Author Archives: Pau Waelder

Out of the grid, into your screen: display your NFTs anywhere

Pau Waelder

The NFT revolution has brought an unprecedented attention to digital art, which is now easier to collect than ever before: once you sync your wallet to the marketplace, you only need to browse, pick your favorite NFTs, and in two clicks you’re the proud owner of a rare gem that just dropped. It is so easy that many collectors have hundreds, if not thousands, of digital artworks in their wallet. The excitement of owning something beautiful and unique, paired with the immediacy of the transaction, can become addictive. As the collection grows, it fills row after row of an endless grid that you can see on any web browser. With a simple copy and paste, you can also share your collection with anyone and brag about your possessions, your taste, or your ability to seize the opportunity and get that coveted artwork that is now out of reach of most wallets.

The excitement of owning something beautiful and unique, paired with the immediacy of the transaction, can become addictive. As the collection grows, it fills row after row of an endless grid that you can see on any web browser.

In the heyday of its market boom, NFTs were seen as quick investments that provided those who arrived earlier and were faster to collect an opportunity to multiply their earnings by buying and reselling quickly: this is what in the art market lingo is known as “flipping.” But art flippers are frowned upon in the art world: what artists, galleries, and also art lovers want are serious collectors. A serious collector is someone who buys art out of a deep appreciation for the artwork, and wants to keep it. Someone who likes to support artists and learn from their work, and obviously someone who enjoys experiencing the artwork, not just storing it somewhere.

As the NFT market has begun to attract serious collectors, a specific question has risen to the surface: how to display the NFTs in your collection? This is a concern that was usually ignored by those who intended to keep the artwork in their wallet for just a few minutes. But now that art flippers, discouraged by the drop in value of cryptocurrencies and many hyped collectibles, have begun to look elsewhere for investments, those who remain and are really interested in the art they collect are considering how to enjoy the artworks as they would if they owned a painting or a sculpture.

From browser to room

Typically, marketplaces focus on providing artworks for sale and securing the transactions. They can also provide additional files that only the owner of the NFT can access, countering the argument “why buy something anyone can download?. In some cases, the platform is not just an endless grid displaying every artwork that users have uploaded, but something more. This is, for instance, the case of Feral File, which features NFTs in curated selections that focus on a particular subject or format, and put together artworks by emerging and established artists, oftentimes produced specifically for the platform. Feral File also stands out from other marketplaces in that it provides collectors with detailed information about each artwork, its format, and the associated files that will be transferred after the sale. As I mentioned in a previous article, it is very important to know exactly what you are getting when you buy an NFT. 

Beyond securing the means to collect NFTs and preview them in their own website, most marketplaces do not offer any means for collectors to display the artworks they own elsewhere. Here again, Feral File is an exception with the development of the smartphone app Autonomy, which allows bringing to a single interface all NFTs collected in different wallets, on Ethereum or Tezos, and viewing them on the device’s screen. The artworks are collected from their IPFS addresses, which at first might cause some delays in loading and viewing the artworks, particularly for a large collection. The app also offers the possibility of connecting to a smart TV or projector and viewing a single artwork on a screen of projected surface, although this relies on a previous synchronization with the device that is not always easy to achieve: while Chromecast and AirPlay are increasingly used, not all screens and projectors support them properly. Solutions like Autonomy respond to the need that NFT collectors have of managing their collection and displaying the artworks, but they are still not fully developed.

Niio has a robust system for storing and managing collections of video and digital art, that is paired with a curated art program, and an app for iOS, Android, and Apple TV, also directly available on Samsung and LG screens, that allows to display a continuous stream of artworks, full collections, and curated selections with information about the art and the artists. The system also provides full integration with NFT collections by allowing users to synchronize their wallets and import the NFTs to their Vault, where a copy of the IPFS stored file is saved and can be immediately displayed on any screen using the Niio app. In this manner, the solution provided by Niio finally fills the gap between buying an artwork minted as an NFT and enjoying it on a high resolution screen at home, or anywhere. Once the wallet is connected to the collector’s personal account, they can buy NFTs on any marketplace, choose which ones to store in their private vault, create their own playlists, and view them in the app or on a screen.

This is the future of collecting, as gallery owners Valérie Hasson-Benillouche (Charlot, Paris) and Wolf Lieser (DAM, Berlin) recently pointed out: collectors are traveling a lot, and they like to have their collection with them, and also to share it with others. This brings a different way of buying art, as it is not only meant to be placed somewhere, but it becomes part of the collector’s daily life and interactions with others, wherever they go.

Moodies LA Takeover. Photo courtesy of Moodies by Hanuka

Formats and behaviors

A question that comes out when displaying NFTs usually is: how do I display my square NFT in a 16:9 screen? Certainly this is a common issue due to the paradoxical fact that TVs have evolved from being square to rectangular, while digital art, that usually adopts the format of a screen in portrait or landscape orientation, has usually adopted square formats in the NFT market. The explanation for NFTs being square can be found in the grid established by most marketplaces, which has become the field of battle where artists compete to show their work, the latter being limited to a square thumbnail. The square format has also proven to be the most successful on social media, and particularly apt for PFP collections, the type of art that one buys to use as a profile picture and signal one’s belonging to a community defined by a particular NFT project such as CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, or more recently, Moodies by Hanuka.

While some square frames exist, not all artworks minted as NFTs follow this rule, so it is up to each collector to decide whether to use a regular screen for all the art they own, or find a place for an additional screen in this particular format. Certainly, just as most collectors have artworks in different sizes that fit certain spaces of their homes, it is possible to have a series of screens (one in landscape orientation, another one in portrait orientation, and finally a square screen) to display different kinds of artworks. In this case, it is important to use a system that allows controlling the art displayed on all of the screens from one app, which is something that Niio can uniquely do.

