For The Curated.app Curator’s Choice

This Curators Choice delves into the concept of a “poor image”, an idea developed by Hito Steyerl (filmmaker, philosopher, artist, and cultural critic) which argues that a class system hierarchy of images exists, where high-resolution “rich” images exist in opposition to low-resolution and degraded “poor” images. But where does the poor image exist in art NFTs? Is it possible for an art NFT to be classed as such?

The poor image “transforms quality into accessibility, exhibition value into cult value, films into clips, contemplation into distraction.” An art NFT does much the same, translating the quality of a physical commodity into accessible (sometimes) cheaper commodities. In some cases, they have become a distraction from an original intent of art NFTs to provide digital artists with a new platform to sell their work.

This selection of NFTs elevates works that defy more commercial trends in NFT art (such as enhanced realism and slick renders) to embrace low-res, computationally generative, and non-fixed format pieces into the mix.

Works:

Lorna Mills, Singspiel Faster
artwork link (in the collection of FOMOBOY)

Rafael Rozendaal, Infinite Entropy
​​artwork link

Jan Robert Leegte, JPEG #0
artwork link

Simon Denny, Guile Twardowski and Cosmographia, Dotcom Séance
artwork link

Casey Kauffman, #cybaer
artwork link

Peter Burr, SHOPPING PLAZA
artwork link

Harm Van Den Dorpel, Temporality is – 93/100
artwork link
artwork link

Libby Heaney, Venuses (quantum bodies watched by Open Pose algorithm)
artwork link