The Jakarta Post
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsAmid NFT boom, artists worry about climate costs
When the South African artist vonMash started thinking about selling his work as crypto-art on a blockchain, he hesitated.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Visual artist vonMash poses for a portrait in his studio in Springs, South Africa, on February 7, 2022 as he covers his face with a painters' palette. (AFP/Luca Sola)
D
igital art is nothing new to vonMash, who describes his blend of painting, video and sound as "afro-delic" -- a psychedelic twist on Afrofuturism.
But when the South African started thinking about selling his work as crypto-art on a blockchain, he hesitated.
"I'm not fully for it because of the energy consumption that it takes," he explained.
Selling art as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, uses the same technology as crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. The buyer receives a verified digital token, which proves the artwork is an original.
The boon for artists is that if their work goes up in value and is resold, they receive a portion of every future sale.
"If another person buys my NFT, I automatically get a share of that," vonMash said. With traditional art, if a buyer pays 100 dollars, and then "sells it for 100,000, I would not get a cent of that."
Warehouse of computers
More from The Weekender
Machines Without a Beating Heart?
As electric cars reshape the driving experience, enthusiasts wrestle with what makes a car special: the roar of its engine, the quirks of an aging machine, or the memories we leave behind the wheel.
FX Harsono revisits Indonesia’s unresolved past in Ambang/Threshold
The veteran artist reworks familiar images of violence and discrimination to confront a history that continues to shape the present.
Farewell, good breast
A cancer diagnosis brings more than the fear of illness. It raises difficult questions about how to protect those we love while revealing unexpected reserves of tenderness and resilience.
