NFT Pixels

Categories:: art, audio-visual, copyright, critical theory, technology

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens are data stored on the blockchain that certifies and records transactions associated with a digital asset. Effectively, they are certificates of authenticity of digital assets traded on blockchain-based exchanges that have spurred an economy of scarcity for digital assets such as images, GIFs, sound clips, and videos. In the past, artists producing digital content may have also considered selling their work in places such as instagram, behance, deviant art, or via their own websites. Though, it is unlikely that this content would have been actually bought in any form. This is likely because the content is already accessible to all. On these platforms, if we are to call it art, it could be akin to a digital version of public art in some ways, for all to see and consume. Or more likely, we would consider it either documentation or advertising and marketing of the artist’s work.

The entire point of NFTs, and the reason they are so marketed as being valuable, is because we believe there is digital scarcity of the content being traded and sold.

Prior to NFT marketplaces for digital art, let’s say that someone were to decide that they wanted ownership of an artist’s instagram post, and decided to purchase their content. They may want to do this to simply support the artist, or because they truly believe they are buying a one-of-a-kind work of art. In either case, the provenance of the digital object and the certificate of authenticity to use that work would likely exist in some personalized contract, and not necessarily be visible to anyone else. As well, the purchase of that digital object is not often dictated by a market, such as in auction-based sales, but rather at the discretion of the seller / buyer and their own relationship.

NFT marketplaces such as opensea, hicetnunc, and others attempt to solve these two issues: creating a public record of the provenance of the artwork and creating an open marketplace for digital art, enabling the purchase and exchange of digital art.

The way NFTs solve the problem of establishing provenance is via recording minting and transactions in a publicly viewable digital ledger for all to see. This means that anyone can “mint” a piece of their work on a publicly viewable ledger, and record forever the artifact of their work. Then, if they find their work being used in another digital media, they could supposedly refer to the digital ledger to provide information on when and where their work was created, suggesting that the provenance of their work pre-dates the other work of art, and an argument for why their work is being infringed upon or used elsewhere, rightfully or not. In other words, it acts as a sort of digital rights management for artists, and is no surprise that actual digital rights management software are built on top of NFTs. With NFTs, artists can claim that there is a stated scarcity that is allowed for a particular type of digital content, and that copies beyond that stated scarcity are in fact not deemed legal by the artist. In other words, the entire point of NFTs, and the reason they are so marketed as being valuable, is because we believe there is digital scarcity of the content being traded and sold.

But is there really even such a thing as digital scarcity for digital media content? Consider first that all digital media is copied constantly, just in order to view it in a browser. From the original server where the content lied, to various hosts of the content, finally to your internet service provider before being copied to your machine, there are numerous copies of the supposedly scarce content. And even if there is somehow an enforced scarcity, has anyone ever used an NFT to enforce ownership? Because, if they are not enforceable, then really, what is the point of purchasing one? Even if I bought an NFT sold by an artist, do I in fact own any rights to that image? Does the NFT sale come with some legal contract that I could then take to court to sue others with? What are the terms of usage of the artwork? Does the original NFT minter also no longer have rights to the image?

Minting all the pixels

This whole line of questioning led me to develop my own set of NFTs, and understand the process by which I might enforce usage of my own work via an NFT, and whether anyone would really take me seriously. I have explored similar topics of copyright within digital media practices in the past, with my work YouTube Smash Up, a generative collage that attempted to re-produce the #1 most view video on YouTube using only content from other top YouTube videos. This work didn’t use pixels, but something between pixels and objects, or what are called “proto-objects”. Can prototypes of objects really be copyrighted, such as a piece of a forehead, lips, a single eye? Apparently so, as the result of this process was numerous copyright claims from the #1 most viewed video’s content right holders.

In this work, I attempted to flip the script, and instead of being sued, I aimed to sue others. In order to do this, I claimed that other artists are using my content without having purchased my NFTs, and so in fact are violating my rights.

I began by “minting” my first NFTs. I decided to use hicetnunc as the mint fees are way more within budget than the alternatives. As well, they are backed by a Proof of Stake chain, which many have argued is much more environmentally friendly than other chains. For my first tokens, I decided to use the most common digital artifacts of images I could in fact think of: the pixels “red”, “green”, “blue”, “white”, and “black”.

Next, I had to find anyone infringing on “my art”. I decided to focus on the hicetnunc NFT market, as it was very easy to get information on their entire collection. In total, there were about 200k artworks indexed on hicetnunc as of August 2021. Since each artwork surely uses pixels, they are all violating my rights as an NFT holder of the reg, green, blue, white and black pixels! Assuming everyone is on board with the NFT claim to authenticity I have created, they would have to purchase each of the 5 required pixels, and so then I’d be looking at approximately 1 million pixel sales, assuming each artwork required a unique sale of the 5 pixels.

