Where will your art hang in the metaverse?

The Future. We’re still at the very beginning of the age of the metaverse, but Mark Zuckerberg is already teasing how Meta’s platform could be a destination to expand the boundaries of fine art. Currently, the ideas are… well, cheesy. But real artists could look past that corniness and create art that is unique to the never-ending digital possibilities of a virtual world.

Program museum
NYT’s Dean Kissick is thinking a little deeper about the implications of Meta’s (someday soon) effect on art.

• Meta is using fine art to market what’s possible in the metaverse — not by showing the art as is, but instead as a way to expand the works through things like animation or immersion.
  • Look no further than this commercial featuring Henri Rousseau’s “Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo.”
• While this may seem glib, it shows that art is a great visualizer for understanding what the draw of the metaverse could be — endless creativity.
• Mark Zuckerberg knows this too and is calling on creators of all stripes to help build out the world in artistic ways (with the promise of money).

Meta’s thinking isn’t without precedent — there are currently five competing Van Gogh immersive experiences that allow audiences to “explore” the artist’s most popular works. People want new ways to experience art.

Software style
At worst, these expansive ideas are kind of corny, exploitative of the original pieces, and may even sand the edges off of serious works (while also pointing to our modern inability to enjoy fine art). But at their best, they may allow artists to create new kinds of “aesthetics” (as Kissick calls it) that are only possible within the metaverse or through AR overlays.

And the rise of NFTs and digital art could be a key avenue for exploring what this art could be. For example, artist Sean Conte created a collection called “Gene Therapy” (the first in a series of “eras”) using machine learning that “breaks apart” each image in unique ways until it creates the “desired effect” — art that marries human touch with AI. In a metaverse, we could see these works be manipulated in real-time to create never-ending, always-iterating pieces — software engineering as a new form of fine art.