When Art Basel returns to Miami Beach in December after a year off owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, it will include a medium that has developed rapidly since the last time the art world gathered there: non-fungible tokens.
Art Basel said Thursday that Tezos, an energy-efficient open-source blockchain, will deliver a curated NFT art experience with interactive exhibitions, speakers, and collaborative panel discussions. Tezos is a part of Art Basel Miami Beach 2021 as an official partner.
According to the statement, Tezos will act as “an ambassador for the greater NFT ecosystem to the traditional art world,” and NFTs “represent the technical layer enabling artistic expression with digital pr”
During the three-day event, the blockchain platform will display NFT artworks, some of which will be interactive, as well as speakers and panel discussions.
At Art Basel Miami Beach 2021, Tezos will showcase a multi-faceted non-fungible token (NFT) display.
The display, which will take place in a 2,500-square-foot exhibition room created expressly for NFTs, will contain artworks, some interactive, from artists who use the Tezos platform, according to the two initiatives. Speakers and panel discussions on themes relating to NFTs’ growing influence in the art world will also be featured.
Tezos has also agreed to be a partner at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021. The event will be held in the Miami Beach Convention Center in Florida from December 2-4.
Tezos has been a popular option for artists and huge businesses to create their NFT projects due to its reduced transaction fees and superior energy efficiency than Ethereum. McLaren, the British car manufacturer, said in June that it would develop an NFT platform on the Tezos blockchain. Doja Cat, a rapper and singer, has been minting, hosting, and trading NFTs on Tezos utilizing the music-focused NFT platform OneOf.
Art Basel Miami Beach, a nearly two-decade-old spinoff of the original Art Basel in Switzerland, is one of the most prominent art events in the world, showing new artists and trends on a regular basis. Over 80,000 individuals and collectors from 70 countries attended the 2019 exhibition, which was the final before the coronavirus pandemic forced the postponement of the 2020 expo.
Last month, Art Basel welcomed NFTs in a big manner, with crypto artist Olive Allen selling one of her paintings for around US$29,000 on the event’s opening day. “A big milestone toward their acceptability as an art medium on par with painting and sculpture,” Allen said of the NFT exhibit at the Swiss event.
Tezos would choose an artist roster for Art Basel Miami Beach by the end of October, according to Soares. The speakers and panel discussions, which will cover themes including NFT ownership and artistic community growth, will be aired live.
Tezos (XTZ) is also one of several programmable blockchains that support smart contracts, which are short pieces of self-executing code. Smart contracts can help Decentralized Finance (DeFi) services cut out the middlemen in traditional banking.