Just as most collectors have artworks in different sizes that fit certain spaces of their homes, it is possible to have a series of screens to display different kinds of artworks

Not all NFTs are the same or have the same purpose. As previously mentioned, some are meant to be used as a profile picture or distributed online, which does not mean they can´t also be displayed on the wall. But others have a particular behavior, they can be generative, or interactive, which means they require a software to run continuously and sometimes an input in the form of a mouse click, movement captured by a camera, and so forth. Digital art has many forms beyond what is usually associated with NFTs, and since artists can mint any digital artwork as an NFT, it must be remembered that some can only be experienced with a specific software and hardware setup. In these cases, the collector must take into account that they need to setup a computer with the software provided by the artist, and connect it to a screen. Some companies, such as FRAMED*, sell a digital frame with an integrated computer that can run software-based artworks, but the collector must make sure that the software of the artwork they own is compatible with this type of device, as well as the size and orientation of the screen (FRAMED* currently sells a device named Mono X7 which is a 17.3-inch portrait orientation display). For video artworks, there are also solutions like Infinite Objects, which provide a customized small screen to display a single video in a continuous loop. Described as “video prints,” these screens have been used by some artists to turn an NFT into a unique object.

Autonomy lets you access your NFT collection and display it. Niio allows you to store, manage, distribute and display video, digital art, and NFTs on any screen.

A collection that lasts

The NFT space wants serious collectors that do not engage in art flipping and hold to the art they own. But collectors also demand a lasting solution for their art collections, which at first the NFT art market, immersed in constant dropping and transacting, did not care much to provide. Most NFTs are stored in IPFS, a peer-to-peer network system that is expected to keep artwork files safe and at the same time publicly available. However, the best option to ensure that one will be able to preserve the artwork is to download the file and keep copies in different locations. This is particularly true for unlockable content that is only available to collectors and usually consists of larger files and additional material. Most marketplaces rely on links to IPFS and store unlockables in their servers, but a safer choice is to keep everything at hand, in a private space. Niio provides collectors with a vault where they can store the artworks and manage all the information about them, including additional files that will be kept private and can always be downloaded. The artwork can be displayed and shared, but it is also securely stored.

Most marketplaces rely on links to IPFS and store unlockables in their servers, but a safer choice is to keep everything at hand, in a private space.

NFTs show that art collecting is entering a new phase in which collectors want flexibility, ease of use from their smartphone or any other connected device, and the ability to take their collection anywhere. But they still want reliability and a way to safely preserve their artworks. The solution that aptly responds to all of these needs will become the standard in the art world.

The Role of Art in a Climate Emergency

Pau Waelder

On 13th October 2022, two climate activists from the environmental group Just Stop Oil, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, threw two cans of tomato soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s painting Sunflowers (1888), on display at the National Gallery in London. They glued one hand to the wall under the painting and sat on the floor. Phoebe Plummer then said: 

“What is worth more, art or life? Is it worth more than food, worth more than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people? The cost of living crisis is part of the cost of the oil crisis. Fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup. Meanwhile, crops are failing, millions of people are dying in monsoons, wildfires, and severe droughts. We cannot afford new oil and gas, it’s going to take everything we know and love.” 

The young woman’s passionate statement was cut short by a security guard who proceeded to remove them from the premises. The activists were brought to a district court and charged with criminal damage. Van Gogh’s painting, protected by a glass, was not harmed, although the frame suffered minimal damage, according to the museum.

The protest has sparked widespread outrage at what can be seen as an act of vandalism. Attacks on artworks at museums have been perpetrated many times by individuals for a variety of reasons, sometimes political, sometimes to draw attention to personal issues. Often, the perpetrators have been described as insane. It is therefore unsurprising that the act carried out by the two young activists has been perceived as criminal, deranged, and appalling, or simply dismissed as stupid. This type of protest is not new, it has been taking place over the summer by Just Stop Oil and then by climate activists in Italy, in actions that mainly consisted of gluing their hands to the protective glass or the frame of a famous painting depicting nature. The activists have taken precautions not to harm the artworks, and therefore cannot be considered to vandalize them, although they have at times caused damages to the gallery walls or the frames. However, no other protest has caused such strong reactions as the one carried out by Plummer and Holland, probably due to the aggressiveness of throwing liquid over a painting (which would normally cause irreparable damage), and maybe also due to who carried out this action. Two young queer women, Plummer and Holland have increasingly become the target of critics who have questioned their sanity and intelligence, and ridiculed everything in them, from their names to the color of Plummer’s hair and her accent. 

An artist’s response

Among the few in the art world who have expressed support for the protest is artist Joanie Lemercier, whose work is often inspired by nature and the representation of the natural world, leading him to address climate change and environmental degradation in artworks and performances that document and support the work of climate activists. In a video posted on social media, Lemercier states:

“Paintings are often the representation and celebration of landscapes, nature, and life. But we don’t actually give much value to these subjects or to their protection. So we are in the process of losing the conditions of habitability of the planet, yet a lot of people are outraged about a symbolic action that didn’t even damage the painting.” 

Addressing the subject matter of the painting, Lemercier points out that the sunflower fields that inspired Van Gogh in Verarges have recently reached the highest temperature ever recorded in France. “We are irreversibly losing these landscapes that Van Gogh loved painting so much,” states Lemercier. The artist suggests that, instead of focusing on the apparent attack on the painting, the public should pay attention to the message that the activists are trying to communicate. He concludes: 

“How do we protect, not just the representation of a landscape on a canvas, but the very landscape that is being annihilated? If we listen to the activists, the message is very clear: we need to stop oil, gas, and fossil fuel extraction.”

Joanie Lemercier makes a good point by presenting a documented, reasonable take on the protest and its meaning, that is arguably more convincing than the protest itself. He does not approve the attack on an artwork, but rather emphasizes the fact that this is a desperate measure to get a message across, and makes it clear that the painting was not harmed. However, it is hard to support the idea that good can be done by attacking cultural heritage, and it is dangerous to simply expect activists around the world to diligently inform themselves of the ways in which an artwork can be exposed to liquids, glues, or other substances without causing permanent damage. 

We care more about representations of nature than about nature itself. We have made cities and virtual spaces our habitat, while using natural environments as sites of leisure, or even just as an image to be displayed on the computer’s desktop. 

