User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu May 20, 2021 9:21 am

warhol-1.jpg

We've all seen the images. We all remember watching the grainy VHS video of Andy Warhol center stage creating digital artwork on his Amiga, a hushed audience watching on in amazement. We later learned that the engineers were inwardly praying Warhol wouldn't use the paint-bucket fill tool as it was very beta, and very crashy.

But Warhol did, and it didn't crash! And the engineers exhaled a shaky sigh of relief while the event went on.
warhol-4.jpg

Now, over 35 years later, five images retrieved from old floppy disks have been minted and auctioned as nonfungible tokens (NFTs) at a Christie's online sale. It has begun, and you can visit the auction and see the prices thus far here. (They each started at $10,000 US.)

The auction is scheduled to end on May 27, 2021.

warhol-3.jpg
warhol-5.jpg
So let's say I lose my mind and bid on one and actually win. How would I be able to "show off" my priceless work of art? The original files were 320x200 NTSC images. These images have somehow been upscaled to 6000 x 4500, which is in fact 4:3. So that's good.

But I wouldn't own the copyright to the actual image, which can be found all over the place online, in art history books, computer history books and the like.

I could display it on a nice big SamSung digital display at home I suppose. The whole point of most art is that it be a viewable experience, by and large, not including multimedia experiences.

But this is more an investment tucked away in my Crypto wallet, only to be talked about as a thing I owned but couldn't really show as an original (just like stocks, home equity as shown on Zillow, Ethereum, etc.), but a scaled up version thanks to someone with some basic Photoshop skills?

I get it. It's a really weird investment in digital goods. But dang it, I kinda really want the original disk! You know what I mean?

And by the way, don't we all want that image of Debbie Harry? Where'd that image go, hm?


<3 :boing:

warhol-2.jpg
Is it just me, or are you all getting some Cannon Fodder vibes from this, too?


User avatar
Overmann

Posted Mon May 24, 2021 6:02 am

Wow, Andy Warhol really had no idea what he was doing ! :D ;)
I've not been able to/had the time to wrap my head around what NFT is or how it works, but I wouldn't take these images if someone threw them at me. Thankfully art is subjective, and hopefully someone finds a use/appreciation for these.

User avatar
JoeUser
Dallas, TX

Posted Mon May 24, 2021 9:37 am

Warhol was the source of today's "cult of personality", IMO. I agree, I never was a huge fan back then. But, to each his own!

User avatar
fxgogo
Twickenham , U.K.

Posted Mon May 24, 2021 10:18 am

Not a fan of the whole NFT euphoria and not sure old Andy would of approved. I would love to see huge glass plates made of these to sit outside in public areas to colour the landscape.

User avatar
Wavemaker
Poland

Posted Wed Jun 02, 2021 9:55 am

Honestly all I see in crypto are creative ways to make fools part with their money. And I did make some from it myself, but I still fail to see which value is it adding to society.

User avatar
bnilsson

Posted Sat Oct 22, 2022 5:15 am

I also couldn't care less about NTFS, but I do have some fascination for these Andy Warhol images.

A while back I downloaded the pngs and downscaled them to original 320x200 ILBM iff files. I think the result is very close to the originals. Original disks are hoarded and won't be released byt the Warhol foundation. Originals wasn't ILBM but some custom format that GrapiCraft used.

Anyway I attached them here.

The Debbie Harry image is of course the holy grail here. But I think this one was lost to time and possibly never even saved to begin with.
Attachments
AndyWarhol.zip
(50.92 KiB)





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