‘Bot R0ss’ is a bit of an anachronism- the Omistu Cyber-test Series 5 droid found a love for the all but forgotten ancient craft of ‘whittling’- the carving of shapes out of raw wood. Until recently, the droid’s efforts have been given away as gifts to friends and colleagues or ended up in the trash containers in the alleyway behind the charging-condo it occupies because, as they put it, ‘you know, they just end up cluttering the place up.’
All that changed when Bot found that their carvings are now being sold for thousands of Metrobucks as part of an emerging trend that is upending the rules of digital ownership:
ARTs, or Actual Real Things.
ARTs- physical objects made by hand, can be bought, sold and traded exactly like their digital counterparts.
Bot has now sold over Mb200,000C in ART items over the past six months. ‘To see my stuff being bought at these prices is astounding. It’s given me the courage to keep going.’
ART could be the next big thing: collectors and speculators have spent more than Mb200 million this year alone. Recently, the ARTisan known only as ‘Feeble’, sold a pottery cow they crafted for Mb69.9 million and their ‘100 Things’ project, where one hundred handmade things are created everyday for one hundred days, sold out before a single thing was made.
At face value, the whole enterprise seems absurd: big-money collectors paying six figure sums for items that are merely ephemeral with no digital authenticity.
‘It’s all just stuff,’ says, @Ha¢k&Ca$h, founder of the mega non-fungible token collection, Irritated Iguanas Clubhouse, ‘and who wants a lot of real things cluttering the place?’
He added, ‘It’s a fad, I mean what are you actually buying, just atoms that will decay over time and then what have you got? Give me pixels and metadata anyday.’
Others disagree and it looks like ARTs may be going mainstream as everyone’s favorite anthropomorphic bunny, political powerhouse and cause celebre, Desmond the Rabbit recently purchased a soft toy version of himself that had been hand-knitted by the mysterious ART-droid, KAK.
When asked about the purchase, Desmond responded, ‘This stuff’s the future, baby, it’s totally Infra!’
And you can take that to the Banksy!