Personally, as a curator with a background in art history, I feel a natural aversion to any form of attack to a work of art (including the practice of burning prints and paintings to sell them as unique NFTs), but I understand the urgency expressed by the activists and the fact that collectively, we care more about representations of nature than about nature itself. We have made cities and virtual spaces our habitat, while using natural environments as sites of leisure, or even just as an image to be displayed on the computer’s desktop. 

What is the role of art in our present climate emergency, then? Maybe something more than becoming the backdrop of climate activists’ demands. The controversy around the soup thrown at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers has focused on the act of attacking a famous, and very expensive, painting, as well as in the activists themselves, but no attention has been paid to the connection between the life and work of the artist and the land that he loved, except in the reading presented by Lemercier. Living artists are now responding to climate change with artworks that speak to our present and address those same issues laid out by the activists, so it would be wise to listen to them too. 

Marina Zurkow, OOzy#2: Like Oil and Water, 2022

Art in a climate emergency

Artists addressing climate change in their work face the challenge of creating art that is engaging in itself, that responds to aesthetic considerations, but also manages to get its message across. This is not easy to achieve, particularly at a time when people consume large amounts of visual material and read the messages that get to them quickly and superficially, as the Just Stop Oil protest and its reactions clearly show.

Transdisciplinary artist Marina Zurkow points to the need to look beneath the surface by taking as a reference a diagram created by Donella Meadows in the 1970s, which uses the image of an iceberg as a metaphor of how difficult it is to change the mental models (the hidden part of the iceberg) that shape the visible actions and their consequences. She applies this concept to our understanding of climate change: 

“Honestly, I feel like if we can’t have an emotional relationship to the material of our planet that is at great risk, we can’t change the way we think about the world. And so anything like «don’t take a plastic bag,» or «get an electric car,» all the moral imperatives that are put on us, if they don’t come from the heart, they’re not going to stick, they’ll just be gone in the next election cycle –at least, in the United States. And so what I am committed to do with my work is to create emotional connections to this material and the ocean.”

Tamiko Thiel, Unexpected Growth, 2018

The pollution of the oceans is an aspect of the impact of human activity on the planet that relates to the climate emergency, as well as with our contradictory relationship with nature as an idealized image and a neglected wasteland. In an interview with Helmuts Caune published in Arterritory, artist Tamiko Thiel recalls her experience with the reality of plastic pollution:

“When my husband and I would vacation in Greece, Indonesia or Malaysia over the past number of years, at some point we started to realise that the sort of pristine beaches that are everyone’s dream of a tropical vacation is an artefact of beach-side resorts. They send out their staff in the early morning hours, before everyone wakes up, to collect all of the plastic that’s accumulated.”

She created the artwork Unexpected Growth (2018), commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, that addresses this issue by placing the viewer in an immersive scenario in which the 6th floor of the museum is under water, populated by plants and creatures formed of plastic debris. The experience can lead a visitor to think about this reality, but at the same time, the piece is quite beautiful, its aesthetic qualities possibly causing more delight than awe.

Balancing environmental concerns and aesthetics is particularly difficult. Marina Zurkow points out that addressing a subject in a manner that is too shocking can lead to rejection:

“The brain wants to categorize what it receives and put in boxes and dismiss those ideas that seem dangerous, depressing or disturbingly radical. Presenting an audience with an impactful idea will attract their attention, but it may also lead them to reject the idea because it is too disturbing and just move on. Our brains want to take a nap, and have a difficult time dealing with uncertainty.”

Kelly Richardson, HALO I, 2021

Artist Kelly Richardson deals with climate change in her work by creating imaginary futures that prompt a reflection on our present. In this way, the message is placed at a certain distance in time that does not produce anxiety and allows a space for action: 

“Until this point, on this precipice, we’ve allowed terrifying futures to be ushered in despite the predictions of so many. Perhaps we have allowed this in part because we couldn’t visualize or understand these futures from an experiential point of view. I try to offer this window of understanding through my work. I create potential futures for people to experience, to encourage reflection on current priorities and where those are leading us as a species.”

In HALO (2021), Richardson depicts a red moon distorted by heat rising from a campfire, a scene from her summer evenings in British Columbia that now takes a different meaning as the rising temperatures have led to banning campfires due to the risk of wildfire. “Summers now bring a mix of joy for its promised, remaining riches and genuine fear associated with what else they will bring,” states Richardson, “I now look out my windows towards a tree-covered mountain and think, «that’s a lot of fuel».”

Diane Drubay, Ignis II, 2021

The scene in Richardson’s video is relatable and in this manner makes its message stronger. This approach to what is familiar and close is also mentioned by artist Diane Drubay when addressing climate change through her work:

“We need to reconnect with what surrounds us on a daily basis in order to better understand and respect it. Having grown up in the middle of nature but having lived in the city for the last 20 years, the only element that has allowed me to feel connected to the grandeur and sublime of nature is the sun. I, therefore, assumed that if everyone could reconnect with the sun in a subconscious and transcendental way, a new relationship between humans and nature could be sparked.”

Her work Ignis II (2021) shows a beautiful summer sky that turns into a menacing red storm in just 14 seconds, which refers to the 14 years left until, according to several scientists, the Earth would reach a point of no return in global warming. Again, the image can be easily connected with a personal experience and suggests a reflection on a future that is not immediate, but is close enough to require immediate action.

Alexandra Crouwers, The Plot: a day/night sequence, 2021

Personal experiences can have powerful narratives, particularly when they bring a more intimate perspective to climate change than the global views offered by scientific reports. Artist Alexandra Crouwers focuses her work in the creation of virtual environments that reflect on our relationship with nature, landscape, and architecture. She speaks of feeling eco anxiety for more than 20 years, which has brought her to consider the climate emergency from a more personal point of view. 

“There is a kind of innate longing for landscapes that are not there. This is connected to the idea of escapism; to escape from where you are at. The word nature has become very problematic: what we refer to as nature is quickly deteriorating in all kinds of senses. To me, simulating this idea of wilderness is like a twisted sense of digital nature, of purpose preservation. It is a way to deal with the idea of loss.”

