ARTIST TURNS MURAL INTO NFT.
British street artist Nathan Murdoch contemplates the mural he has just spray-painted, a giant image of two hands wearing rainbow-coloured gloves and joined in prayer, then hurls a large dollop of white paint straight at it.
The destruction of the freshly created mural is part of an artistic project straddling the physical and virtual worlds. The original image will not survive, but two versions will, one a print and the other a digital file called an NFT.
“We're going to do a singular print which will go to an eBay auction, and then after that we'll do a singular NFT print, which will also go to auction, which is essentially crypto-art,” he said.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, a type of digital asset verified using blockchain technology. NFTs are increasingly popular in the art world because they make a file unique by allowing it to be permanently authenticated, regardless of copies. In a record-breaking auction at Christie's, an NFT by U.S. artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, sold for nearly $70 million in March.
For Murdoch, based in the central
English city of Peterborough, the decision to destroy his mural allows him to transfer the status of original work to the print and the NFT. “All other evidence of it will be destroyed,” he said.
Murdoch plans to donate the proceeds of the sales of the print and NFT to Britain's National Health Service.
He drew international attention after a mural promoting racial harmony that he painted in a Peterborough underpass in 2019 was widely shared on social media.