The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is encouraging visitors to learn about the history of art through Web3 games and NFT rewards. The new activity, called Art Links, invites people to determine common threads and relationships between more than 140 works of art from The Met’s selection, with new obstacles to be released weekly.
It is built on Coinbase’s Center bitcoin in collaboration with start-up Br Laboratories. Gamers in the video game are required to make a network of seven pieces of artwork and six connections. Each ring must be completed in four tries.
The game provides a variety of possible connections, depending on the type of musical movement or the materials used. For instance, a player could build a website by recognizing that two pieces were actually created using the same materials or were a component of the” cubist” motion.
Players can even join paintings through “emojis”, shared indicators, and symbols. Upon safely finding art-based connections—or” stores “—between functions, players can then say free NFT badges and make achievements.
People who earn these achievements may uncover real-life benefits, such as discounts at The Met Store or personal, curator-led in-person tours. Craft Links also includes built-in teaching moments, accessible via interactive icons, so users can brush up on their their art background information.
The Met’s site is currently hosting the game, which may work for a total of 12 months.
This isn’t the monument’s first venture into blockchain, but it is a little different. Again in 2023, the Met The Met teamed up with the game software for Replica, an mixed reality quest-based game (available for iOS and Android ) that’s linked to a Met knowledge within the Roblox universe. Visitors to the museum were guided via an interactive image to 37 different physical works that the app, created with technology partner Verizon, could more discover by scanning the pieces in question.
In return, players could score digital collectibles—like Van Gogh’s famous straw hat—for their avatars.
” Objects in Disguise,” which explores the themes explored in the video game, features artworks created with unexpected and purposefully deceptive materials like by Su Xianzhong. Additionally, the game explores” Art x Tech,” which features works by Matthew Jensen that explore artists ‘ interactions with technological innovation over time.
The Met’s demonstration of faith in blockchain technology comes at a time when NFT art’s demand has largely decreased. The mainstream art movement appears to be focusing its efforts elsewhere, as NFT trading volumes on the marketplace Magic Eden have decreased by 91 % from their all-time highs.
Record-holding digital artist Beeple claimed in December that the NFT market had” come back down” and that speculators had “moved on” despite noting that” there is still very much a lot of enthusiasm around this stuff.”
Nonetheless, intersections between high-profile art institutions and the NFT space continue to crop up.
In October, Christie’s London hosted an auction for a dynamic digital artwork inscribed on Bitcoin’s Ordinals protocol—a first for the auction house.
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