In Diorama. The Plot: a day/night sequence (2021), she depicts what is left of a small family forest that was cleared due to a climate change induced fatal spruce bark beetle infestation. The 3D rendering of the real space becomes a sort of memorial and a tool for the artist to investigate how to deal with eco anxiety and ecological grief.

Katie Torn, Dream Flower I, 2022

Depicting remnants, ruins, or debris is also a powerful way to create awareness about the ongoing destruction of our natural environment. Taking this idea to a different context, artist Katie Torn has addressed the possibility that we as humans have become incapable of understanding nature without our intervention, and can only envision a hybrid world in which natural and artificial merge into one. The classical concept of beauty plays a pivotal role here, as it confronts us to our distancing from nature:

“Destruction and decay are frightening but it can also be beautiful on a purely aesthetic level. Like watching a forest fire from your computer screen. It is awful and heart breaking but can be watched slightly removed like an explosion in an action film. My work stems from the ironies we see in industrial disasters in nature like the most beautiful pink sunset that is caused by pollution or being awestruck by the colorful beauty in an oil spill.”

While works such as Dream Flower I (2022), cannot be said to address climate change, they do point out our relationship with nature in a wider sense, the mental models to which Marina Zurkow has referred, and that form a society interested in its own comfort, regardless of the consequences to our planet.

Christopher Makos: everyone is in drag

Pau Waelder

Niio is proud to introduce a selection of artcasts by celebrated photographers in collaboration with Fahey/Klein Gallery, the leading contemporary photography gallery in Los Angeles. Curated by Nicholas Fahey, these selections dive into the work of the artists, presenting key series and iconic images, and are available to our members for a limited time only. .

Interview with Christopher Makos. Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, Christopher Makos moved to New York after high school. He traveled to Paris and met surrealist photographer Man Ray. During this time, he traveled around Europe and spent long sessions with Man Ray, learning from his experience and working method: “His philosophy was, go by your first impressions, your gut feelings,” recalls Makos about his conversations with Man Ray, “because usually these are the best, because by the time you’ve looked at it two or three times, that analytical part kicks in, and then you start to question some of your inputs.” This advice has led Makos to always keep all of his material and revisit it later, to discover new readings and possibilities that he may have previously overlooked.

Christopher Makos. White Trash, 1977

“From Man Ray I learned to go by my first impressions, my gut feelings”

Back in New York, Makos met Andy Warhol in 1976 through his friend Dotson Rader at an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The photographer then had a show at a gallery in 492 Broadway titled Step on It, which consisted of putting the photos on the floor, covered by Plexiglas sheets, so that visitors would have to look down instead of staring at the walls. Warhol could not attend but sent Bob Colacello, who loved the show and invited Makos to visit the Factory. He then started working for the influential Interview magazine, after taking some pictures of Warhol. “At the time, they weren’t really shooting assignments,” says Makos, “it was more like, you know, we decide on somebody and they would see if it’s a good fit.” 

Christopher Makos. Portrait of Andy, 1986

He became a close friend of Warhol and to a certain point, an influence in the way the famed artist would conceive photography. Part of their collaboration revolved around Warhol’s interest in modeling. Sony Corporation was interested in having Warhol as a spokesperson of their products, and at that moment he realized he did not have a portfolio of pictures that could help him in this aspect of his career. “Andy had a film career, a painter’s career, an author’s career, but he never had a modeling career,” states Makos, “and if you see the pictures, you’ll notice that he’s quite awkward in it. As he was a painter, his hands are quite telling of how awkward he might feel at that moment.” 

Christopher Makos. Debbie Harry, 1977

In 1977, he became known for his book WHITE TRASH, which depicted the punk scene in New York alongside portraits of some of the city’s celebrities, such as fashion designer Halston and singer Deborah Harry, among many others. In the 1980s, he became an exceptional chronicler of the New York scene through his column “IN” in Interview magazine, presenting up and coming stars Matt Dillon, Christian Slater, Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Ford, among others. He traveled to Spain and started a long term relationship with the cultural scene in Madrid, participating in the progressive cultural and social movement known as La Movida, which emerged shortly after the death of dictator Francisco Franco and in the midst of the country’s transition to democracy. His portraits of film director Pedro Almodóvar, fashion designer Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, actress Bibi Andersen and singer Miguel Bosé are iconic of this moment. 

“Creativity is something that you have to just be open to, and let things emerge.”

In 1981, Makos and Warhol conceived a new photographic project inspired by Man Ray’s series of photographs of Marcel Duchamp dressed as the fictional Rose Sélavy. Warhol characterized himself as a woman, with different wigs and makeup, wearing a white shirt and tie that he rearranged in some pictures to make it look like a dress with a strapless neckline. Both the artist and the photographer rejected a dress offered by Halston for this shoot, which Makos says they should have accepted, although it would have probably taken the series in a different direction. “Some of the people at the Factory didn’t want us to do it, because they thought that would ruin Andy’s portrait career,” states Makos. He took 365 different pictures over two days, of which 120 form the series Altered Image. In these portraits, Andy Warhol plays with stereotypes but does not want to portray the ideal of the complacent, beautiful woman. He looks at the camera with a defying stare that involves more of an introspection of his own identity. Makos compares this work with the way Cindy Sherman plays with stereotypical images and identities, and how everyone plays a certain character in their daily lives, everyone is in drag.

Christopher Makos. Altered Image, 1981

“Andy had a film career, a painter’s career, an author’s career, but he never had a modeling career”

Christopher Makos has portrayed numerous celebrities, from Elizabeth Taylor, John Lennon, David Bowie, and Salvador Dalí, to Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Mick Jagger, among many others. His ability to capture the personality of the person behind the celebrity stems from his early lessons with Man Ray in following one’s gut feeling and letting the person in front of his camera be themselves. A keen observer, he expresses how being attentive spurs creativity: “I think creativity is something that you have to just be open to, and let things emerge. If you keep your eyes wide open, and see things around, creativity can emerge.”

