You can visit the new “Born in Chicago” exhibition and bid on Ethereum-based NFTs in person or through a web browser.
From the outside, Chicago’s imnotArt appears to be just like any other little art gallery, but once inside, you’ll notice a significant difference.
Instead of still paintings or prints, the walls are covered with screens that display vivid, animated artwork, ranging from Sinclair’s twitchy single-line compositions to ProbCause’s creature-esque blending of renowned metropolitan scenes.
The entire exhibition has also been replicated in a video game-like metaverse universe, with a video feed streaming live footage from the real gallery into the game space, which is exhibited on the rear wall.
Every piece of artwork in the exhibition is a single-edition NFT coined on Ethereum that you may purchase for your personal collection. NFTs allow digital art to be sold in the same way that physical art is: an NFT is a blockchain-backed deed of ownership for a digital item, allowing you to authenticate its scarcity and provenance.
Although digital artwork can still be easily duplicated, stored, and shared, NFTs provide a method to give it value and assist the artists who created it.
We are pleased to release the first piece from
“The New Digital: Born in Chicago”
We couldn’t be revealing a more fitting first piece for this show.
Now presenting, “CHICAGO” by @csinclairart See the piece here 👉 https://t.co/tFrWm8lZV9
Auctions begin tomorrow ⏳ pic.twitter.com/RBKXiCgTxa
— imnotArt (@im_not_art) August 13, 2021We’ve seen virtual galleries crop up in online environments, and you can see NFT artwork on digital devices. However, digital artwork tokenized as NFTs is now treading on the turf of its physical contemporaries in the form of physical art galleries where people may attend and watch the digital creations represented on screens.
It’s a way of demonstrating that art is art regardless of media, and possibly legitimising this medium in the eyes of sceptics.
In the city’s Wicker Park district, imnotArt, Chicago’s first NFT art gallery, opened in June. The gallery has previously sponsored community activities, but on Saturday, it will open its first major show, “The New Digital: Born in Chicago.”
New work from the aforementioned artists, as well as Chuck Anderson, Sophie Sturdevant, Sean Williams, Willea Zwey, and Joey the Photographer, will be on display through August 22.
Each NFT piece is projected onto a big screen, allowing the artwork—which is almost always animated—to stand out against the gallery’s stark white walls. A QR code is placed alongside each sculpture rather than a placard. Scanning it with your phone pulls up a webpage containing information on the artist and artwork, as well as a link to an auction.
“We want people to come in here and feel like they know the artist, know the piece, and have had an experience with it—rather than just seeing a piece on a wall,” co-founder Chase McCaskill told Decrypt on a recent visit.
However, this isn’t the only way to see imnotArt; the gallery also exists in the internet metaverse. Within Cryptovoxels, an Ethereum-based virtual reality, an exact replica of the physical gallery exists. It has the same layout as the actual location and features the same NFT artwork on the walls. It’s the same space, but with voxel visuals in 3D.
As previously stated, the two have a direct relationship. A live feed of the metaverse gallery is shown on a giant screen in the Chicago site, and the physical gallery has cameras that feed into the virtual museum through a Twitch stream.
You may watch yourself on Twitch inside a virtual reproduction of the gallery if you’re standing inside the physical gallery. It’s completely out of control.
Physical 🤝 Digital
imnotArt Chicago pic.twitter.com/UdqsGSfIc6
— imnotArt (@im_not_art) June 18, 2021It also serves a useful purpose. The hybrid physical/digital NFT gallery, which opened earlier this year in the middle of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, was partly inspired by travel limitations and health concerns.
It enables NFT fans and members of their community to view exhibitions from the comfort of their own homes (or anyplace else) while remaining linked to the physical space.
Furthermore, because of the dual-gallery method, local events in Chicago can have a genuinely global component, with participants coming from all over the world to view the digital artwork and place bids as they like.
As shown in the embedded video clip above, imnotArt’s prior events demonstrated the potential for this kind of collaboration, but now that the gallery is having its first genuine exhibition with new artwork for sale, it will be much more significant.
“As far as we know, this is the first true physical/digital art exhibition that’s been done that is fully physical, but also fully virtual as an amplification of the physical,” said McCaskill. “We want to keep pushing that envelope.”
The co-founders, Matthew Schapiro and Zachary Grochocinski, are self-funding imnotArt, and it is not a pop-up: they have a year-long lease with an option to extend. The team also intends to use the area for content creation and community interaction in addition to future shows.
In September, the location will host NFT collectors from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, in addition to hosting a recent local Ethereum development meetup.
In some ways, imnotArt’s creators consider themselves as missionaries for NFTs, the crypto world, and especially Ethereum—the decentralised, blockchain network that powers the world’s second-most valuable cryptocurrency and the platform that now powers the majority of NFT activity.
While some people see the gallery and know what NFTs are—even shouting “NFTs!” as they drive by—many of the people who walk by and stop in don’t know what they are or have only a rudimentary understanding of the medium, according to Grochocinski.
The founders believe it is their responsibility to crypto natives to help introduce NFTs to the rest of the world and educate them about the ecosystem.
“Ethereum’s ethos is all about how the rising tide raises all ships, and creating ways to make the world a better place,” Schapiro explained. “That ethos has very much trickled down into imnotArt, and that’s what we want to use this space to do.”
“We really want it to be immersive and educational foremost. There’s a lack of depth of understanding of what an NFT can mean,” he added. “We don’t want you to just come in and see a bunch of pictures on a wall. We want you to leave really understanding what this larger movement is all about.”
It’s a lofty goal for an art gallery, but the care and attention paid to imnotArt’s real and virtual venues suggests that the founders are committed to spreading the word about NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and decentralised technology, even if it’s one guest at a time.
