Jennifer & Kevin McCoy on the True Value of Digital Art, Thursday, Live on Zoom

Sign up for this week’s debut of our new conversation series with trailblazer at the intersection of art and technology.

The artists Jennifer & Kevin McCoy

Artwrld editor-at-large Andrew Goldstein will be hosting a live conversation with the McCoys on Zoom this Thursday, September 5th, at 1:00 PM EST.

RSVP to join the discussion and take part in the community Q&A at the end! (This newsletter is meant to help you get up to speed ahead of the talk.)


In this week's email

  1. Meet the McCoys: Why Artwrld is launching with the McCoys
  2. Pre-Read: What to know before tuning into the talk
  3. Community Box: What's that? Come find out.

Meet the McCoys


What if the art market—what if the whole underlying foundation of the art ecosystem—was a buggy string of legacy code? And, what if you could fix it?

That was the deeper proposition that the artist Kevin McCoy offered up a decade ago when he and the technologist Anil Dash invented the NFT, debuting their breakthrough onstage at Rhizome’s 2014 Seven x Seven conference. By using the blockchain to imbue a digital artwork with unique value and verifiable provenance, they essentially applied a hotfix to a flaw in the art market that until then had made it practically impossible for digital artists to monetize their creations. 

Did it work? Maybe all too well.

Quantum, a generative artwork by McCoy that was the first ever registered on the blockchain, resembles a star exploding and imploding: a supernova. For now, that pulsating image has proven prophetic. Three years after the broader NFT phenomenon burst sensationally into the public consciousness in 2021—a crypto annus mirabilis in which digital artworks and collectibles alike seemed to be going money-viral everywhere (including Quantum, which sold at Sotheby's for $1.47 million)—the sector seems to be similarly collapsing in on itself.

Today, many once-high-flying NFT businesses are struggling or defunct, prices have cratered, and just last week tokenized-art platform OpenSea announced that it had received a Wells notice from the SEC—a sign that regulators may continue to view at least some NFT collections as unregistered securities, i.e. illegal in their current state.

So, what happened to the promise of the blockchain for digital art? And are things as dire as the headlines (like "The Overwhelming Majority of NFTs Are ‘Dead,’ Report Says") suggest?

To inaugurate Artwrld’s conversation series, we're pleased to sit down with Kevin and his wife and artistic partner Jennifer McCoy to talk about the evolving nature of value when it comes to digital art, where things may go from here, and the duo'snew show at New York's Ryan Lee Gallery starring an art-making robot.


Pre-Read


BIRTH OF THE NFT: It’s rare to witness an art-historical innovation take place in front of your eyes, but that’s what you can do by watching this video of Kevin McCoy and Anil Dash creating NFTs (initially called “monographs” for monetized graphics) onstage at Rhizome’s 2014 Seven on Seven conference. Come for the wow factor, stay for the loose, improvisatory, and unexpectedly funny tenor of the whole thing. [Vimeo, 28 minutes long]

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT: Here's a quickish synopsis of what led to the Seven on Seven moment and then the saga of the first NFT—McCoy’s Quantum—and the fascinating, go-nowhere lawsuit following its Sotheby’s sale. [NFT Now, 809 words]

THE STORY OF MONEGRAPH: The Seven on Seven presentation didn’t just give rise to NFTs, it also led to the 2021 creation of the Monegraph platform, a business venture Kevin McCoy launched to help artists and galleries start their own NFT operations. Three years later, the Monegraph website is no longer online. [Artnet News, 675 words] 

NFTS WILL POWER THE METAVERSE?: Here, Kevin McCoy postulates how his invention will form the infrastructure of our coming virtual world over the next five to 10 years. [Coindesk, 502 words plus accompanying video] 

OPENSEA VS. THE SEC: This is an illuminating conversation with "crypto lawyer" Preston Byrne about why OpenSea has a good defense against an SEC case even though two NFT projects it platformed, Stoner Cats and Impact Theory, ended up settling with the agency for millions. [Unchained podcast, 37 minutes]

"THE RISE AND FALL OF OPENSEA": A deeply reported expose on how the most successful and best-funded NFT platform both lost its lead in the platform wars and got caught in the crosshairs of regulators. [The Verge, an epic 5,596 words]


Community Box


What is the Community Box? Really, it's whatever you want it to be.

Think of it as a kind of campus message board where you can ask questions, provide feedback, share ideas about what we should be doing at Artwrld, or throw up job postings—and if you're an art organization looking for a tech resource or a tech company looking for art help, our newsletter audience (12,000~ at launch) might be a perfect pond to go fishing for talent.

More than anything, this is an experimental space—so just email anything you think could or should fit here to community@artwrld and we'll figure out how to accommodate it on the fly.


About Artwrld


Artwrld hosts live talks every week with leading artists, technologists, art professionals, and entrepreneurs about the opportunities and challenges at the vanguard of creativity.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​more at: artwrld.com