HAVE METAVERSE AND HYPERREALITY HAD AN IMPACT ON ART?

What is Metaverse? What is hyperreality? Does the metaverse have an impact on modern art? What are the pros and cons of the metaverse? All these questions will be addressed in this article.

Throughout centuries, scientists tried to create something much more superior to humans, something that can change our daily lives cardinally, something that will aid people in their daily lives, making it much effortless. Technological advances followed one another making something unthinkable come to be real, expanding imagination to a whole another level. Today computers, smartphones, tablets, self-driving cars, and much more are used to connect us with our beloved ones, draw, play games, get to our destination control free, write books, etc. Developments in technology created an opportunity for the digital art movement to emerge. Millions of people create artwork using their tablets in different illustrators, moreover, they stream -a process of recording your artwork while working on it and interacting with people simultaneously - and much more people get influenced by it. Digital art became quite popular in a fleeting time period as it could depict art more precisely. Imaginers started to envision more bizarre ideas, such as Metaverses and Hyperrealities. Ideas that seemed unrealistic once now seem to be almost invented. The question of whether metaverse and hyperreality have an impact on art now rises. Throughout my essay, I will elaborate on the meaning of terms, their relationship to art, and whether we should be cautious or not. In other words, this paper will show that although it seems practical and desired, the relationship between art and technology is something that we should be careful of. We need to remember what Marshall McLuhan once pointed out: the medium is the message.

Nowadays, the termMetaverseis used everywhere, and most people still have a vague understanding of what this means. Stephenson reports that the term Metaverse was firstly used 30 years ago in a book called snow crash by Neal Stephenson in 1992. Neal is an American novelist known for writing fictional stories, and he is also known as Stephen Bury (as cited in Wikipedia). A metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection. As Darrell Wood expressed “The metaverse is described as a means of creating digital spaces for a range of human activity” (Wood). The first occurrence of the metaverse world was Second Life innovated by Philip Rosedale. As metaverse is a general term representing 3D virtual worlds no one owns it, but instead there are several metaverse worlds whose owners are the individuals or the companies who created that specific world. “Facebook, Epic Games, and other companies are investing significantly in creating a metaverse” (What is a Metaverse). These companies the main goal is to create a metaverse world where people can communicate with each other, create their personas based on their taste, use cryptocurrencies and NFT’s to buy and sell stuff, etc. One fascinating example of a metaverse world is Liberland project namedCyber Urban Incubatorby Zaha Hadid Projects. “This is a work in progress. The Liberland Metaverse – a collaboration between Liberland, Zaha Hadid Architects, Mytaverse and ArchAgendaa.o. – is designed as a virtual industry synergy and networking hub for Crypto projects, crypto companies, and crypto events” (Liberland).

This picture is a brief representation of the Liberland metaverse. On the right-upper side, it can be speculated that architects added these cryptocurrencies' change rates here to make it more similar to our world. As we use dollars, euros, and pounds in our daily lives we can use cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, Ethereum, and dogecoin in metaverses. Even though the Liberland project is still in progress, some beta testers already used it and shared their opinions with the team.

One of the benefits of the metaverse is related to the arts. Metaverse has a remarkable positive impact on the art world. Nowadays, more artists create artworks with mythical creatures and fictional worlds where the skin color of people is pink, birds walk while whales fly, and even more controversial stuff take place there.

The native art form of a future metaverse where items will be created inside the metaverse world using the building tools of the given world is called meta-art, while imported work is one that is originally created in real life and then transferred to the metaverse world via uploading the digital image of the work. (What is a Metaverse)

The question that concerns most people is whether the metaverse will be similar to SAO, Sword Art Online, novel series by Reki Kawahara that was later alternated to anime. In the anime, the creator of Metaverse trapped citizens inside the metaverse where they couldn’t have any contact with the outside world. In their real life, families of those who are trapped had to connect life-supporting machines to them. The series continue as the main character, who originally was a beta tester, gets to know a girl who is quite skillful, and they join their forces in order to defeat the creator and break free from this prison-like metaverse world.

But it's a pity that the virtual worlds[SAO and Oasis] depicted in these two movies[sword art online and ready player one] are built from top to bottom, and everything is set up before the player enters (including how to get experience upgrades, including the purchase price of goods, and rewards for tasks) Etc.), it also defines the only way to win (for example … Aincrad). Therefore, they can only be regarded as highly immersive games, rather than so-called Metaverse products. (What is Meta Universe)

As mentioned above, in SAO players could only use functionality allowed by the developers, whereas in the real metaverse, developers try to make metaverse independent 3d multiplayer virtual world, where there is a chance for unexpected possibilities. Therefore, we can conclude that the metaverse worlds most probably will not be alike to SAO.

