like you probably have a whole museum of your NFT art. And token blockchain NFTs ensure artist royalties automatically will help to protect and preserve artwork. So I know that's kind of a. Sorry if that was long. I was reading over kind of what I found in my studies on NFTs that I know we talked about before, but. And you can tell me if you think that all sounds pretty accurate or not, or if you disagree with anything, but, you know, you're the expert here, so. But I, I was kind of wondering if you can dive in on the royalty part of it, because I think that that's what's so interesting too.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Yes, I'm going to say there's a lot of information in there and we could probably spend an hour on each of those topics. So I think we have to choose kind of like what we want to talk about.
But let's start with royalties because that's something that really looked appealing to me when I first joined the whole blockchain movement.
And if you think about you have a painting, physical painting, you sell, you never know what's going to happen to that painting ever again. There is no track record, it's gone. And if the person decides to resell, you have no idea what's going on with the blockchain. Every transaction is public, and that's the beauty of it. So everything that is sold, you know where it's going. You know the movement. You know, if someone decided to burn the painting, which would be, you know, destroying the piece of art, you can send it to a burner on the digital realm. So, you know, everything that happens is stored on the blockchain.
Now, when we talk about royalties, you have some different ways to approach it. For instance, let's talk about the Tezos blockchain, which is not the most famous. I would say it's a favorite of the up and coming artists because it's a very fun community. People sell very cheap and it's a reliable blockchain. It was the most green blockchain until Ethereum did the whole repurposing of the, of how they run their nodes. But on Tezos, when you create an artwork, you set the royalties on your smart contract. So it's bound to Your contract, you decide the rules. And anytime someone sells on secondary, you get the royalties. And I usually set mine really high. I set for 25%.
And some people don't notice that. And they resell for what they thought would be a small profit, but they actually lose money because they didn't think of the royalties in them. But it's a blockchain that people sell. They buy and sell very fast.
And that's the max royalties that you can put on Tezos. Some people put no royalties. They set it for very low. But since I'm pricing the art already low on Tezos, I want to make sure that if someone sells, I get a nice chunk as well. When you talk about Ethereum, which is the most used blockchain for art, you don't actually set the royalties on your contract.
Now you can, but it's still the marketplaces, they can bypass the royalties. And that has been a huge, huge, huge drama in the community because you would say you make your contract, and on Ethereum, it's usually up to 10%.
It's not that high for large projects, which are the, what we call the PFP projects, which are 10 generative artworks, you know, like those variations, the punks, those monkeys that everyone knows the collections that people know, they're big collections with small variations. They're called PFP projects.
Those usually have the royalty set for under 5%. Some of them are even only 2 or 3%.
But the big movement is because they feed their community.
There's a lot of sales on secondary, so they actually make money on secondary sales.
Some marketplaces decided to increase their movement on secondary sales, and they killed the royalties.
Artists were going, they said, you know, that's like so messed up. But it went beyond our control.
And some of them, some of the marketplaces say, no, that's wrong. We're going to stick with the artists and we're going to honor their royalty. So, you know, the royalties, a big deal for us artists especially, you know, if we want to leave a legacy and if we want our legacy to support our children, then when they kill our royalties, that's a big problem. But anyway, there is a lot going on, on royalties, and I hope that the control goes back to the artists eventually.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And so right now you're saying that that is not kind of active, what's going on?
[00:19:21] Speaker B: It is. And it's not, you know, depending on where you trade your art. Some marketplaces are very good and making sure that the artists get the royalties, but some are bypassing the. The Contract.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: So that's, you know, it's, it's a little tricky. You have to know where you, where you put your art right now. Yeah.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: And on the platforms where they, you know, trade and buy and sell NFTs.
If it's, would you say that just to clear up for everybody listening, like NFT created art for NFTs, would you classify that as digital art?
[00:20:00] Speaker B: Yes, it's digital. Digital art.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: So yes, I guess my question is, is like say I take an image of one of my oil paintings and I put it on the platform and I sell it as an NFT and I want a royalty on that. And I think we talked about this before, this is the question I have. So say I sell my original piece of art and then they want to go like, that's their art.
So can they take an image of the painting that I just sold and sell it as an nft or is that my right as an artist?
Or do I need to sell NFT rights when I sell an original painting?
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Okay, now we're talking about copyright and about, let's say networking because those two don't, you can't quite go separately on those.
When you talk about copyright as an artist in the U.S. i mean like the laws can be different in other countries, but I know the laws in the US because that's where I used to trade most.
When you create the art, the copyright belongs to the artist unless otherwise stated. So that means if you sell a painting, you still have the right to make prints, to make merchandise, to sell. As an nft, you have the rights, you have the copyrights of it. So the person bought the physical piece because they want to appreciate the physical piece in their home, office, whatever, wherever they want to appreciate the art, but that's what they're buying when they buy the physical piece.