Though one could take it further and claim that each usage of the pixel constitutes an additional copy, and that each artwork requires multiple purchased of the pixels. Let’s assume the average size of an image on this platform is ~1024 x 1024 pixels. Then it stands to reason that each artwork has ~1 to 5 million usages of my minted pixels. For the 200k artworks then, we’re talking about 200,000,000,000,000 usages in total. If I were to swap my minted pixels at a $1 each, that would entitle me to a claim of 200 trillion dollars worth of infringing usages of my minted pixels.

Now what?

Unfortunately, there is no standard way to enforce my NFT’s claim. I could hire a lawyer I suppose and attempt to find the identities of people on hicetnunc and attempt to bully them with cease and desist notices or threats of lawsuits. Tracing an individual’s identity on an NFT marketplace is not easy, however. In fact, it’s meant to be near impossible if the user has not willingly given their information. All that is known is their Tezos wallet address and there is no KYC enforcement in place.

Perhaps in a future where all digital media is stored, accessed, and even created using blockchain technologies, one could imagine an enforceable DRM bot, prowling and confirming NFTs for all used content within digital media. Perhaps they will call it ContentID or something clever like that. Until then however, I would have to use old fashioned technology such as lawyers, e-mails, and phone calls.

If you believe it will be possible in the future, you may want to get in early before all the pixels are gone! Below I have shared all the pixels in question which you can purchase on hicetnunc:

A grey pixel was already sold earlier this year for 1.36 million dollars, so you may want to get the jump on these while you can.

Extrapolating further

Surely minting pixels is not within the realms of expectations of what constitutes an NFT. Even if somehow they were perceived to be valuable, how could it ever be enforceable? Similar questions have been asked by others with content that closer resemble “normal” NFT content, for instance by auctioning knockoffs of original work. Even in these cases, the idea that an NFT should provide any mechanism of digital scarcity, or ever be enforceable, is still not achievable. Without having digital scarcity, or a legally binding certificate of authenticity, at least one that means anything, then what is the point of NFTs?

The recent digital art NFT wave is not a new phenomenon. CryptoKitties, a site for collecting and breeding pixel-based kittens via NFTs, accounted for 25% of Ethereum traffic in 2018, and popularized NFTs before the most recent 2021 NFT digital art wave. When bought and sold, the owners of a CryptoKitties NFT have no rights attached to the images of the art they claim to hold rights to. Instead, they are bound by the rights granted to them via the Nifty License, which states “As long as they aren’t selling the art, they’re free to incorporate it into their project”.

I see myself as an early NFT colonizer, coming into a new digital universe and saying, “You didn’t claim these pixels, so they’re mine now. Oh you already knew about them? Well, where’s your deed of land for this? Don’t have one? That’s too bad.”

For all of NFT’s stated faults, some people are certainly earning huge payouts. And with the most recent wave of NFTs, artists are earning too. However, I fear that those that are earning the most – aside from those laundering their dirty money, e.g. CryptoPunks – are those with the most influence, those who are the loudest on Twitter, or those who have the most capital to begin with in order to market their work to a larger audience. Further, the narrative surrounding NFT markets is such that there is some stated air of fact that people are really trading genuine one-of-a-kind artworks, when in fact they are really just trading influence, akin to trading on how many social media likes a post may get in the future. That’s not to say that there isn’t a culture or generational influence of digital artists being created and bred in these market places. That goes without saying. But those that are caught up in the windfall may not realize the downsides, that NFT art markets are not about owning artworks, but rather capitalizing on influence.

In order for NFT marketplaces to go beyond simply another social media influencer breeding ground, and turn into a truly creatively empowering tool, it appears that there needs to be a valid mechanism of tracing which provides actual digital scarcity for digital assets. In order for this to happen, NFTs would need to become pervasive enough that it intersects with the tools used for creation as well to allow for mechanisms to enforce and trace the usage of existing work.

However, the problem with such a world is that NFTs will then usher a new age of digital colonialism, where early adopters of the technology have vested stake in the digital space of all possible assets, and they are able to claim they have deeds of land for land that was otherwise free to roam previously. This might look like a next generation of creative tools that integrate with digital asset markets storing everything from patterns, textures, images, code, and more, but which are now backed by NFTs, and can be used to understand the provenance of the data used in the creation of new digital works. Within this future, I see myself as an early NFT colonizer, coming into a new digital universe and saying, “You didn’t claim these pixels, so they’re mine now. Oh you already knew about them? Well where’s your deed of land for this? Don’t have one? That’s too bad.”

Already we are seeing AIs capable of becoming their own NFTs, entire games minted as NFTs, and even bots capable of competing to mint an NFT. For now, NFTs are of very little consequence to most creator’s and designer’s workflow. For collectors, they do not offer any protection or any real authenticity of an art work beyond what Instagram or even screenshots would give you. And for artists, they are a lucrative distraction that may not be around forever. In any case, I’m excited to engage the community with these questions I’ve been wrestling with and understand that I may be offending artists that are just trying to earn a living wage. My aim is not to offend artists, but to learn about the questions I’ve presented in this article.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Kyle McDonald for helpful discussions during the development of this work.