NFTs, Crypto Art, and Digital Collections? – A Roundtable Discussion
Presented by faculty, staff, and alumna of the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory
Wednesday, March 9, 2022, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
This virtual event is free and open to the public
NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have taken the visual arts by storm over the past few years. This roundtable, moderated by Professor T’ai Smith, will take a look at the economic, historical, technological, and preservation aspects of this new art form. The roundtable will bring together participants from different perspectives. Blake Finucane, who earned her MA in Art History in 2018, will talk about the ways her historical research into crypto art informs her current practice as an investor in NFTs. She will underscore how NFTs can help artists from minority or less-privileged backgrounds attain visibility in a traditionally rarefied environment. Timothy Fernandes (AHVA Digital Media Technician) will address some of the technological aspects underpinning NFTs. At the same time, he will bring a critical eye to an artistic sphere that seems to be so strongly driven by commercial considerations. Rémi Castonguay (Curator of Collections in the AHVA Visual Resources Centre) will bring the perspective of an information professional, concerned with collecting and preserving cultural representations. His take will be inscribed within the history of image technology. T’ai Smith will moderate the roundtable and frame the discussion from an art and economic historical perspective.
Rémi Castonguay is Curator of Collections at the Visual Resources Centre (Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, UBC). He received his master’s degree in Library and Information Studies from McGill University in 2000 and an M.A. in Musicology from Hunter College in 2008. His varied experience in New York City took him from the Frick Collection to Columbia University and the City University of New York. He was Public Services and Project Librarian at Yale University’s Gilmore Music Library from 2008 to 2015. In British Columbia, he worked at Lucidea, an ILS software company based in Richmond, and at Simon Fraser University as Digital Scholarship Librarian. In recent years, his work has focused on analog and digital preservation and the digital humanities. He has presented numerous times at the International Association of Music Library (IAML) and the Music Library Association (MLA) conferences, and his articles have appeared in Fontes Artis Musicae, Music Reference Services Quarterly, the Journal of Web Librarianship, and other publications. Remi plays the piano, harpsichord, accordion, guitar, recorder, and a little bit of ukulele!
Timothy Fernandes is a digital artist, designer, and technician focused on the sensory and social effects of new media technologies. His work encompasses a wide range of media, leveraging techniques from film and video, audio engineering, computer programming, cognitive science, and interaction design. He holds an undergraduate degree in Cognitive Systems, and a master’s degree in Digital Media. He is currently the Digital Media Technician for the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC.
Blake Finucane is the Chief Strategy Officer at Pluto Digital, where she runs both the crypto venture capital investment fund and NFT fund. She also has a number of advisory roles including a blockchain gaming studio as well as a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). She graduated with her MA in Art History from UBC in in 2018 where she wrote her master’s thesis on how blockchain technology and cryptocurrency can be applied to the art world, under the supervision of T’ai Smith. It was one of the first academic theses ever to be published on “crypto art.” Since this time, she has been featured in top cryptocurrency and business publications, including Cointelegraph and Business Insider, as well as in academic journals such as Leonardo. @blakefinucane
T’ai Smith is Associate Professor in Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC, where she teaches modern and contemporary art history and media studies. Author of Bauhaus Weaving Theory: From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), her articles have appeared in various journals, including Art Journal, Grey Room, Leonardo, and Texte zur Kunst, and in numerous edited volumes and catalogues, most recently for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, and the Museum Brandhorst in Munich. She is currently working on two book manuscripts: Fashion After Capital and Textile Media: Tangents from Modern to Contemporary Art.