Christopher Makos. Equipose, 2005

Steve Schapiro: what is special about people

Pau Waelder

Niio is proud to introduce a selection of artcasts by celebrated photographers in collaboration with Fahey/Klein Gallery, the leading contemporary photography gallery in Los Angeles. Curated by Nicholas Fahey, these selections dive into the work of the artists, presenting key series and iconic images, and are available to our members for a limited time only.

Interview with photographer Steve Schapiro (July 21st, 2017). Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery

Steve Schapiro (1934-2022) was one of the most prominent figures of documentary photography in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. An exceptional witness of the civil rights movement, his camera captured key moments in American history with a sharp eye and caring attention to the subjects of his portraits. 

Devoted to photojournalism from a young age, he was inspired by Henri Cartier-Bresson and took lessons from W. Eugene Smith, whose teachings marked a profound influence in Schapiro’s work throughout his career. In 1961 he traveled to Arkansas and photographed a camp for migrant workers. Jubilee, a small Catholic magazine, published his photos as an eight-page picture story. The New York Times picked up one of the photos and used it as the cover for the New York Times Magazine section. That was his first real break. Schapiro continued showing his pictures to Life while doing essays on “Narcotic Addiction in East Harlem”, “The Apollo Theatre”, “Women of New York”, and “Jazz Sessions for Riverside Records.” Finally Life gave him an assignment which worked out and he began freelancing for Life and other magazines such as Time, Newsweek, the Saturday Evening Post and Paris Match. 

“There’s so many pictures I look at which have an iconic feel to them. And yet, you can’t explain what it is in the picture that’s causing you to feel that way.”

Steve Schapiro

He closely followed the political and social changes of the 1960s in the United States, accompanying Robert F. Kennedy during his presidential campaign and the civil rights movement’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the Selma to Montgomery march. In the 1970s and 1980s, Schapiro turned his attention to film set photography. He was hired by Paramount Pictures and worked on the set of famous films such as Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976). 

Steve Schapiro. Robert Kennedy at Berkeley, California, 1966

The series of photographs of the American Civil Rights Movement is among Schapiro’s finest. In late 1962, he read James Baldwin’s essays in the New Yorker which became the book The Fire Next Time. Schapiro asked Life if he could do a photo essay on Baldwin. They agreed and for the next month Steve traveled with Baldwin to Harlem, North Carolina, Mississippi, and New Orleans. He met many leaders of the non-violent civil rights movement and saw real segregation for the first time. Schapiro notes of meeting and traveling with Baldwin, “Here was an intellectual, a brilliant man, and a black leader who never seemed to forget the importance of relating to each other as human beings. He had a hunger for love and believed in its power.”

Steve Schapiro. James Baldwin, Do You Love Me, 1963

This portrait of Baldwin is particularly telling of a quality that Schapiro sensed in him: his loneliness. Describing the photograph, he confesses: “every time I look at that picture, I feel an emotional moment. Because it seems to me it really points out the loneliness that he had, during 1963, which was the time when I first met him.”

After Schapiro’s photo-essay ran in Life in March of 1963, he was assigned to cover the South in even greater depth. These assignments produced images that are now part of the American collective subconscious: George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama, the March on Washington, Civil Rights leader John Lewis in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leading the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Schapiro’s photographs from this time are some of the most important historical documents of the American 20th century. While his photographs certainly document the darker side of the struggle, Schapiro also manages to relay the constant reliance upon love, community, and faith that became the legacy of King and his Civil Rights Movement.

“It is looking for that specialness in people, what makes someone unique, which I really treasure, either in a person or in an event.”

Steve Schapiro

The way in which the photographer became part of the people he was portraying speaks of his care and attention to the human side of the stories he was telling through his pictures: “I really enjoy being a fly on the wall,” he says. “And really waiting for that moment when I sense something about someone, particularly in a portrait that really conveys something.” 

Steve Schapiro. Vote, Selma March, 1965

The images from the Selma march are among his most iconic, with this one being particularly symbolic: “[The vote picture] conveyed a sense of what the civil rights struggle was about,” he says, “because it was about gaining the vote for black people in America. There’s so many pictures I look at which have an iconic feel to them. And yet, you can’t explain what it is in the picture that’s causing you to feel that way.” 

Schapiro’s unique ability to blend in with the crowd and capture spontaneity also allowed him to take candid photographs of movie stars, musicians, and artists that communicate a strong feeling of intimacy. His technique basically consisted in being there and assuming he would be allowed to take the picture: “If you’re a photographer, and you smile at people, they feel good about it,” he states. “Most people don’t mind being photographed, unless they feel that you’re going to do something to harm them in some way. So basically, if you’re just matter of fact photographing people in terms of who they are and what they’re doing, you don’t have any trouble.”

Steve Schapiro. Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick and Entourage, New York, 1965

“If I have a philosophy on life, it’s that we should care more about people.”

Steve Schapiro

Steve Schapiro was a great photographer not only because of his technique and his instinct for a perfect composition in the frame, but also because he cared about the stories he told and the people whose lives are part of that story. Without this sensibility and empathy, the images would appear perfect but distant, devoid of the human breath and the beating hearts that one feels in each of his pictures. Schapiro made this clear in one of his last interviews: “If I have a philosophy on life, it’s that we should care more about people. And we should have more of a humanitarian view of things. And I’m concerned that there are important, powerful people who don’t have that, and they don’t value human life. But life is so precious.”

Disrupting flows: Museum of Glitch Aesthetics

Pau Waelder

Mark Amerika’s Museum of Glitch Aesthetics (MOGA), commissioned in 2012 by Abandon Normal Devices for the London Olympics, brings together a series of artworks created between 2005 and 2012 that explore the creative and aesthetic possibilities of glitch through various media. Amerika, with a group of collaborators that included Aaron Angello, Saoirse Crean, Mary Fé, Will Luers, Ruth McCullogh, Chad Mossholder, Julie Rooney, Rick Silva, Joel Swanson, and Steve Wade, among others, set up this fictional institution devoted to the work of The Artist 2.0, an equally fictional character whose oeuvre is profusely described and analyzed in a 73-page catalog that not only elaborates a complete profile of the artist, but also suggests critical reflections on digital culture, the IT industry, and the art world.