Another interesting question that needs to be addressed is whether Metaverse and Hyperreality will be interchangeable in the future or not. Hyperreality is an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies. As Wood has described it “Hyperreality is considered a condition in which what is real and what is fiction are seamlessly blended together so that there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins” (Wood). In Darrel Wood’s opinion, a cachet of the metaverse is the concept of hyperreality. As we know there still isn’t a real representation of the metaverse. The goal of developers is to create a virtual world where people will interact with each other, and whether later on, it will end up being hyperreal depends purely on one’s mental health as each person perceives differently and the amount of time, they spend in the metaverse world. For example, one can be intensely concentrated and lose track of time, which in the long run will lead to psychological problems and addictiveness. There are some people who get influenced effortlessly, which is why many videos, games, and movies have trigger warnings in them, and those people might start to confuse reality and virtual reality resulting in hyperreality. For example, cosmonauts after returning to earth had difficulty adapting to gravity as in the cosmos on the shuttle, they had zero gravity, so they were mostly levitating as were their belongings. In one of the interviews published by NASA Johnson with a cosmonaut, cosmonaut while explaining some theories was leaving stuff such as pencils in the air and, of course, they were falling on the ground due to gravity (Johnson 0:24-0:28). Cosmonaut who was used to flying around the spaceship for a long time had to pick his belongings after he checked the air and noticed that it fell.

We can relate this example to metaverse and hyperreality. If a person with poor mental health starts entering the metaverse world on a daily base he, just a like cosmonaut will have difficulty in differentiating between what is real and what is virtual, he will start by making common mistakes similar to cosmonaut putting his pencil in the air and expecting it to hang in there. Later on, these people will start to doubt and check every little thing to be sure that it is real or not. Movie Matrix can be an example of that. After spending some time in the hyperreality, the main character, depicted in the picture above, forgot that there was another world and lived in a hyperreal world thinking that it was real. Days went by and the character started doubting some things which enabled his friends to save him. As such we can speculate that the metaverse world can be hyperreal for some users who most probably are easy to influence or manipulate.

Secondly, in order to understand Metaverse’s impact on art, it is essential to get to know the term NFT. The non-fungible token is what NFT stands for. As fungible means unreplaceable, it is clear that this token cannot be replaced. Vanessa Lau famous YouTuber and influencer talks about definitions of NFT and metaverse, why they are useful and how come they are so popular. Lau says:

Look at a dollar bill, a dollar bill is replaceable, if someone took it from me, I could easily go to the bank and take another one. What about if you take my one and only limited edition of a Pokémon card? I cannot replace it, even if I get something similar. The same thing applies to the Mona Lisa portrait, there is one and only of it, even though there are many copies, and duplicates. (Lau 02:15-02:41).

She explains the definition of NFT to viewers using real-life examples. After these explanations, it can be said that NFT is actually a digital document documented in blockchain containing information about who created it, who purchased it, when and where, at what price was it sold, and all the previous transactions between owners and buyers of the artwork. NFTs are like a signature for digital assets: they authenticate ownership of digital items like art, music, video, in-game assets, and more. NFT art on the other hand is the art created that is being traded, created, or sold. NFT art can be anything starting from memes to a famous basketball match video. What can you do with NFTs? Sebastian Smee gave an answer to this question as follows “For instance, you can divide an NFT into fractions and sell it as shares. If it goes up in value, so will the shares. The companies already doing this promote it as a way to democratize art ownership and investment” (Smee). So, there can be several reasons for why one might purchase NFT art: the first being art collector and the second business purposes.

In recent years, the prices of NFTs skyrocketed. Many famous influencers, actors, and companies have been purchasing outrageously expensive NFTs. Deku Chow says that “NFTs are having their big-bang moment: collectors and speculators have spent more than $200 million on an array of NFT-based artwork, memes, and GIFs in the past month alone, according to market tracker NonFungible.com” (Chow). Marshmallow, the popular electronic music producer, and DJ is one of the most noted celebrities NFT holders, owning several. It was kept a secret until he changed his Twitter profile picture to a CryptoPunk. As Rimme Dirchi has mentioned another celebrity:

Musician Shawn Mendes joined the NFT marketplace OpenSea and launched an NFT based on his album, ‘Wonder’ with Genies. The musician introduced digital wearables including a guitar, necklaces, vest, and earrings which were available for purchase and earned Mendes more than $600,000. (Dirchi)

NFTs as many other areas is male dominated one. In order to fix this, Yam Karaki decided to take matters into her own hands and Arora explained that “In the hopes of encouraging equal participation by both genders, Yam Karaki launched an NFT collection named World of Women.” (Arora). Many female influencers also purchased NFTs showing their voice here too. For example, Madonna created a Twitter post stating that she bought Bored Ape too (Deka).

