Blockchain Aesthetics

Catalog description

This1-pt course examines the evolving paradigm of "Blockchain Aesthetics" using an interdisciplinary Art History and Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspective. Students will learn and discuss the dominant methods, concepts, and strategies of applied blockchain technology in contemporary digital art, and together attempt to analyze and theorize the potential affordances and harms of this new artistic medium as it intervenes in established visual art institutions and communities (e.g., from museums and galleries to auction houses, social media and the decentralized web). The class will also look backwards in history to situate "Blockchain Aesthetics," and the wide artistic realm of "Crypto Art," in a broad cultural and technological history beyond NFTs, highlighting how ideas around cryptography, contracts, reproducibility, decentralization, scarcity and financialization developed in modern and contemporary art. Approaching the blockchain as a novel artistic tool and a technology of power, this course considers recent aesthetic evaluations of Crypto Art against its sociopolitical, infrastructural, and ecological impact, centering its contested potential for—and negation of—equity.