And then we talk about relationships with collectors and clients. I had one client, for instance, who bought my top seller artwork.
I sold several prints. It's the rainbow row at night. And I still have it available for prints because people love it. They still ask if they can buy prints.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: I've seen it. It's beautiful.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks. So that piece has sold tons of merchandise, but there's only one original. And the person who bought that original knows that. And she bought it. She bought it was one of my highest priced paintings because it's, it's very large, it's a, it's a big piece.
And, and she's fine with that because she knew it was already my top selling art. And like the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is public domain. Anyone can sell a print of the Mona Lisa. Anyone can do anything they want with that print, but the original is priceless. And that's where I think the, you know, the vision goes. But there are some clients who are very, I would say, like, it's a. I'm going to be a little mean here because I don't think that that's the right way to go about things. But they're greedy. So they buy a piece and they want for their appreciation only. They want no one else to look at it anymore. So I had someone approach me and asked me to paint a version of the rainbow roll. And they said, and I want you to sign a contract that you're never going to paint that very same location again.
And I was like, sorry, dude, that's not worth my time. I don't want to be bound to a contract because you want to look at the piece by yourself and not share it with your, you know, with anyone else. It's like, I think it's kind of greedy, you know.
And that brings me back to the blockchain.
So when you have an nft, you mint your artwork.
Anyone can take a screenshot. Anyone can do what we call right click save. Anyone can copy that artwork.
But only one person, or an edition, if you can sell it as editions as well, owns that artwork. It's the same thing as the Mona Lisa, you know, even though it's digital and there is no real difference between the file and the copy, there is the provenance of ownership. And some people take pride on that. They say, like, I am the owner of that piece. I am the person who supported that artist. And that's where, you know, it's all about ownership. It has nothing to do with how many people look at that art can you copy or not? You know, so it's a mindset. It's. It's something that. I find it very interesting. But anyway, I'm changing off topic, but.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: I just know this is. To get to that this is also.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Interesting, you know, Then again, just. Just to. Because I think I didn't. I wasn't so clear on the first question. So if you sell a painting. I actually got in trouble with one of my CL clients.
She had one of my artworks and she said she was going to mint it as NFTs and sell with, you know, some bundle of something she was doing. And I said, like, no, you don't have the copyright of that piece. That's part of a large collection. And I wanted to all be together in that collection. And that has to come from me, the artist. So that's proof that it comes from my wallet and not from a collector's wallet. It has to come from me.
I would be fine transferring ownership to her. Like, you know, like, do an airdrop. I didn't have to. I wouldn't mind not selling, but giving her the nft. And she could sell, but she could not mint the NFT as her possession. You know, like, it's just not allowed. And that's when people say, like, is this yours? Because there's a lot of people that have no understanding of that. And they see a beautiful image online, they copy and then they mint as if they put own it.
That's where.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: And it's the same on. On real life. You know, people copy other people's work all the time.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: Yes, it's.
Yeah. And I actually have taken this step, and I don't know how many. How common this is for artists, but I have actually had my attorneys, they have copyrighted and filed all my paintings.
Wow.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: So I never. I never went that far because it is, you know, it's given, you know, that you own the copyright, you know, unless otherwise stated. You don't have to actually say it belongs to me. So. But anyway, that's an extra layer of protection. Good for you. I would never bother with this, but I understand your point.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's just because, you know, I have a legal background and I think I honestly just thought gives me peace of mind, knowing with this digital world we're in, I thought, you know, I just want to protect my paintings and my photography. And it's so interesting what we're talking about because I was actually kind of sitting, having dinner, and I recently had the filing for my photography. And there's one of my pictures is called Just Paris.
And I've had a lot of people think that AI made that picture or that it's, like, not real. And I'm like, no, that's my photography. I took that picture, you know, and he was so intrigued. He's like, where were you standing in Paris? Like, I don't know if it was because he didn't believe I took it or he was as curious. I'm like, oh, now he's gonna go copy me and try to take the same picture. But he wanted to know the location on my phone, on the camera, like, where I was when I took the photo. He wanted to know, like, where I was standing. It was very interesting. And I was like, well, I just left La Flutes in Paris and had an amazing dinner. And it was. It had just rained in Paris and so the sky. And you probably know, as an artist, so, like, you know, we call it golden hour. And yes, as a photographer, so it just rained in Paris. It rained a lot. And the golden hour, it was sunset. And I walked to the spot and I just captured this just kind of really cool moment. And he, he basically looked at me, goes, you basically have a once in a lifetime shot there. He's like, that was, you know, but that's, you know, that's what's so interesting about us as artists, you know, especially with paintings. Like, I'm so excited. I probably shouldn't talk about what I'm working on, but I have a new painting I'm working on right now and I'm really excited for it.