Ten years after its creation, MOGA comes to Niio in the form of a selection of six key artworks from the museum, and the following review of the work of The Artist 2.0, which participates in the fiction created by Mark Amerika and his collaborators.

Still from Lake Como Remix (2012)

Image compression

In 2005, The Artist 2.0 presented in an exhibition titled Pixelmash, in the Northwest of England, a series of animated GIFs, a (now lost) internet art work, and a digital video projection, all of which referred to the practice of appropriation and remix, so dear to early net art practitioners. The GIFs, part of the .gif(t) economy series (2005-2006), featured pixelated excerpts of early works of video art, photographs of pop stars, and paintings by Goya in dizzying loops that some would now identify as the work of a post-Internet artist or a cryptoart OG. These works already spoke of The Artist 2.0’s interest in the condition of the digital image in its online distribution: the image as a file that is constantly reused and re-contextualized, and more importantly, compressed. 

Image compression formats were initially developed for the first digital cameras, but became crucial to the development of online content in the 1990s and have been popular ever since. Even recently, in 2021, Beeple’s infamous artwork Everydays: the first 5,000 days, which was sold at auction for $69.3 million, has been criticized for using the lossy compression format JPEG instead of the lossless PNG. While file formats can be said to have become part of our digital culture, they were particularly important for artists putting their work online in the 1990s, as they had to deal with the limitations of a 56kbps dial-up modem and create highly compressed images and 256-color animated GIFs. Pixelated images and fast-paced loops of grainy photographs or video sequences became an integral part of the aesthetics of early Internet art. 

“I was one of the first artists of my generation who self-consciously bought a shitty mobile phone with first generation video recording technology embedded in it and just went, «Wow, that looks totally fucked up and I love it. This is better than painting.»”

The Artist 2.0

Before the dot-com bubble and the fascination for the new millennium brought a fleeting attention to Internet art that had major art institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, or TATE Modern acquiring web-based artworks, net art was identified with a renegade attitude towards the art world. It proclaimed the possibility of bypassing the gatekeepers and hierarchies of the art world 1.0 by using the web as an uncharted territory in which everything was possible and the roles of the actors could be reimagined. However, its proponents knew of the utopian nature of this proposition, as they knew that the art world 2.0 would still be ruled by institutions, corporations, and institutional corporations, and dominated by ever more sophisticated technologies and systems of data transmission. The pixelated image, in this sense, was also a form of rebellion, as well as a nostalgic reminder of a time when the resources were limited and the web was free, as in free speech and free beer.

Mobile Beach, 2007

Better than painting

It is believed that The Artist 2.0 studied art in the Northwest of England, probably at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Lancaster. There he created his first mobile phone videos, taking images from his surroundings in industrial zones and the Morecambe bay, and posting photos in a primitive blog. Both the photos and videos presented glitches, consciously created by recording while performing violent movements or riding a vehicle, in order to overwhelm the device with too much data to process. The result, as can be seen in Mobile Beach (2007), presents interesting similarities with color field painting, which The Artist 2.0 surely noticed as they titled some of the photographs obtained with this technique “A Painting that Speaks for Itself.” The Artist 2.0 was also interested in linking these glitched images to street art, as can be seen in several photographs of walls, addressing a reiterated connection between digital art and street art as those rogue practices that do not have a place in mainstream contemporary art. “I was attracted to much lower tech versions of glitch before anyone was really paying attention to it,” states The Artist 2.0, asserting their pioneering role. “I was one of the first artists of my generation who self-consciously bought a shitty mobile phone with first generation video recording technology embedded in it and just went, «Wow, that looks totally fucked up and I love it. This is better than painting.»”

While The Artist 2.0 refers in this quote to the radical and controversial proposition of presenting a glitched image as equal or even superior to a color field painting, there is actually something more interesting taking place in the creation of glitch art. As philosopher Boris Groys once stated, a digital image does not exist by itself, but needs to be performed, to be seen, just as a musical score must be played to be heard. The image file contains information that the device interprets to display it as a visual output, and here Groys points out that “every performance is an interpretation and every interpretation is a betrayal, a misuse.” Therefore, the way we perceive digital images, as the equivalent of printed photographs, celluloid negatives, or paintings, is misleading. The digital image is always the result of an interpretation, and glitched images reveal this hidden truth. Ironically, in this manner the glitched photos taken by The Artist 2.0 do have a lot in common with color field painting, as both types of artworks deny the image its role as an illusory reality.  

Lake District Walks: Code Mosh, 2007-2008

Walk the walk

The Lake District Walk series represents a later phase in The Artist 2.0’s work that stems from their early experiments with a shitty mobile phone. Here the mere recording of a video while walking in the countryside becomes an act of artistic creation as the device is once again overwhelmed by the amount of data to be processed, given the combination of movement and the varied and complex shapes that a natural environment has to offer. Several other elements come into play: the egocentric nature of recording an uneventful moment in one’s life, so much in line with the self-centered attitude that was starting to become the norm in early web 2.0 society; the first-person perspective, made popular by FPS video games; and finally the antagonistic relationship between nature and technology that has lead a growing segment of the world’s population to abandon the countryside and live in cities, where there is abundant wifi and plugs to charge their mobile devices, only to return during weekends to record boring videos and share them on social media. 

“The flow of data, the water of information, is continuous, and I am a multilayered part of the mix. The flow does not ever really need me, but I totally need it. It roots me. It channels my creativity in ways I have no control over.”

