Combating the Disinformation Age with Art and Crypto

Artist Jake Johns’ and the inspirations behind an artistic social media revolution utilizing Blockchain Technology, a.k.a. “Crypto Art”.

“Did you look at your phone before you peed this morning, or during midstream?…” asks the question by one of the initial Facebook venture-capital investors in the stunning new Netflix Documentary “/the social dilemma_” 

This Netflix documentary is a must-watch for any facebook engaged user across the world, to understand to what extent facebook’s platform is placing hidden suggestions and slowly manipulating your inner psyche and physical actions.

If you’re like most Facebook users, you’re probably engaged with your circle of people everyday, and you think its private relationships between you and your friends, or your communities that you’re engaged in. Generally, people are posting about their days, posting pictures of themselves with family and friends, and recently very much their political views. As an Artist, I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of social media and initially thought it was a joke and have always treated it in the same fashion. I’ve also spent the great majority of the past decade of my life traveling the world and making paintings on different artistic projects and living in different countries where social media wasn’t as accessible, so I’ve never really given a large amount of time to social media until recently since entering a rather lengthy quarantine and making art in my studio, I discovered social media as a way to engage a much larger audience with my art. So I’m a late-comer with fresh eyes on Twitter, which I really just started to engage in the past year, and I the craziness is (in my opinion) very obvious to me. With that, I’m kind of a new kid on this block, untouched by the artificial intelligent algorithms (that I know of) and able to navigate these social media waters fairly untouched and unscathed. And I’m not posting things about my personal life, so I’m a new specimen of sorts, a non-engaged user who posts don’t fit the current majority of the specimens:

Now most people who starts to understands the true evils of social media abandon the platforms completely, I felt as an artist that a different approach could be taken. Why not use their systems against themselves? A snake in the grass so-to-say. If others are creating fake news propaganda, can’t I create truthful anti-propaganda material? Can we use social media itself to raise awareness? I think so, and the creators of the social dilemma agree with me:

Take for example the recent pro democracy Riots in Hong Kong. At the time, I was in China and (looking over my back) creating art about the movement. It was something that I was very close to.

I had already begun to share my images of the conflict on social media, as I was seeing a lot of strange comments through social media (twitter), I felt the absurdity of it was grand, so I took a traditional approach, making art about it (I also wrote about it here: https://medium.com/@BigComicArt/art-world-crypto-style-f6c847fadd2c)

Now, in order to understand how Crypto Art can work here (because cryptoart can work in many many different ways!), lets start with a brief beginning:

I was first invited to create artwork for an innovative new platform called SuperRare (SuperRare Team) almost two years ago. At first, like all, I was skeptical. Who on earth would buy a digital image that is in essence free? I mean, there’s tons of philosophical questions and different opinions that have now formed on NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) since the explosion of their conception (read more DADA.art, dada.art), one of the most prominent is of course: “Why can’t I just screen-shot it?” My answer to this is, well: digital art has been around for a long time…. and it’s here to stay with a much different sense of ownership. We can now very clearly see that value with the first Crypto-Art piece selling for 100,000 USD by Chicago artist Matt Kane, and a digital piece representing Bitcoin going up for sale at Christies NYC in conjunction with Async Art (https://async.art/) this month. (Update this piece sold for 130,000+ USD https://twitter.com/ChristiesInc/status/1313950974134956048?s=20)

So I created my journey on Superrare creating comics, and it was an initial blast. There were only a handful of artists at first and we simply promoted on social media, and if one person tells two, word grows really fast! (I also ran advertisements and hosted one of the first physical block-chain and art shows in existence, see www.CryptoArts.org) Since then I’ve seen many major players take note, especially with an classical comic artist Jose Delbo taking to the scene and issuing genuine original work on the blockchain at MakersPlace.

As a few weeks turned into a few months, things started to progress really quickly. We went from this very abstract idea, (which is still very difficult for most to understand) of giving value to a digital image, to find several important blockchain companies were flat-out copying our artist-lead community, and even celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Paris Hilton were trolling and recreating mine and other’s artworks (remixing artwork is not a crime, of course LOL, read about Robness Cyberpop and the Trash Art movement). The day I received (I also collect art!) a very unique piece from Sarah Zucker (www.thesarahshow.com) about a digital portrait of her cat, and the very next day we witnessed Paris Hilton publishing on Twitter her very own collectible NFT of digital-kitty kat! Talk about a copy-cat! No joke!

But, putting initial bad feelings aside it’s all good, this is decentralized technology, and it’s progressive and open to all. And in my mind, it makes our community and the original artists who created this scene even more important, because they (we) are in fact the luminaries that helped create a new art movement! Wow and it’s been a wild ride! And of course a little bit of celebrity love can go a long way, because apparently Paris donated her funds to feeding the needy in Los Angeles via the @LAFoodBank , and it’s also helped to raise the awareness of collectible digital art which is still fresh and new on the horizon.

I was initially so enthusiastic about the Paris Hilton piece, that I created my own work of art in response, and I of course trolled Ashton Kutcher on my own accord on Instagram (his post has since been taken down after my complaints on his thread for not giving any credit to me (because he did in fact copy-cat me (and other artists who have done the same!) in a video he made where he was burning physical artwork and leaving only the NFT behind, giving sort of an authenticity to the artwork only existing now on the blockchain.

So moving onward, as our world has been as of late been thrown into a mess, with large crowds of protestors gathering throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, a conversation is starting to happen here with digital art that takes our attention away from disinformation and fake news on social media and more centered onto the truth. I’ve been working on this project for several months…. Stay tuned for part2.

Jake Johns’

www.BigComicArt.com