The picture of Bored Ape is quite popular NFT art and right now is sold for 430 thousand dollars. Many celebrities found it amusing to buy this NFT art. Even though some might find this artwork unaesthetic it still can be used for business purposes. For example, many businessmen and businesswomen have made their research about different NFT arts and made speculations to find out which will be popular in the future. After finding the one they bought it at a low price, when it wasn’t popular, and kept holding onto it till it didn’t get popular and then sold it at a higher price but still lower than the market price. A great number of people have used this method and made quite a fortune overnight.

This is the statistics of Bored Ape NFT for 2021. It is pretty clear that the price has been rising since the beginning and it is quite remarkable that it started with less than 10 thousand and right now it is 430 thousand dollars.

However, as the quote says, there is no rose without thorns. Some skeptics fear that Metaverse can be dangerous. Society’s opinion differs due to how each of us perceives differently and some groups might perceive it in a similar way depending on the level of unanimity in the group. Marshall McLuhan, a famous philosopher described this phenomenon in 5 words –the medium is the message(cited in Wikipedia). The meaning behind those words is that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. So what matters is how those skeptics perceive the message. Skeptics gave several reasons to be worried about the metaverse. The first one is that there can be data leaks. As Larry Magid, an American journalist, technology columnist, and commentator, also mentioned “Just as the internet created challenges for safety, privacy, and security, the metaverse will add even more challenges” (Magid). Company Meta created by Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has been under the radar for collecting quite private data from its Facebook users. According to OFlaherty, “Facebook’s AI algorithm that leads people to extreme content has been under the spotlight and is at the center of recent allegations that the social network puts profits before people” (O'Flaherty). Many influencers now feel like Mark’s interest in Metaverse creation should be looked at more intensely as people can be more vulnerable to the information leak to be actively in metaverse one must have AR and VRs and many more other technological devices where one’s personal data might be attacked or voluntarily given under another name. It is no news that most people don’t read the terms before allowing whatever the program wants from us.

The second concern is harassment under the mask of anonymity. Even before the whole metaverse hype people already anonymously attacked each other in online games and social media. If someone has angered one, he or she can easily create a fake acc and attack that person by spamming. Some psychologists feel that after the creation of the real metaverse this situation will worsen. There was a scandal about Facebook, again. One of the participants felt like he was attacked. The company made a statement later on clarifying that “While Meta did have the foresight to implement blocking functionality to prevent unwanted attention, the company admits that this was neither “trivially easy” to activate nor readily “findable,” prompting moves to surface such functionality more prominently” (Glenday).

Finally, the metaverse intensifies already existing distortions and lowers one’s self-esteem. In the 21stcentury the most teenagers and young adults think about is their looks and the number of likes their post gets. In a world where all that matters is how popular one is, people try to fit in with the so-called standards. Some psychologists fear that metaverse will have a horrifying effect on one’s self-esteem. Sophie Wilson writes about Metaverse and social insecurities that Metaverse can intensify. She feels that people will be less tempted to return to the real world. Moreover, she does not exclude the possibility that there will be bullies who will create insecurities about avatars in Metaverse too. Still, Wilson is optimistic about the Metaverse:

The metaverse could be an opportunity to experiment with virtual appearances beyond social media filters. It could unburden us from the limits society puts on our appearances in the physical world. But it would be naïve to imagine the metaverse as a utopia where beauty standards don’t exist. (Wilson).

If used the right way, it’s possible we could create a world where physical appearances have less sway on our mental health and self-esteem. As for developers it is also essential to keep each and every user self and happy, many companies most probably will have some features or regulations to keep everything under control, in a good way.

In conclusion, metaverse and hyperreality is still in progress, and their destiny and outcomes are still blurry. Software developers try their best to make everything in the best possible way. Even though we don’t know what the outcome will be, whether it is something positive or negative everyone is quite excited. Even at this point, the influence of metaverse and hyperreality on art is clearly seen. People are so mesmerized by the concept of the metaverse that many artists draw so many designs for tech companies in hopes that they will be used in the metaverse world.