The Artist 2.0

Videos like Lake District Walks: Code Mosh (2007-2008) illustrate this phase with a combination of the “color field painting” effect of previous works and a new and more interesting “dragging” effect which takes place when a camera movement forces the device to quickly refresh the image, resulting in a delay that has portions of it frozen and awkwardly dragged to a new position. This effect, crudely achieved in this manner, will inspire future generations of artists, such as Davide Quayola, who has achieved it in a controlled manner through sophisticated image recognition techniques. As will be discussed further, the Lake District walks are by no means a simple method to generate glitches through camera movements and a highly textured environment: the act of walking and the exploration of a non-urban space have a particular meaning that will be made apparent in The Artist 2.0’s later work.

It is worth mentioning in this phase a rara avis, a mysterious undated video whose authorship might be questioned, were it not for its undoubtable similarities with Mobile Beach and its clear influence in the following phases of The Artist 2.0’s oeuvre. Glitch Lake is a separate work that does not consist of recording a walk, but staying put while pointing the camera at a mass of water bathed in the afternoon sun. The gentle ripples caused by the waves and the scintillating reflection of the sun are enough to cause a wide variety of glitches in the otherwise static image. This is a smart move by The Artist 2.0, who finds out that it is not necessary to move the camera around. It is enough to choose a subject that is in constant motion, yet not changing its position: water becomes an ideal generator of glitched videos.

Glitch Lake

Dérives

Before we get to the title of this article, let’s take a detour, or better a dérive. The Artist 2.0 took a turn in his artistic research, caught by the unavoidable appeal that Google products have had on digital artists over the last two decades. Interested in the creative possibilities of Google Earth, he created several artworks, among which the popular Lake Como Remix (2012), a recording of a live VJ session in which The Artist 2.0 explored a road that runs along Lake Como in Italy, exploiting the glitches produced by their erratic navigation. In this virtual dérive, The Artist 2.0 enacts a “walk” in a virtual space composed of a 3D model mapped with photographs and drawn in real time by a software collecting data from the Internet. An obvious, and endless, source of glitches, it becomes an ideal tool for visual experimentation while suggesting a critique of the way our perception of the world is now mediated by the products of a large corporation. Unlike other artworks that address similar glitches, such as Clement Valla’s also widely popular Postcards from Google Earth (2010), the Lake Como video can be logically connected to the Situationists’ practice of dérive, which can be described as aimlessly walking through the city in order to understand its structure and “be drawn by the attractions of the terrain,” as Guy Debord would put it. The Artist 2.0 consciously goes in circles, explores the tunnels and abruptly turns the camera towards the lake to reveal the visual tricks created by the software and the fragile scaffolding on which the whole virtual environment depends. 

Lake Como Remix, 2012

The importance of this dérive, or the act of moving, particularly when comparing this work to those of Valla and others, will be even more relevant in later works by The Artist 2.0. At this point, it is important to mention that Google Earth brings in an even more effective way of using the glitch to question the validity of the image as an illusion of reality. The landscape of Lake Como never succeeds in fooling the viewer: unlike previous videos in which a real image is glitched, here there is no reality to start with. “[T]he image never really has time to become an image in this environment,” states The Artist 2.0, “It’s more like what I call image information or visual codework. It’s something that’s always in process and always being processed by the receiver.” The Artist 2.0 forces Google Earth to veer off its path and participate in a dérive that will never take it to its intended destination. Lost in a cul-de-sac, the software reveals the process behind a simulation that has become powerless.

Disrupting flows

Glitch Lake had shown how water created glitches, but there was more to extract from the idea of flows. The HD Streaming series plays with the requirements of a high definition video, so common in our daily consumption of news and entertainment, which has in turn created the need for higher bandwidth connectivity, wherever we are. The videos are again captured in natural environments and in some cases streamed over the Internet from the mobile phone, conceptually connecting the water streams with the flows of data that enable reproducing the video somewhere else. The Water of Information (Data Flow Capture #36) is an outstanding example of this series: the camera is fixed on a small stream, water flowing down between ferns and bushes. The scene reminds of the view from a public webcam or the fake flowing river photographs one might encounter in certain restaurants. As a video, it is only interesting because the glitches caused by the water disrupt the whole image: it trembles and stretches, and at times it becomes a cascade of pixels, an abstract composition of vertical green lines. As The Artist 2.0 themselves put it, the concept of flow is central to their work: “The flow of data, the water of information, is continuous, and I am a multilayered part of the mix. The flow does not ever really need me, but I totally need it. It roots me. It channels my creativity in ways I have no control over.”

The Water of Information

Adrift in this flow, The Artist 2.0 escapes our gaze and his brief but seminal contribution to the History of Art in one last dérive. Circling back to their origins, The Artist 2.0 remixes a previous artwork, one of the Lake District Walks, which now appears in a split screen next to a virtual recreation of the same video, rendered in a 3D game engine. Titled Getting Lost (The Long Dérive) (2012) this last artwork is an obvious reference to the work of artist Richard Long and the Situationists, in what can be considered typical of a phase of maturity in an artist’s work, when one looks back at the old masters not to kill them, but to acknowledge them. Notably, in this artwork the video is not glitched: technology has now achieved a stable and reasonably well-defined moving image. It is, however, the 3D rendered space that is still glitchy, the camera movements causing a “dragging” effect of certain background elements and simulated objects. It seems, then, that The Artist 2.0 is suggesting that just as digital video has achieved the means to remain an illusion, so will virtual environments, which are currently suffering from a limitation of resources similar to that of online imagery in the 1990s. 

Getting Lost (The Long Dérive), 2012

Getting Lost ends with the camera pointing towards a cloudy sky, as if searching for an answer or a way to continue wandering about. It may also hint at the metaverse, that ill-defined space or accumulation of spaces that seem to reside in the clouds, or nowhere. Notably, online virtual environments are also prone to glitches, as Gazira Babeli, the rogue Second Life performance artist, can attest. The Artist 2.0 has shown that our devices are shaping how we see the world, even before virtual and augmented reality turn real spaces into mere point clouds meant to be covered with perfectly rendered 3D illusions from which we cannot escape. But even then, there will be glitches, and the glitches will reveal the truth. 

