Brutal Positivism: A Theory of the Autonomous Digital Object

This study identifies the emergence of Crypto Art as an aesthetic phenomenon characterised by movements of enclosure and restriction within post- digital culture.

This study identifies the emergence of Crypto Art as an aesthetic phenomenon characterised by movements of enclosure and restriction within postdigital culture. Crypto Art presents the construct of the Non-Fungible Token a foundationalist in its status as remediating object: the NFT functions as a simulation of the authentic and truthful as it re-essentialises digital images; where digital fabrications "can be endlessly copied without fading into inferiority" (Plant 2015,212), Crypto Art formulates an enclosure of digital images as private property
arrested in the NFT (Joselit 2021, 3). As a field of research, Crypto Art, and the
disintermediating technology of the blockchain and NFTs, remains heavily undertheorised. Existing literature encompasses discussions of Crypto Art's blockchainbased praxes as a decentralised alternative to conventional (usually physical) normative exhibition spaces (Franceschet, et al. 2019; Whitaker 2019). However,
such approaches take Crypto Art and disintermediating technologies at face-value;rather than addressing the theoretical implications of blockchain-backed aesthetic
materialities, these approaches emphasise description and speculative inquiry without attempting to provide adequate theoretical frameworks through which to
articulate and situate Crypto Art. As such, the study proposes a guiding framework for apprehending Crypto Art and its paradigmatic use of NFTs/blockchain in relation
to broader art-historical, aesthetic, and philosophical traditions.

The study outlines the NFT construct as a principal medium of control and accumulation framing Crypto Art's restrictive production and distribution. I conceptualise the following central research question to frame the aims and objectives of the study: to what extent do the limits of blockchain-backed art -...