title: NFTalkie-walkie green
year: 2024
src origin: link to asset
type: digital asset
size: responsive
type: HTML/CSS/JS & audio recording
audio: Hans Ulrich Reck
visual & code: Florian Kuhlmann
blockchain: Base (L2 Ethereum by Coinbase) -> Transfer ETH to Base Blockchain

HTML-based audio playing web piece using JavaScript, CSS animations, and embedded animated GIFs

NFTalkie Walkies by Florian Kuhlmann and Hans Ulrich Reck

Background

At some point, artists and art theorists adopt every so-called “new” medium, attempting to configure it according to their own perspectives. Naturally, especially in the context of artists and their galleries, there is also the impulse to anchor artworks in every new medium in such a way that money can be made, added value can be generated, and an economy oriented toward surplus value can be established.

Motivation and Intent

For the experimental nature or ambition of advanced, media-interested art, however, this is not the main focus—though the collateral effect of economic added value is by no means despised or rejected outright.

Thus, the starting point and motivation here is to use NFTs and blockchain technology for the presentation of art and its theoretical discussion in a wide variety of contexts. This is the basis for the dialogue between the authors on how and what might be realized in this regard.

What are NFTs?

Typically, NFTs and blockchains—when related to “art”—are set up for visual one-of-a-kinds. In doing so, art integrates itself into the medium of a growing crypto industry. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique units of data that cannot or should not be exchanged. Their place of installation is used by the purchaser of the unique token as a singular assertion of ownership identifiable on the blockchain. Of course, they can be bought, sold, or traded, but their location is initially unambiguous.

However, this already applies to the traditional sphere of artworks. Every such location—and thereby every work placed there—is uniquely definable, thus unmistakable. Certainly, this is not new either and also applies to the traditional domain in which artworks are acquired, placed, and stored. Because no two “tokens” are identical, they cannot be calculated or exchanged as equivalents. Above all, they determine and make measurable the authenticity of ownership of digitized data within the blockchain.

The Edition

What is new in the series presented here by Kuhlmann and Reck is that it does not concern images, but lectures, which can be placed and acquired in this way. The authors have deliberately refrained from participating in the one-off economy with its exorbitant prices and instead offer three lectures as an edition in a format comparable to the earlier acquisition of limited editions or pressings of LPs or CDs.

The underlying idea is that Hans Ulrich Reck delivers or records lectures on various questions frequently and urgently raised in artistic circles, and Florian Kuhlmann designs them and anchors them in the blockchain.

Contents of the Edition

This has now been done. And so, the authors—together with various organizers—are showcasing the possibility of acquiring a digitally signed edition on the blockchain at €20 per unit/lecture.