A pioneer of Web 2.0, Godefroy Jordan is also a pioneer of Web 3. With his partners in Twineva, he is pushing museums to take an interest in blockchain. guest of 20 Mints Squaredwith Jodouin Mitrani from Mintedhe explains what new technologies can bring to these venerable institutions.
Twineva shifts museums to Web3. Is that summed up well?
Twineva is a collective of veterans and experts in digital and heritage who support artistic projects that want to go on the blockchain. We place ourselves in the role of co-producers, because in NFT, many approaches resemble what happens in the audiovisual sector. Today, most artists can’t code. So these are very often projects where you have to associate artists with each other, make collaborations, produce new things like generative art.
Is it a new way of looking at art?
Not so much… When Raphaël was doing architecture during the Renaissance or when great artists of the XXᵉ century united in architecture or for giant frescoes, they called on teams of craftsmen, architects, to technicians to meet technological challenges. It’s just new ways of collaborating. And two worlds which today totally ignore each other. We have therefore positioned ourselves alongside museums, institutions, foundations of the heirs of great artists. Actors who watch all this, see the train start and would like to get on board and we help them define strategies in line with their cultural policy.
Why do they want to come on board? Is it the fashion effect?
There are museums that want to regain the audience they lost with the Covid, others that want to reach young audiences because they have aging audiences. Institutions that want to open up to innovation or contemporary art because they have fairly traditional collections. Many new artists have already created codes for themselves. Often from 3D, video games, street art. We are sometimes very, very far from traditional fine arts. And yet, we will have to make the bridge. Our job is to manage to create strategies from existing collections.
By encouraging them to create NFTs?
The NFT comes to restore a title of ownership in a world, the digital one, where the work of art had lost its value because it was copied ad infinitum. It’s amazing ! But if I take over a work of art which itself is not for sale, there is a paradox. In this case, selling a digital twin only makes sense if it gives access to more.
Do you have examples?
Ultra high definition scans for example… I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that. It requires a material investment because you have to close the museum and come with high-precision equipment, but all of a sudden you have an image that isn’t the one you stole with your iPhone. You have an image inside which you can scroll down until you see the painter’s touch. It feels like a little robot going to Mars and exploring a new planet. But we also have the possibility of giving more information. When a museum has a painting behind it, it has archives, sketches, university articles. If tomorrow I don’t have a space problem in my little museum in the Metavers, if I buy this digital twin, maybe I’ll be able to display all these documents in a room that will delight my friends or strangers who come to visit my exhibition.
Is it a bonus logic?
Yes, we have another dimension which is that of derived products, we are reinventing the postcard with a single image repeated several times. Or we add artefacts and we make sure that, starting from a single work, we create 5,000 different versions to make profile images, trading cards. Finally, we have a last possibility, these are collaborations. Have you seen the bear’s head drawn by Leonardo da Vinci and sold at auction by Christie’s? The Italian duo Hackatao had fun recreating it. And when we visited the presale exhibition with Oculus glasses, we saw, as we approached, this head coming out of the drawing and which was a digital work of art. There, we create new works, really 100% digital. And all put together, this creates immense opportunities…