(est. 2021) explores the intersections of technology, culture, and human experience. From urban phenomena and digital spirituality to the evolving landscapes of creativity, we investigate how modern life reshapes perception, identity, and society.
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#21 — VIOL: the ‘anti-violence’ drug that is spreading through Lisbon by Mark Ellison
#20 — Signal Ghosts: The Cities Where Wi-Fi Never Dies
#19 — Digital Detox Retreats: Escaping the Algorithm by Cassandra Myrren
#18 — The Urban Sleep Crisis by Eleanor Voss
#17 — Cryptic Art: NFTs and the Revaluation of Creativity by Marcus Ellwood
#16 — Virtual Pilgrimages: Religious Experience Online by Mark Ellison
#15 — The Dark Side of Wellness: When Self-Optimization Becomes Obsession by Eleanor Voss
#14 — AI Companions and the Loneliness Epidemic by Isolde Maren
#13 — The Rise of Microdosing in Corporate Culture by Cassandra Myrren
#12 — Sonic Immunity: Healing Through Frequencies by Cassandra Myrren
#11 — The Ethics of Immortality by Adrien Veyra
#10 — Algorithmic Faith: When Machines Preach by Mark Ellison
#09 — Post-Human Erotics: Desire Beyond the Flesh by Elin Vårnes
#08 — Synthetic Memory: The Future of Personal Archives by Caio Navarro
#07 — Neurosprawl: Mapping the Brain as a City by Eleanor Voss
#06 — The Archive Will Outlive You by Liang Wei
#05 — Eternal Scroll: The Infinite Feed as a Prison by Isolde Maren
#04 — Terraforming the Mind by Alessio Romano
#03 — Digital Necromancy by Mark Ellison
#02 — Speculative Hunger: Future Diets in a Synthetic World by Cassandra Myrren
#01 — The Ecology of Glitches by Alessio Romano
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In recent years, NFTs have emerged not merely as a digital novelty but as a profound catalyst reshaping the terrain of creative production. Where once art was inseparable from its material presence, today a blockchain ledger can confer uniqueness on an image that, in pixel form, could be infinitely replicated. The consequence is a radical revaluation of creativity itself: what counts as original, valuable, or culturally significant is increasingly entangled with technological mediation.
NFTs operate at the nexus of digital culture, economics, and artistic practice. They formalize the scarcity of what was once infinitely abundant, privileging provenance over perception. Philosophers like Yuk Hui have explored how technology mediates human experience (Hui, 2016), arguing that such digital infrastructures transform not only objects but our conception of agency and originality. In this light, NFTs are not simply market instruments—they constitute a new ontological framework for art.
The movement has already catalyzed the emergence of novel artistic practices. Digital creators such as Beeple, Pak, and XCOPY have transformed social media virality, algorithmic aesthetics, and interactive design into objects of market desire. Here, the medium is inseparable from the market: code, visual form, and blockchain metadata converge to create works whose identity is simultaneously artistic, technical, and speculative. Claire Bishop’s insights on participatory and relational art (Bishop, 2012) resonate: collectors are not passive witnesses but active participants in the creation of value, their bids and ownership embedding them into the lifecycle of the artwork itself.
Yet this democratization is paradoxical. While the technology promises greater autonomy for artists, it has also generated stark hierarchies: a handful of early adopters capture disproportionate economic gains, while the broader creative community navigates volatile markets and algorithmic gatekeeping. Cultural theorists such as Boris Groys (2014) have noted that the digitalization of art transforms it into a field of visibility and reputation, where attention is both commodity and medium. In other words, NFTs collapse creation and circulation, aesthetics and speculation, into a single process.
The global dimension of NFTs further complicates the discourse. Artists from Europe, Asia, and the Americas participate in shared digital marketplaces, challenging local notions of art, copyright, and cultural heritage. The tension between global access and localized experience mirrors Hito Steyerl’s reflections on the circulation of images in the digital age (Steyerl, 2017): images are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, and value is produced less by intrinsic qualities than by networks of perception, endorsement, and technological infrastructure.
Moreover, NFTs provoke a philosophical inquiry into the nature of ownership and authenticity. What does it mean to “own” a digital object whose visual presence can be copied at will? How does creativity persist when recognition is algorithmically mediated and commodified? These questions situate NFTs within broader debates about immaterial labor, digital economies, and the future of cultural production.
In sum, NFTs challenge us to rethink the very architecture of creativity. They demand engagement with questions of technological mediation, global circulation, market speculation, and aesthetic innovation. Whether we regard them as speculative bubbles, tools of empowerment, or a new artistic medium, NFTs are a lens through which we can interrogate the evolving relationship between art, value, and society in the twenty-first century.
References
- Hui, Y. (2016). The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics. Falmouth: Urbanomic.
- Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso.
- Groys, B. (2014). Art Power. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Steyerl, H. (2017). Duty-Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War. London: Verso.