This exhibition seeks alternative forms of art that deal with digital technology. 

Degital, which is purposely wrongly spelled for Digital, is the title of an exhibition series that started in 2019, and this is the third edition. Degital has questioned whether art dealing with digital can have new ‘personal’ values. https://degitalarts.xyz/

Degital’s third edition, Not For Technology, started by looking at the hottest potato – which may soon cool – non-fungible tokens (NFTs). As images and Internet memes are sold for tens of billions of dollars, the art scene is excited like encountering a new civilization that has never been seen before. It has long been said that works of art are unique and irreplaceable for a long time, but the infiltration of technology – armed with capital – makes them even more (in other words) irreplaceable.

The fundamental capital problems of blockchain and coins, such as the problem of mining workers, environmental problems, technological development centered on white male’s kingdom Silicon Valley, deepening capitalism, etc. have completely disappeared, and the excitement as if a new (art) market has been opened fills the scene.

This exhibition is conscious of NFT, which creates the illusion of a new possibility in the art market, stock investment, and coin investment, overheated mainly by millennials. It throws a thought experiment on how to bring this generation’s desire for investment into the art market. The purchase system is made as a special format that mixes things people are passionate about, such as blockchain, coins, bidding, and investing.

Just like NFTs, nothing is predictable, you don’t know how the deal was made, and only those who participated in the deal can get part of the information. But this is Not For Technology. This is only an experiment to avoid selling art relying on coins and systems.

The 10 artists participating in this exhibition have a flexible attitude to dealing with digital as a conceptual/physical medium and cast their votes that their works may have unknown values through this playful but challenging dealing/bidding method.

In the sense that the audience/consumer directly values the work of art and the value of the work is set by the market, it is similar to the NFT. However, I would like to throw a question whether a non-fungible token is needed to sell non-fungible art and whether it is possible to create a new model without absorbing the justification of capitalism that NFT has.

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First, the artist sets a minimum price.

Second, the audience can bid without limit while the market is open. The bid price is confidential.

Third, on the last day of the market, the audience who bids with the highest bid purchases the work at that bid.

The successful bidder can know the number of bidders and the desired bid price, and the bidders can know their ranking.

※ All bidders must pay a bid deposit. Participants who do not win the bid will receive a full refund of the deposit paid. The final successful bidder purchases the work by paying the difference from the winning bid price minus the deposit. A successful bid cannot be withdrawn.