Post-Digital Aesthetics; Disintermediating Technology; Theories Of Art; Art And Technology

This study identifies the emergence of Crypto Art as an aesthetic phenomenon characterised by movements of enclosure and restriction within post- digital culture.

This study identifies the emergence of Crypto Art as an aesthetic phenomenon characterised by movements of enclosure and restriction within postdigital culture. Crypto Art presents the construct of the Non-Fungible Token a foundationalist in its status as remediating object: the NFT functions as a simulation of the authentic and truthful as it re-essentialises digital images; where digital fabrications "can be endlessly copied without fading into inferiority" (Plant 2015,212), Crypto Art formulates an enclosure of digital images as private property

arrested in the NFT (Joselit 2021, 3). As a field of research, Crypto Art, and the

disintermediating technology of the blockchain and NFTs, remains heavily undertheorised. Existing literature encompasses discussions of Crypto Art's blockchainbased praxes as a decentralised alternative to conventional (usually physical) normative exhibition spaces (Franceschet, et al. 2019; Whitaker 2019). However,

such approaches take Crypto Art and disintermediating technologies at face-value;rather than addressing the theoretical implications of blockchain-backed aesthetic

materialities, these approaches emphasise description and speculative inquiry without attempting to provide adequate theoretical frameworks through which to

articulate and situate Crypto Art. As such, the study proposes a guiding framework for apprehending Crypto Art and its paradigmatic use of NFTs/blockchain in relation to broader art-historical, aesthetic, and philosophical traditions.

The study outlines the NFT construct as a principal medium of control and accumulation framing Crypto Art's restrictive production and distribution. I conceptualise the following central research question to frame the aims and objectives of the study: to what extent do the limits of blockchain-backed art - exemplified by an operative rehabilitation of the authentic and original - reveal the possibility for a critical artform capable of unravelling technocratic modes of control?

This question is underpinned by the following sub-questions:

- To what extent do the movements of interiorisation held in the construct of the NFT destabilise the deferral of authorship, authenticity, and origin for digitallymediated works? - What types of intersubjective relations emerge following a technological remediation of philosophical notions such as origin, truth, and authenticity?

- What kind of aesthetic materialities surface through a technological reessentialisation of the object that affect our representation as subjects? In realisation of the above aims, I highlight the following objectives:

- To explore Crypto Art in relation to a broader post-digital framework typified by institutional scrutiny and emphasis on peer-to-peer forms of signification - To re-assess the role of the NFT as a medium of enclosure and exclusion in a post-digital realm characterised by the free circulation of images

- To explore the affective transformations inaugurated by the repositioning of the digital image as unified object insofar as digital materialities shape the relationships between object and represented subject