NFTs – like land art – promise a bold new horizon, but can they ever provide a meaningful alternative?

NFTs might change the world, but not in the way you think. Two projects have recently been announced involving Olafur Eliasson – one virtual, the other rooted in a coastal landscape. At first they seem diametrically opposed to one another, but perhaps they might both have grown from the same old logic of extraction.

The first announcement is for a ‘new major landmark artwork’ on the west coast of England, part of a wider public programme entitled Deep Time: Commissions for the Lake District Coast. Conceived in collaboration with nature writer Robert Macfarlane, Eliasson’s proposal is for a ‘monumental outdoor artwork and optical illusion’. Your daylight destination would consist of an elliptical steel basin installed in the mud flats of Copeland, which, twice a day, at high tide, would be completely submerged by water, creating a reflective mirror-like pool of concentric rings. The second project, Your view matter is a virtual reality work and NFT – commissioned by Vignesh Sundaresan, aka MetaKovan, the crypto-currency billionaire who rose to fame last year when he paid $69.3m at Christie’s for Beeple’s NFT, Everyday: The First 5000 Days (2021) – consisting of a virtual journey among Platonic solids, which can be accessed online and is also being exhibited at various venues.

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