Jewelry Designer and Celebrity Artist ONCH Goes Digital with Release of NFT
With pieces ranging from pretzel necklaces to My Little Pony’s fine jewelry collection ONCH is used to creating eye-catching works of art. This weekend, he aims to bring his eccentric designs to the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). PST, LA-based artist ONCH is selling eight NFTs. In addition to using this event to break into digital art, he also takes the opportunity to donate to charity, with 10% of the proceeds going to Stop Asian Hate initiatives.
“Seeing what is happening right now because of racism breaks my heart. As an artist, I feel the need to always use my voice – which is my art – to help in one way or another. », Says ONCH.
ONCH’s first NFT series illustrations are images of hand-created designs. In these pieces, the artist says he showcases iconic elements – like pretzel patterns and bright colors – to familiarize the market with his neighborhood style. In addition, ONCH offers personalized jewelry with certificates of authenticity to those who purchase NFTs.
This is the new trend to adopt, the object to own, at least in digital form: celebrities everywhere are taking to NFT. An acronym as mysterious as the concept it designates: a digital work that one can acquire and possess, like a painting or a sculpture, but which could only be admired through an interposed screen.
Jewelry and Designers with Digital NFT
A Los Angeles-based jeweler has unveiled a necklace with a digital screen that displays non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as the blockchain-based art craze continues to grow. However, not everyone thought it was a cool flex.
The “Ethereum Block Chain,” a play on words that refers to the popular decentralized blockchain, allows the wearer to present an NFT digital asset using a 14k gold Apple Watch. The device is attached to an equally shiny 14-karat gold chain. The necklace combines “Your favorite digital asset with your favorite physical asset,” its creator, Ivy J Jewelers, wrote in an Instagram post. The locket also includes a personalized engraving of the QR code that points to the holder’s crypto wallet.
An NFT is a digital signature stored on a blockchain ledger that allows anyone to verify the ownership and authenticity of items. In theory, an NFT could be anything that can be stored digitally, including photographs, paintings, as well as videos and animations.
In a clip posted to social media, the Apple Watch adorned with gold on the necklace features several animations, as well as an NFT ‘Top Shot’ from the NBA.
The locket was auctioned on Wednesday with the starting price of 6 ETH (around $ 11,515 at the time of writing). However, Ivy J Jewelers canceled the auction before anyone could place a bid.
The futuristic bling has caught the attention of crypto enthusiasts on Twitter, with many chatting about being able to show off digital art so extravagantly.
One commentator hailed the necklace as the “biggest flex of the decade,” while others have conceded they would pay “ungodly” amounts of money for the chain.
Others were more direct with their critics, describing the gem as an example of NFT’s “stupidity”.
While technology has divided many in the art world, NFTs have made huge sums of money.
Last week, a self-portrait created by world-famous humanoid robot Sophia, and converted to NFT, sold for $ 688,888. The auction followed the sale of a collage of digital drawings, in the form of an NFT, which grossed $ 69 million.
After embarking on the world of cryptocurrencies, the British plastic artist is preparing his entry into the bustling world of “crypto art”.
Damien Hirst’s last sale was seasonal: it featured paintings of cherry blossoms, painted in oils against a backdrop of a spring sky. The British artist’s first foray into the digital meanders of cryptocurrencies, this series actually preceded a much more gargantuan project, that of a series of 10,000 works, and as many NFTs. Rather than putting its NFTs online on reference platforms, such as Nifty Gateway or SuperRare, its digital initiative will be in green, seeing the light of day on an eco-responsible platform dedicated to NFTs.
Based on tamper-proof blockchain technology (“blockchain”), NFTs function as universal digital certificates of authenticity; a revolution in the Wild West that the web still represents for everything related to the notion of property. However, one of the current setbacks of this technology – which is based on the same architecture as cryptocurrencies – remains its environmental cost, since according to calculations carried out by artist and computer engineer Memo Akten, creating an NFT on the Super platform Rare – where transactions are made in Ethereum – would amount to release 211 kg of CO₂ into the atmosphere.
Invent the future NFT
This prospect should therefore not arise for the plastic surgeon, who has announced that his series will be sold on a future platform, presented as more ecological: Palm. “It’s new and art-oriented, it’s the most environmentally friendly, and it’s faster and cheaper to use,” the artist said in a statement.
NFT stands for “Non Fungible Token”, “non fungible token”, in French. A virtual object, made unique thanks to blockchain technology, a kind of computer signature that gives it its own identity, certifies its authenticity, and makes it impossible to copy.
Art and tech NFT
If NFTs have started to be exchanged in the fields of video games and sports (such as, for example, fields in a virtual world, or the map, like a Panini album, of a star footballer), it is in the art world they brew the most money. Sculptors, photographers or visual artists have thus taken up the NFTs. On Thursday March 12, a digital work by American artist Beeple, Everydays: the First 5000 Days, sold at auction for $ 69.3 million at Christie’s.
It was the tech giants who then took NFTs to more mainstream terrain. On March 6, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey put up for sale his very first tweet (the exciting content of which boils down to “I’m creating my account”), posted fifteen years ago.
On March 23, the tweet was acquired for a whopping $ 2.9 million (roughly $ 2.4 million, donated to charity) by the president of a blockchain company who was looking forward to have in possession “the equivalent of the Mona Lisa”. A transaction that will not prevent anyone from continuing to consult this historic post: like the Mona Lisa, it remains visible to all. But, in the same way as that of the Louvre does not resemble its innumerable copies in any way, only the Tweet “certified” by an NFT will be recognized as authentic, and monetizable only by its owner. As long as neither Dorsey nor Twitter delete it.
In mid-March, it was Elon Musk’s turn to post an electro track of his composition on Twitter. Before he retracted: Despite offers totaling $ 1.12 million, the billionaire ultimately felt that “it didn’t seem very right to sell that.” Her companion, the musician Grimes, asked herself fewer questions: on March 1, ten digital works signed by her (virtual) hand, representing bald cherubs floating above a terrestrial globe or a ruined temple, flew away in 20 minutes for a total sum of 5.8 million dollars (over 4.8 million euros), raised for the benefit of an ecological NGO.
On check your image
Mystery, fortune and new technologies: it took no less for other celebrities to join in too. While a year ago, Paris Hilton auctioned off – for charitable purposes – a remarkable drawing of her cat, Munchkin, estimated at $ 17,000 (around 14,000 euros) and has since created an Instagram account dedicated to her digital works, Lindsay Lohan sold a portrait of her last March for 50,000 dollars (approximately 41,000 euros).
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