Steven Sacks: 20+ years at the forefront of new media art

Pau Waelder

Photo: Joanna Holloway

Steve Sacks founded bitforms in New York in November 2001, at a time when digital art was getting attention among the contemporary art institutions in the USA as well as Europe. Major exhibitions held that same year, such as Bitstreams and Data Dynamics at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and 010101: Art in Technological Times at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art were particularly inspirational for him.

Photo: Joanna Holloway

The name of the gallery (always spelled in lowercase) merges the words “bit”, understood as a basic unit of information, and “forms”, referring to any art form, as a statement of its commitment to art and technology. At 529 West 20th Street, the gallery was initially located in the heart of Chelsea, the epicenter of New York’s art scene. In 2005, bitforms opened a second gallery in Seoul, but the market for new media art was still far from consolidated, and this space closed its doors in 2007. In 2014, after thirteen years on a first-floor space in Chelsea, bitforms relocated to a ground-floor property on the Lower East Side. 

Over two decades, bitforms has achieved an influential position in the contemporary art market as a gallery devoted to digital art, participating in major art fairs and representing some of the most recognized artists in this field, such as Manfred Mohr, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Casey Reas, Quayola, Auriea Harvey, Refik Anadol, Gary Hill, Claudia Hart, Beryl Korot, Marina Zurkow, Daniel Canogar, Daniel Rozin, Siebren Versteeg and many others. On the occasion of the third series of Niio Commissions, which was curated by Sacks, we sat down with the gallerist to discuss his views on the development of the contemporary art market and the role that digital art is now playing in it.

Installation view: Manfred Mohr: A Formal Language. bitforms gallery, New York, 2019. 

How would you compare the general awareness of digital art when you opened your gallery in 2001, and today?

In 2001 there were things happening in the art world and underground scenes, but media art was not accessible or exposed as it is today. There is no comparison. Today it is now mainstream, thanks to three letters, NFT.

Installation view: Claudia Hart, When A Rose is Not a Rose. bitforms gallery, New York, 2011

The initial statement of the gallery read: “bitforms will position digital art as an influential and innovative art form that is evolving and warrants recognition.” Would you say that you have achieved this goal?

The goal of the gallery from the beginning was to present artworks from all generations of artists that were experimenting with media. It took a few years, but we were able to build a diverse stable of artists, each having a voice and a vision tied to their generation. History was essential. We purposefully worked with artists of historical significance to enhance the credibility of the younger generation of artists and the genre itself.

“The introduction of software art through our program was one of the more significant moments at the gallery. Generative, interactive and immersive art opened up innovative ways of creating, experiencing and appreciating art.”

In your gallery, and in collaboration with your artists, you have developed methods for selling digital art, and particularly software art. What was your experience with these formats?

The introduction of software art through our program was one of the more significant moments at the gallery. Generative, interactive and immersive art opened up innovative ways of creating, experiencing and appreciating art. As with video and photography before, there was apprehension and doubt about the validity and credibility of using technological media to create works of art. Today, software or generative art is among the most popular art being purchased today. The use of software in the creation of art has expanded conceptually and revealed many new art forms using digital technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI), to name a few. None of these artistic practices would be possible without the mastery of code.

Installation view: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Voice Array. bitforms gallery, New York, 2012.

Twenty years ago, you envisioned the possibility of collectors having a dedicated screen for digital art and experiencing a rotating collection of artworks. Do you see our present moment as the right time for this vision?

Very early on I felt people would have screens in their homes devoted to media art. The idea of having a single location with a curated selection of works was necessary in order for the medium to thrive. Of course NIIO has a similar vision which is why I chose to work with them from the start. There were no tools at the time that allowed for the collection and management of media art, and my collectors were demanding it. Today, with the massive popularity of NFTs, millions of people are now aware of media art and many are looking for elegant ways to present their works. Screens have also come down in price, gotten larger and have greatly improved their resolution. It’s a very good moment for media art to enter the “art” dialogue for the masses.

Installation view: Casey Reas +
Jan St. Werner. Alchemical. bitforms gallery, New York, 2021

Over the last two decades, bitforms has become a beacon of digital art in the contemporary art market. In your experience, has the position of galleries devoted to digital art changed in the contemporary art market?

I would say over the past 10 years we have seen the integration of media artists into mainstream galleries, and in the past few years there have been others more devoted to media art. Also, museums began to witness the popularity of media art installations drawing large crowds across many generations. Again, when the NFT explosion occurred there was a much broader audience that became very curious about how they could purchase and live with non-traditional art forms.

Installation view: Refik Anadol. Quantum. bitforms gallery, New York, 2021

In 2021, you launched bit.art to showcase NFT drops by your artists in an online platform. Did you create this space as a reaction to the endless thumbnail grids offered by NFT marketplaces? What is your opinion about how NFTs are commonly displayed and curated?

When NFTs started to show up everywhere, the gallery needed to take a stance. We were unhappy with how people were defining quality media art and how little was known about its context and history. The majority of NFT platforms gave no context, they were just marketplaces, primarily focused on buying and flipping. No emotional attachments. No conceptual rigor. It was all about the money. Which is fine to a degree, but not when the entire basis of NFT/digital art was to define a new type of commodity to be traded, not appreciated or intellectually challenging. 

“Niio gives my artists more exposure and it’s much easier for collectors to view and manage their artworks”

bit.art tried to connect with how artists conceived the presentation of their work, both on a cultural and market level. The site never really succeeded financially, but we needed to make a stance and present our views of this nascent marketplace. Things are changing. More artists are creating serious work and thinking about presentation, and more collectors are excited about the art instead of just looking to flip artworks quickly and make a profit.

Installation view: Beryl Korot, Selected Video Works: 1977 to Present. bitforms gallery, New York, 2012

Niio has recently launched its third series of commissioned artworks with artists represented by bitforms. Can you tell us briefly what you find interesting about the platform?

I have very much enjoyed curating on the NIIO platform. It gives my artists more exposure and it’s much easier for collectors to view and manage their artworks. As I said earlier, there is no other platform in the market that gives artists and collectors this type of control and freedom.