Here’s the big news – a new sculpture/NFT hybrid piece by a celebrated digital artist just sold at Christie’s for $28 million!
Eduardo Prospero reports on the sale of the installation, called “Human One,” today, but some readers may be confounded by what looks like a repeated typographical error.
Prospero, in the title and the text, cites artist Mike Winkelmann’s professional nom de guerre as “Bleeple.”
Other resources, including the artist’s own site, consistently spell it “Beeple.”
“Digital artist Bleeple cemented his place in the history books with this one. Auction house Christie’s sold his human-size 3D video sculpture and NFT hybrid in their first live event since the pandemic,” Prospero writes. “The piece exceeded expectations, the projections had “Human One” selling for $15M and it almost doubled that. Does this hybrid format open a new chapter for NFT art? We wouldn’t know, but Bleeple’s piece sold alongside works from Jean-Michel Basquiat, Banksy, and Peter Doig.”
Anyway Beeple, or “Bleeple”, apparently encouraged by the previous sale of his “Everyday” piece for $69 million at Christie’s, returned to the notable valuables auction and sold the Human One piece for just under half of that sum.
This new artwork, “Human One,” is a shining example of melding digital intellectual property rights through NFTs with physical installations. Physically it’s a 7 foot tall piece with multiple devices generating an image the artist says is “drawn at random from a data pool of the artist’s visual creations that is accessed via Ethereum blockchain.”
“The kinetic video sculpture, with an accompanying NFT, is a hybrid of physical and digital technology,” writes Abby Schultz at Penta, getting the artist’s name right. “It shows a striding person clad in silver garb wearing what appears to be a space helmet. The figure walks determinedly through changing landscapes projected on four walls of its 4-foot-by-4-foot box.”
Linking NFTs to physical objects is a brand-new part of the industry that we expect to grow as time moves on. Keep this in mind if you have interest or holdings related to NFTs, cryptocurrency or this broader fintech sector.
