“Sound Money” Series

ttps://opensea.io/category/soundmoney/

“Sound Money” the story of the artwork being auctioned.

The artist, Ms. Jiaying Liu, has been using blockchain technology to create artworks since 2017. Just before CAFA’s (Central Academy of Fine Arts) 2020 Graduation Exhibition , she completed the “Sound Money” Series, it did not draw much public attention when these works were first released.

As COVID-19 seriously damaged the U.S. economy, Trump implemented a rare unprecedented policy, “helicopter money”, it distributed dollar currency to the entire American population. Jiaying was inspired by this phenomenon — through analyzing the Ether blockchain transaction data she selected a thousand of the most active players in CryptoArt and airdropped Cryptocurrency in the denomination of “Thousand Dollars” to these Ether addresses.

A few days after, interestingly the “Sound Money” artworks were being auctioned off in CryptoArt community and the tokenised artwork Dollars with limited edition were soon sold out. Collectors were interested to come across an artist who was creating artworks about Crypto-currency, they started to search for more information about these artworks under the entry of “Sound Money”. This is an intriguing marketing campaign that helped the artist sell out her series of artworks imitating America’s Helicopter Money-dropping movement. What’s more interesting is when these collectors saw the artist selling specially made “3 Dollar” and “7 Dollar” that had the same price as it’s denomination, they also put their received “Thousand Dollars” for $1,000 bidding price on the CryptoArt trading platforms OpenSea,

“Sound Money ”正在拍卖的艺术故事

艺术家刘嘉颖自2017年开始使用以太坊区块链技术进行艺术创作。2020年毕业展前,她创作了“Sound Money”系列作品。这些作品刚发布时,关注的人并不多。由于疫情严重冲击了美国经济,特朗普政府开启了历史罕见的“直升机撒钱”模式,向全民分发美元货币。艺术家从中获得灵感:通过分析以太坊区块链交易数据,将加密艺术(CryptoArt)领域最活跃的一千名玩家筛选出来,并向这些以太坊地址空投了面额为“1000美元”(Thousand Dollars)的加密货币。

几天后,有趣的事情发生了,“Sound Money”系列作品被纷纷出价,限量版的加密艺术作品被销售一空。这些收藏家发现原来有艺术家在创作关于货币的加密艺术作品,他们会进入“Sound Money”的词条下了解更多作品信息。这是一次有趣的营销活动,直升机撒钱式的批量复制作品,使得艺术家早期创作的作品得以顺利出售。更有意思的是,当这些收藏家看到艺术家以相同标价出售特制的“3美元”、“7美元”时,他们也将收到的“1000美元”出价为1000美金,在加密艺术交易平台OpenSea上展开拍卖。

The artwork “Zero Dollar” in the Sound Money series extensively uses the cyber cultural element of “meme”. In CAFA 2020 Graduation Exhibition Miss Jiaying Liu updated the most recent bidding price (i.e. the price updated given on April 28th, 2020 was submitted to CAFA) of the “Zero Dollar” meme artwork labeling it within the art piece. Jiaying zeroed in the Dollar, stripped of Dollar’s symbolic meanings, and endowed new value with new symbols onto the Dollar. Jiaying released 100 pieces of Zero Dollar on OpenSea, tagging 0 as the initial price for each piece, so the audience could bid arbitrarily with any price they wish to attached on the work. As said by the artist, each piece of Sound Money artworks is closely related to the auction, and if the work was never bid for it was not “finished”. Her blockchain artworks are created on the topics of “Cryptocurrency”, “Credibility Creation” and “Transaction”, while “Traffic” is also an important element of her works.

Sound Money”系列中的零美元作品,大量运用了互联网文化中的“meme”元素。在这次央美毕业展中,艺术家将包含“meme”的零美元的最新拍卖价格一一标注在作品中(价格以4月28日提交给中央美术学院的版本为截止),艺术家将美元归零,消解了美元的符号意义,用新的符号赋予了美元新的价值,艺术家将100张零美元发布到OpenSea上,并设定初始价格为“0”,观众对这件作品不同的出价都标注在了作品上,用艺术家自己话来讲,Sound Money中每一件作品都与拍卖有关,如果作品没有被出价,那么她的作品就没有“做完”。她的区块链作品围绕着“加密货币”、“信用创造”、“交易”等主题进行,同时“流量”也是作品的一个很重要的切入要素。

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Jiaying Liu, Zero Dollar 100, CAFA 2020 Graduation Exhibition
刘嘉颖,《零美元100》 Zero Dollar100,2020,中央美术学院2020毕业展
https://opensea.io/assets/0x2287bd440a11c4585058fdc090455786130f49bf/0

Zero Dollar” is an artwork that is a part of the “Sound Money” series. It is not only an image but a non fungible token (NFT) on the Ethereum Blockchain to possess a feature of unique existence in cyber space. The artist binds the symbolised “Zero Dollar” to the Cryptocurrency, which received a bid of 3.6 ETH on CryptoArt exchange. This work argued on how much premium is created by Cryptocurrency against the banknote paper symbolising the US dollar, as well as raised the question on the US dollar’s symbolic property and benchmark value setting for assets.

