As for the second animated photo, it’s entitled “In Every Lifetime, Fire Rages,” and it shows an endless embrace in the desert as the fires burn in the distance... This sculpture has the romantic name (which is great, me, being a helpless romantic and all) of "In Every Lifetime, I Will Find You" and it was created by Michael Benisty. It's one of my favorite photos from the last ten years at Burning Man. Michael has asked that I donate to a charity of my choice is a local one here in Queenstown, New Zealand called the Southern Wellbeing Trust. Their tagline is “Delivering evidence based innovative community level solutions for Mental health and wellbeing.”

Now, what is an NFT, you are wondering? Hmmm… how to explain it. Think of it as bitcoin for art. Unique pieces of art are uploaded and authenticated in the blockchain. There is a trail of ownership that is in the public record. For example, ONE person will end up buying Burning Embrace above. They can just keep it and proudly display it online, and they can feed it to a display in their home if they wish. They can also resell it to another buyer at a higher price if they wish and pocket the profits.

It sounds a bit silly, I know… but a good analogy is baseball cards. People collect and sell baseball cards because they are limited and they have special meaning to the owners. If you can get your head around digital money like bitcoin, then it’s not a big cognitive leap to think the same way about digital art. It’s a brave new world…

How does the $$ work? A little inside baseball here, speaking of baseball cards. There are several NFT marketplaces, and my first release is on Foundation. They take 15% and the other 85% goes to the artist. Also, subsequent sales on the same platform has 10% going to the original artist till the end of time. Cool, eh? Anyway, that’s a little primer for you… I’ll link to a recent show I was on where I was explaining NFTs on This Week in Google.

Below is a little video of me “minting” my first NFT and getting it into the blockchain. It’s a silly video, but you’ll get the idea.

And, if you want to see me try to explain NFTs on that show, here it is below or you can view the full ep here. Enjoy!