Podcasts on the rise (and fall) of NFTs

Information on and our understanding of NFTs seems to be a moveable feast. We first wrote about an artist’s experience with this NFT art market in April 2021. Much has changed since then. So, below we offer a roundup of some new release podcasts which (mostly produced in Australia) consider the ways artists, arts workers and industry is engaging – and disengaging – with the advent of the technology.

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) Podcast discusses TV, film, games and digital arts. In a new episode they chat to artist Marc-O-Matic about making and selling NFTs. The artist talks about his surprise at the income potential of ‘minting’ his artworks. He explains his process, from getting noticed online to the platforms he chooses to show on, commission taken, IP, royalties, being open to bidding rather than fixed price and the fluctuation of crypto currency.

World renowned online and print resource The Art Newspaper has a podcast called The Week in Art. Naturally the trend of NFTs has cropped up. Most recently they had a repartee with cryptocurrency and NFT reporter Amy Castor in ‘Crypto crash: what now for NFTs?’ who speaks on what she sees as the speculative and ‘illiquid market’ of NFTs. It’s a succinct and informative 17 minute listen.

Photo by Andrey Metelev on Unsplash

The ABC’s The Art Show presented by Daniel Browning brings us NFTs: next gen. They speak with artist Jonathan Zawada, who saw the potential of getting his work in front of an audience with the NFT platform, but shared ‘I got so turned off by the money side of it…the whole framework is built around not the quality of the work…but how much they’re sold for. Which on the one hand is really liberating … but at the same time I found the vacuum of actual art appreciation quite depressing.’ Plot twist, he re-entered the market, listen to the podcast to find out more. They also focus on MintNFT, associated with Justin Miller Art, a gallery showcasing Australian artists in the NFT realm who are trying to bring ‘a sense of curatorship’ to the field.

Art Glider Podcast by Sugar Glider Digital, an art consultancy business, is another new podcast. It includes conversational explainers on the NFT art market. They observe that any space that has a screen can turn into a gallery space, and that the value of digital art is that it can activate any space that has a screen. In Episode 3 we get insight into founder Emilya Colliver’s participation in various NFT and Web3 conferences, and the path toward building a subscription platform that would allow users to access various artworks.

Update: After we published, Amy Castor was in conversation with Julian Morrow for On Sunday Extra, listen here.