One of the main uses of “traditional” art has been to decorate home interiors and make them a more pleasant place to be. Now that NFTs have claimed a significant place within the art world (still small in comparison to what is projected to come), you would be right to ask yourself how could you use this artwork for your home or real estate. That real-estate can be physical or digital. That’s because as the Metaverse becomes a reality, people might look to show off their NFTs on the metaverse house where their avatar resides. Even do some home decoration for their digital asset.
Can you imagine showing a PFP (Profile Picture) NFT in your home’s living room? If you had a Bored Ape or a Crypto Punk, would you keep only in your cryptowallet? Or would you allow it to be shown to your friends? Being able to display such art would an interesting proposition for any space.
All of these things could do the same thing in metaverse setting. Does it make any sense to do home decoration in these virtual settings? Is it all really the same thing, except on the metaverse?
The first set of questions, about your own physical home, could probably be resolved by using posters and merchandising from a particular NFT project. If we are talking about a 1/1 NFT artwork, galleries like SOPRG offer you the possibility to buy an NFT, it’s physical equivalent or both. So now, you can bring the NFT onto the real world and make your spaces really unique. Whether you would like to give your house an eclectic, pop-art feel with a PFP NFT image; or give it a classic artistic feel, NFTs could very well be the answer.
Now, what about the Metaverse? People have started to slowly venture into buying digital real-estate. And they are not spending pennies. Millions of dollars have been spent in buying houses on Decentraland, a very popular metaverse. Krista Kim, a Toronto-based artist, sold a house for $512,000. The house was called “Mars House”, and it was billed as the first NFT house in the digital world. That house would later host the first metaverse wedding on June last year. So that house would require some home decoration work done to it, to be able to show off.
With this new way of looking at what you actually call a home, it is not surprising that designer Andrés Reisinger has sold his NFT furniture for tens of thousands of dollars. NFTs that serve as home decoration.
If art is to for the sake to be admired when perceived, why would that stop being the case in the Metaverse? The actual use of a chair or a sofa might be added on. But, if you look at the case of Reisinger, that barely matters. He produced a digital chair called Hortensia, and was met with such fandom on Instagram, that he later would produce the actual chair. People were so mesmerized by digital artwork, that they demanded a physical representation of it. The art preceded the use of his work. The same can be applied for a piece of online property. You could pay for someone to do some home decoration for your metaverse house.
Sometimes, the public that is still reluctant to get into NFTs gets extremely caught up in the discussion of whether something has utility or not. The reality is that sometimes, NFTs are able to question what the actual utility of things in the physical world is. Why does one chair gets sold for tens of thousands of dollars and another one is worth less than $20? Why does a Ferrari cost more than a Chevrolet? That cannot possibly be explained by utility on its own.
As people look to live their lives remotely possible and without the need to be physically in one place to perform a job, the metaverse is just a natural evolution of things. Think of the productivity app for teams Soccoco, where through the use of UX/UI design they create a digital office space for subscribers and their teams. That office space is divided in visually represented rooms, smaller offices, workspaces and conference rooms. If you are in the same room with someone, you are able to talk to that person. So that interface already simulates a metaverse. Another example is the videogame Fortnite, where people are already spending money on clothing to make sure that their characters are looking good. Fortnite is one of the players in bringing the metaverse into the mainstream, and they have already hosted digital concerts by a variety of artists.
As all of this unfolds, would you be surprised that SOPRG already has a parcel at the Somnium metaverse? The possibilities for a gallery in this space are quite real. Like hosting events, allowing like-minded individuals from all over the world to interact and have a chat about art, and loyalty-building actions. NFTs provide visual appeal inside this gallery, of course, which has the look-and-feel of a museum or gallery once inside.
Architecture and design for the Metaverse have the potential to become disciplines like their physical counterparts. As there are many speculators, people might struggle to separate value from the speculation. Once the dust has settled on all things related to the Metaverse, NFTs, Cryptocurrencies and —generally speaking— Web3, the value of digital real-estate could become apparent. As the quick-rich schemes die off, what will become apparent is that all of this is a new layer of reality. And that new layer of reality, people can make a living by performing ordinary jobs. More high-tech, but ordinary.