Is the NFT Revolution Over?

Is the NFT revolution simply over?
 
“NFT Market Generated Over $23 Billion In Trading Volume In 2021” (Forbes, 23 December 2021). If 2021 went down in the annals of crypto history as the year of NFTs, with digital pictures of bored apes selling for tens of millions of dollars to such celebrities as Snoop Dogg, Justin Bieber, or Gwyneth Paltrow, 2022 will be remembered as their market shake-up, with the Apes’ value falling by 78%. As the market consolidates, the moment is ripe to revisit the 2021 crypto and NFTs craze and reimagine what the future lies for them.
 
Whether digital monkeys are headed for their doom or not, or whether the industry really is just in a winter, the Century City Arts Council has invited three NFT experts to describe how NFTs work, what they are, why they are still relevant in 2022 and beyond. We hope to also discuss NFTs as a new art form and their role in reshaping both the art market and art collecting practices. 
 
 
Muriel Quancard is a contemporary art curator, appraiser, and strategic consultant, invested in helping artists, collectors and arts organizations define new paradigms. A fervent advocate of technology driven practices, she lectures and consults on complex phenomena such as computer-generated art, AI powered processes, augmented and virtual reality, blockchain and NFT. Muriel curated exhibitions, festivals and commissioned artworks globally collaborating with such prestigious institutions as the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Museum of Art. Previously, Muriel worked as an art advisor and served as a Senior Director for the Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York. Muriel is a Certified Member of the Appraisers Association of America in post-war, contemporary, and emerging art, and a member of their newly formed NFT committee.
 
Peter Wu+ generates artworks and immersive environments utilizing modeling and rendering software, projection mapping, 3D printing, and machine learning. Through speculative fiction, Wu+ investigates our estrangement associated with technological advancement and modernity. Wu+’s work examines how technology can alter and influence our perceptions of identity, reality, and history. In 2020, he founded and created EPOCH, an artist-run virtual experiment that functions as an inclusive community building platform inviting established and emerging artists working in both digital and analog mediums to participate. Being primarily artist-centric, EPOCH has established itself as a virtual destination that challenges the status quo with its critical and innovative approach to curation and exhibition building. In 2019, Wu+ was awarded the COLA Individual Artist Fellowship and the Public Art Division commission with Los Angeles World Airports Arts Exhibition Program to be completed in 2022. 

Sarah Conley Odenkirk

• ​Mary Williams - Realtor, Coldwell Banker

• Michael Douglas Carlin - Documentary Film Director