NFTs Take Front-and-Centre Stage At 2021 Art Basel Miami

Many traditional art lovers are showing an interest in the digital art marketplace, driving notable NFT art marketplaces to put digital and hybrid art front and center at the world-famous Art Basel in Miami.

The Art Basel Miami Beach is taking place from Dec. 2-4, 2021, at the Miami Beach Convention Center. It will be one of the initial significant exposures that physical art collectors will have to the cutting-edge world of blockchain technology. Art auction house Christie’s is hosting an invite-only exhibition at an undisclosed location in Miami, in partnership with nft now and OpenSea. The “Gateway exhibition” will showcase a labyrinthine network of rooms, depicting artwork from 34 NFT artists, including Andre Oshea, Ash Thorp, Chad Knight, and Sarah Zucker.

Another entity that will be operating an exhibition at the art festival is Aorist. Aorist is an interdisciplinary art endeavor that operates at the bleeding edge of the latest in both art and technology. It intends to be as green an NFT marketplace as possible, by using Algorand to mint the NFTs. Aorist will  launch “Crossroads,” a decentralized experience consisting of physical installations at different locations in Miami, Augmented Reality (AR) experiences, immersive experiences, and online-only artworks.

At A Cross-Road Between Physical and Digital

Crossroads is the brainchild of Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile, who has joined forces with artistic visionary and entrepreneur Ximena Caminos, to turn an upmarket district of Faena in Miami into a world of art and blockchain technology during the Miami Art Week. The artwork on-show will be in tangible and intangible forms.

A key showpiece in the Crossroads “exhibition” is the work of Refik Anadol. He has generated a physical sculpture of coral by using Artificial Intelligence modeling of 1742772 images of coral, called “Machine Hallucinations: Coral.” Artworks of this caliber will be the most expensive, followed by those paired with a digital representation, a 3-D representation, a physical sculpture, and then a larger edition print, which will be the cheapest. Other notable artists whose works will be on-show include Aureia Harvey, Jonas Lund, Joanie Lemercier, and Quayola.

There is some irony to the “Crossroads” exhibition in that they will not be accepting cryptocurrencies for purchases, but only dollars. Rodriguez-Fraile believes that Ethereum’s volatility makes it unsuitable to be used as a currency.

Tezos’ Green NFT Exhibition

 Tezos, an energy-efficient blockchain that uses Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, will also exhibit a collection of NFTs at the Art Basel called “Humans + Machines: NFTs and the Ever-Evolving World of Art,” which will bring to the table discussions surrounding the role of man and machine in art, and NFT art. Tezos provides a platform where NFTs can be minted in an environmentally-sustainable way, and visitors to the exhibition in Miami will have the opportunity to create and mint personal NFTs, as well as hear a panel of speakers speak on the implications of this new digital art form.

Earlier this year, an art exhibition called “Right Click + Save was held by a partnership between a Singaporean art and dining establishment and crypto exchange Coinhako. The exhibition included “Untitled (Flower)” by Andy Warhol, “ALIVE” by Beeple, and “Machine Hallucinations: Synthetic Mars Terrian,” by Refik Analdol.

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