Brave New Commons is a project considering the new type of ownership of digital artwork made possible using NFTs, not based on a uniqueness rooted in conventional materials, but as a novel means of ownership utilizing the properties of digital data. In contrast to the open ascending price auction, I named it “subdivision method,” which determines the price of an artwork by dividing an arbitrary price set by the artist by the number of purchasers. A higher number of purchasers results in a lower price. Also, as there is no distinction between the original and duplicate in digital data, multiple numbers of people will own the exact same artwork, creating a form of “distributed ownership” different from what some call “co-ownership.” 

I had been thinking that making copies and distributing was the only way to make digital artwork last for the future, similar to Public Domain Software. Now the NFT came in, but the current economics surrounding NFT art is too speculative. Therefore this project was realized to criticize the condition of NFT art. 

The project launched in a group show Coding Theory, at 3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo, where my 30 artworks were listed and sold. I made these in the 80 and 90s by using MacPaint on Macintosh SE and recently excavated from the old floppy disks. Most of them were not published and some were not completed, existing as temporary saved files, while two of them are actually titled “tmp.” This incompleteness becomes a key to realizing this project. After the show was over, the additional participation continued on the web site until the end of January in 2022. 

Actually, one of the artworks was set at 1 million JPY at the beginning but it went down to the cheapest price 1,096 JPY(=9.5 USD) at the end, because it was distributed to 912 participants. If it gets 1 million participants, it would be less than 1 JPY. It means an artwork becomes public property, not in a public museum, but owned by a community as one of the final destinies of artwork.