《零美元》是“Sound Money”系列中的一件艺术作品。它不仅仅是一副图像,同时也是一个以太坊区块链上的非同质化代币(NFT),从而拥有了在网络中独一无二存在的特性。艺术家将符号化的“0美元”与加密货币相绑定,在加密艺术品拍卖平台上,《零美元》获得了近3.6以太币(约合1300美元)的出价,此作品探讨了加密货币赋予象征美元的纸张以多大的溢价空间,同时对美元的符号性以及其资产基准的价值锚定提出了疑问。

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Jiaying Liu , Zero Dollar 100-64, CAFA 2020 Graduation Exhibition
刘嘉颖,《零美元64》Zero Dollar64,2020,中央美术学院2020毕业展
https://opensea.io/assets/0x2287bd440a11c4585058fdc090455786130f49bf/164

In the “Sound Money” series, on the basics of the Zero Dollar, the artist further collected a large number of images of “How one would feel when you see 0 Dollar?”. In the collection, “memes” occupied most of the images, they were combined with the 0 Dollar notes to generate another group of Zero Dollar images that corresponds to the issuance of non-homogenized tokens (NFTs) on the blockchain, which are also auctioned in real time on blockchain platforms.

“Sound Money”系列中,在零美元的基础之上,艺术家在网络上征集了大量的图像,“当你看到0美元后,你是什么感受?”,征集的图像中,“meme”符号占据了大部分,艺术家将这些图像放入0美元中,一组零美元图像得以生产出来,并对应发行区块链上的非同质化代币(NFT),同时在区块链平台上实时拍卖。

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Jiaying Liu , Zero Dollar 100-8, CAFA 2020 Graduation Exhibition
刘嘉颖,《零美元8》Zero Dollar8,2020,中央美术学院2020毕业展
https://opensea.io/assets/0x2287bd440a11c4585058fdc090455786130f49bf/108
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Jiaying Liu, Zero Dollar 100-2, CAFA 2020 Graduation Exhibition
刘嘉颖,《零美元2》Zero Dollar2,2020,中央美术学院2020毕业展
https://opensea.io/assets/0x2287bd440a11c4585058fdc090455786130f49bf/102

The artist picked up nearly 100 pieces of Zero Dollar and set the initial price to 0 for blockchain players to bid on any piece.At the graduation exhibition in CAFA, she presented the final prices at which each Zero Dollar was sold.

艺术家挑选了近100张零美元,艺术家将最初的价格设置为0,区块链玩家可以对任意作品进行出价,在中央美术学院的毕业展上,艺术家展示出了每一张零美元最终售出的价格。

Jiaying Liu, One Wei Dollar, CAFA 2020 graduation exhibition, 2020 刘嘉颖,One Wei Dollar,2020,中央美术学院2020毕业展
https://opensea.io/assets/0x2287bd440a11c4585058fdc090455786130f49bf/1000000000000000000

In the work of “One WEI Dollar”, the artist created an unprecedentedly unique dollar as issued in crypto currency. This work, embeded with President Nixon’s portrait, uses the smallest token decimal of Ethereum, i.e. , or 1 Wei, as the denomination of paper money and is sold with the same price with denomination, it could be the Crypto artwork with the closest to zero bidding price in history.

在《One WEI Dollar》作品中,艺术家创造了一张绝无仅有的美元,通过加密货币形态发布。作品将尼克松的头像植入其中,并采用了以太坊的最小计价单位:(10的负18次方),也就是“1 Wei”作为纸币面额,并以相同价格进行出售并成交,这也许是历史上拍卖金额最趋近于零的艺术作品。

Under Nixon administration, USD officially decoupled with gold, representing the end of Bretton Woods system established after World War II. Thus this kind of fiat currency became the legitimate banknotes with no power to redeem golds.

在尼克松时代,美元与黄金正式脱锚,二战后确定的布雷顿森林体系寿终正寝,法币成为了“法定不可兑现货币”。

Jiaying Liu, 1000 Dollars, CAFA 2020 Graduation Exhibition
刘嘉颖,1000 Dollars,2020,中央美术学院2020毕业展
https://opensea.io/assets/0x2287bd440a11c4585058fdc090455786130f49bf/1034

In March 2020, the Trump administration adopted the policy of helicopter money-dropping to cope with the pandemic. The artwork of “1000 Dollars” was therefore finished and then exhibited in the form of a 3D Model of a money-dropping helicopter at CAFA 2020 Graduation Exhibition, where the visitors could scan Qr-code to obtain a copy of this digital NFT artwork.

2020年3月,特朗普政府采取直升机撒钱模式来应对疫情带来的影响,1000 Dollars在这个背景下被创作出来,这是一个标注1000美金图像为符号的数字货币,这件1000 Dollars作品,在中央美术学院2020毕业展上,以直升机三维模型的形式进行撒“钱”,观众通过扫码来获得这件《1000 Dollars》的数字NFT艺术品。

Jiaying Liu, 1000 DollarsAir-dropping Money, CAFA 2020 Graduation Exhibition
刘嘉颖,《1000美元》1000 Dollars,直升机撒钱,2020,中央美术学院2020毕业展