Today, the terms "digital art" and "crypto" are tied to each other in a never ending torrent of terminology and technicality to the extent to which one quickly gets lost in the explanation to ultimately remember that digital art has existed since long before cryptocurrency was conceived as an idea.
Digital Art can be traced back as a medium of the 20th century, given life in the advent of industrialization and specifically computational processing and cinema.
An early example of digital art comes from Ben Laposky, an American mathematician and artist who utilized an oscilloscope, a means of visualizing voltages or signals, to create what he called "Oscillons". These would be considered the first proto examples of computer graphics for the time.
It would be another decade for the first computer graphic to be developed by Frieder Nake in 1965. While artists continued to experiment in this space throughout this time it would not be until the 21st century and the advent of the internet that these artists would receive popular acclaim as well as critical. But even as far back as the 1960's people have been experimenting within a digital canvas.
Since the conception of crypto currency, the demand for digital art grew rapidly, peaking in 2021 with NFT's perhaps most famously in the sale of The Merge, an NFT collection created by Pak which sold for $91.8 million.
It has been a long road for digital art since then, the medium's value now operates at a fraction of it's worth in the aftermath of the scandals that plagued the crypto and NFT markets. However, one of the positive outcomes of the "hype" built around these marketplaces has been the revival and renewed interest in an artform that had long been underground.
While digital art has had a presence long before NFT's were available, it's important to recall the power and flow of the artworld and the valuation that works receive both in the moment that they are created and long after.
It's important to consider artists as pioneers but it is not always immediately apparent, in the case of Laposky, Nake, and the hundreds akin to them, this most recent decade into the digital world has been a great example of this notion.
Check out for more info:
Digital Art Movement Overview | TheArtStory
PAK’s NFT Artwork ‘The Merge’ Sells for $91.8 Million | Penta (barrons.com)
The history of digital art and how it has changed the world 👁️ (digitalartists.com)
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