And I love just, you know, as artists, you know, we, we, you know, the paint supplies are expensive. You know, like, I went to the paint supply store the other day. I don't know if they realize, like, so when we're charging what we charge for a painting, like buying canvases and paints can cost up to a grand. You know, when you're supplying yourself, when.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: You think about it.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: It's all.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I, like, left the paint store, I think, with five tubes of paint and I think a couple other supplies. And I think it was like almost 400, you know, I was like, whoa.
But I know how that goes. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, so. But I just love this topic of NFTs. I think it's so interesting.
And what would you say is the best?
I mean, I hope it's okay. We're asking this. If you're not comfortable answering, we don't have to. But I was gonna say, do you recommend a platform for NFTs? Like, do. Can you recommend one, or do you not comfortable talking about that?
[00:29:22] Speaker B: No, it's not that I'm not comfortable. I'm going to say something that is quite concerning, actually.
Since the big buzz from 2021 died out.
A lot of platforms, they had so much money, but then they tried to keep pushing and they lost their funds. So a lot of platforms are closing right now.
For instance, not long ago, we had a big problem with known origin when they closed.
And that's something I want to approach before we wrap up. Which has to do with preserving the art on the blockchain, because the art, except for bitcoin, which has a specific movement called the originals, and you mint the artwork in the actual blockchain and it has to be a very small file because every byte in the blockchain is expensive. So most of the time what happens is that you have the art in the blockchain, but it's not. You have the metadata, and the art actually points to a server. And the server, we also have the centralized servers, which are the IPFs, we have pinata, we have a few options, and even Amazon servers.
The minute that the creator of the contract, which was the problem with this one, you would create with the platform contract, and that platform would point to those servers.
And to make sure that the art remains available, you have to do something that we call we pinned the art. So the art would have to be pinned to the server. And when Known origin closed, they didn't have the artworks pinned. You had to go and do it yourself. And a lot of people didn't do it. And the information on their art, the actual images got lost. So that is a problem.
Now, what I heard this month, another platform that is very old, it was one of the biggest selling platforms, which is Nifty Gateway. They're closing this month. So another big planet was that one. Again, Nifty Gateway.
But again, there was a problematic platform in the sense that you would meet the art with their contract, and then it was everything under their domain, their control. And then when they close, they sent an email and said, you have to download, withdraw to your wallet. So I did that. I only had three artworks that I bought there, so I did that and I'm okay, but a lot of art's going to be lost because they're closing and it was centralized in their platform.
So all that to say, the safe way to mint your artwork is to create your own contract.
So I have my contract. I use a few different facilitators because I'm not a developer. So I don't know how to write my contract.
But you can do an artist contract using Manifold.
You can do it using.
What was the name?
Transient Labs, which I prefer. They have much more elaborate contracts, and even if they close, you still have ownership of those contracts. And you just need a way to. Like, if you're a developer, you will know how to access the contract in the blockchain and work directly in there. So what they do, they are facilitator that translates the language of the technology that we as artists are not willing to understand because it's very complicated, it's not our realm. So we use their platforms to actually create our own contract.
So I have several artworks in my own contract.
And then the platform that you decide to use as the marketplace, then it is a decision that you list it in there. And if they close, you still own the, the art and you still, you were allowed to move and list in other places.
So basically I use manifold transient labs to make my own contract to mint my artwork.
And I list them on, I'm on Super Rare, which is, I'm the most looped well platform. Everyone wants to be there, but it's not a platform that does well for me. Like I haven't sold in there, even though it's the, the best platform for collectors. You know, they, they think, you know, it's very good. But anyway. But I create my contract and I list on Super Rare. I don't mean through the marketplace.
And then the same artwork, if I want to take out of Super Rare, I can list it on foundation. Let's say it's another platform that is a good marketplace. Not sure if they're going to last because who knows? And opensea rarible, they all, you know, there's magic Eden, there's so many places. But I would say use your own contract. That's the one thing that is important.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Marketplace, it depends on the person.
So.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that you just shared a wealth of knowledge with me and the audience here and I think, you know, we're all gonna feel like we know more about NFTs. Now.
Is there anything else you, which you feel is important to share or touch on or do you have any suggestions?
Like for me, for instance, as an artist, if I wanted to, you know, sell my original work images as an nft, I think I was using rarible myself. I kind of tested with one.
I don't, nothing has really happened, but I did do a higher, you know, royalty percentage that you were mentioning.
I took your advice on that, but I was just kind of testing it out. Do you, you know, do you have any advice or words of wisdom you want to share before we close our podcast session today?
