Almost two years after having organized its first NFT sale of works of art, the famous auction house Sotheby’s has unveiled its next Web3 movements, including a digital art auction inspired by a popular internet phenomenon that started on Reddit, to be held in both Paris and the metaverse.
The “Natively Digital: Oddly Satisfying” auction will feature a range of digital artworks inspired by “oddly satisfying” web videos, a trend that started with a subreddit community on Reddit in 2013. The community is focused on sharing mesmerizing and surreal video loops, including hypnotic animations of seemingly impossible patterns and movements.
The auction, taking place March 17-24, will feature 66 NFT pieces, including works by well-known NFT artist Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann, whose record Christie’s $69.3 Million NFT Auction took place two years ago this week. Other artists participating in the auction include Clément Morin, ARC, Ryan Talbot, Lucas Zanotto, and more.
This is Sotheby’s first “Natively Digital” auction to take place in Paris, during the Paris Blockchain Week festivities, but it will also be the auction house’s first NFT auction to take place. hold simultaneously in the metaverse.
A Sotheby’s digital auction house has been created in RLTY World, a private metaverse platform used by brands and web3 communities that supports NFT assets. start RLTYWho raised over $4 million in funding in 2022will also feature Paris Blockchain Week panels and keynotes on its platform, as well as a Web3 virtual job fair.
Following the ‘Oddly Satisfying’ auction, Sotheby’s will switch gears with ‘Natively Digital: Glitch-ism’, which will feature a range of NFT artworks in the style of glitch art. As the auction house describes, the art features the “intentional creation of errors and glitches in digital media, such as images, video, and sound art, which highlight the complex relationship and often tense between humanity and technology”.
Scheduled for March 24-31 in New York, the “Glitch-ism” sale includes the 2018 Ethereum NFT coin “Loading new conflict…Redux 6” by pseudonymous artist XCOPY, by far the NFT world’s most famous glitch artist and creator of several pieces that have sold for millions of dollars each. Other artists in the sale include JakNFT, jakethedegen, Patrick Amadon, and more.
Michael Bouhanna, head of digital art and NFTs at Sotheby’s, described the sales collectively as “a look at the pervasive influence of digital culture that will continue to shape our lives”.
“One of the recurring themes is how digital art communicates our ever-changing relationship with technology,” he explained in a statement, “from the therapeutic and escapist pleasures of strangely satisfying animations to entanglements of technology that seem to impinge on what it means to be human in Glitch Art.