Okay.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: I'm going to, to give you an overview of what I think is happening and where we can go with this.
So what we have right now is that the market is shifting back into trading and not so much into art. So every social that I use that is related to NFTs have shifted into trading tokens and not so much into trading art.
With that in mind, you have to understand that art in itself is not a hot asset for the market anymore. So it's not like in the early days you'd put any Garbage on chain and people would buy it and they would trade because it was, you know, it was a speculation market.
Now we have, we have started to mature.
So what we're missing right now is collectors that understand the value. And I think we're still getting there. We're not there yet. So if you're thinking about selling your art just the same as in real life, you know, the traditional industry, you have to network, you have to meet the right people.
Just putting your art on a website doesn't make it sell. You know, like you as an artist, you know, like you have an original painting, putting it online, it's not going to make it go by itself.
Same thing with NFTs. It's not because you mint it, it's not because you put it on the blockchain that it's going to sell. You have to network just as hard.
So here's, you know, the advice is this, like, if you, if you see the potential of this digital crypto renaissance, which I believe that we are breaking boundaries, you know, the MoMA now has a big collection of NFTs, was a huge news a few weeks ago.
So I think we're getting there. And it's been, it's getting recognized as a movement of art. Not so much as, you know, another way to market your art, but as a movement. That's why I think of NFTS as a medium. So if you have that in mind and you want to explore the cyber renaissance, then go for it. But if you're there just to try to make, you know, make a sale, I wouldn't advise to even bother.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: And would you still say, would you agree that it is a good way to preserve and protect works of art, ancient art?
[00:38:25] Speaker B: It is. It is. So, okay, I think that's, I, I'm sure we're running. I know that's short on time. Yes. But, yeah, what I, I have to explain a little bit of the technical part so people understand something. I learned because I worked in a blockchain like I was working in a new blockchain. And I understand how they work.
First, for people who don't understand what is the blockchain, right? You have a block of information that goes to the next block and goes to the next block. So that block, when it's written, it's immutable. Nothing changes that block. But there's a block that comes after that can have new information that overwrites. So this is the valid information. This is still there, hasn't changed, but the new block has a New information. So whenever you put something on the blockchain, it's there, like we could say forever, forever. As long as there's technology, you know, so there is the preserving part of it.
It's written in the blockchain and it's going to stay there. Even if the marketplace goes down, the platform goes down, you can still go on the blockchain explorer and find it.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Now.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: When we think about preserving the actual file, that's where it gets tricky. Because unless it's a very small file and you decide to do a full on chain mint, which you can do on Bitcoin, I haven't done it, but it's a trend and some people are doing it.
Unless it's done on chain, there's always a risk of the art being lost. Because IPFS is a decentralized server. And it is much, much safer than if you have a normal server because it has several backups, it's split between many nodes. But if they're not getting paid, they'll shut it down.
Unless the funds keep going to maintain IPFs, to maintain pinata, to maintain Amazon servers, unless they're being paid, they go away.
But despite all those technical challenges, I do believe that it's a way of preserving art. And that was my whole presentation back in 2022, I think, because I believe artworks that have been damaged severely through the years, you could still have a record that is permanent in a way, you know, in the blockchain. And you can have like a huge catalog of art that is accessible to anyone, because the blockchain is accessible to anyone. So that is something I believe in. And I would love to see museums putting the whole collections on. On the blockchain.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Yes.
And I actually found that in my findings to be a solution to the problem with ancient art and preserving it. I feel like this is a solution for sure.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: And I would love to take that on. You know, I just feel like that would be amazing if, you know, I could be considered like you, maybe a digital artifacts, you know, art consultant. That's what I'm trying to dive into and go in and get all this ancient artwork and everything, you know, preserved for us for future and for heritage purposes. But yeah.
Well, this was an amazing conversation and I feel like we covered a lot. I feel like we could still talk so much more. But I want to thank you very Cogniano for coming on and I love that we're both artists and I think that we'll probably be in the same circles for a while. And I look forward to getting to meet you in person. And I thank you so much for coming on the Dr. Random podcast today and just educating us all on this really cool topic. I think it's so cool.
Thank you.
[00:42:32] Speaker B: Well, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And I love talking about NFTs and the blockchain and the whole realm of possibilities. So anytime if anyone wants to put me in another interview, I'm happy to do that.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Everybody appreciate you. Yeah. And get her book NFTs 101.
It's, you know, it's a great book and I highly recommend everybody getting it and everybody support her as an artist. Vera Casiano and of course everybody support me too as an artist. All of us, we're both artists. We'll support each other and yeah. So we're a great community of that and. All right. Well, thank you everybody for listening to the Dr. Random podcast and as always, I will say ciao.
