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Comment by gokhan | Hacker News Reader

Would you go to Louvre to see Mona Lisa if you have an atom-by-atom identical copy at home? How much would you pay for the original? What is "original" in this case? Which ship of Theseus is the original one?

I don't say, as art, some NFTs are not pretty. I just say they don't represent the same value (for me) as some people think. A CryptoPunk does not have a physical representation, so the one you and I see on our screens are both the same, the original one. I can already see the original whenever I want by just visiting Visa's tweet.

A CryptoPunk, especially the one Visa bought, clearly is history. But that does not apply to other NFTs, others are ordinary JPEGs.

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Many museums are in fact showing fakes. Seems that people don't care as long as they know there's only one official version of it hanging somewhere, even if that's not the original. I think that's analogous to owning the one NFT that was officially minted by the work's creator, even when there's infinite digital copies of the work possible.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90170415/so-many-museums-are-fil...

I wouldn't say that people don't care because they know there's only one official version of it hanging somewhere.

I think it's more so that people don't know that they're looking at a fake. I would be surprised if you told someone that the painting they're looking at is fake and they're response is "oh I don't care". I'm sure they'd be at least a bit disappointed.

>Would you go to Louvre to see Mona Lisa if you have an atom-by-atom identical copy at home? How much would you pay for the original? What is "original" in this case? Which ship of Theseus is the original one?

I am certain that if there was a perfect replica of the Mona Lisa, the original would retain most of its value. I don't really understand why this is the case, but I do understand that it is the case.

I'll take a stab at this.

The value for me is in knowing that I am standing in front of the same canvas that Da Vinci stood in front of. It's similar to going to a historical site and standing where history you've heard about was made and seeing/hearing/smelling something of what the people who made it did. It builds a sense of human connection, a shared experience, and makes something you "know" to be real "feel" more real.

Da Vinci never stood in front of the "atom for atom copy" of the Mona Lisa, and generations have not come from around the world to see it. We're receiving the same visual stimulus, but the ability to participate in the human connection is reduced because we know it's a copy. (Worth noting that if we didn't know it was a copy, then this wouldn't be a problem.)

I agree with this - it's the human connection that does it for me. As someone else already mentioned, seeing the brush strokes on the canvas and knowing that the physical thing in front of me was crafted by the hands of the artist however many decades or centuries ago, is a special experience.

Interestingly, when paintings like the Mona Lisa are concealed in those plastic protective containers, that experience is significantly decreased for me. It's strange, but that layer between the canvas and my eyeball has a major effect on my perception.

Should check out the currency by Damien hirst. He made a “real” piece of art and a correspondent nft. One of which has to be destroyed at a certain time. I believe most will destroy the physical version. https://www.heni.com/

> Would you go to Louvre to see Mona Lisa if you have an atom-by-atom identical copy at home?

The point is moot, as you can look at super ultra high def scans of many paintings from the comfort of your home.

And you can see more details this way and not pay any museum fees too

Any digital scan will never be a 100% accurate re-creation of an original artwork.

Even the best digital display technology can only display a fraction of the human perception, something that pigments are not limited to. Pigments are also physical materials, which can reflect light in drastically different ways, which can only be appreciated in person. Finally, paintings are actually 3 dimensional, with the different brush strokes creating a detailed texture on the canvas (look at a Van Gogh for an extreme example), which won't be accurately depicted in a scan.

> The point is moot, as you can look at super ultra high def scans of many paintings from the comfort of your home.

That's a scan, a first-generation analog copy, and thus subject to generation-loss.

CryptoPunks, being 100% digital, can be copied exactly an infinite number of times. If I download the PNG from the URL in the NFT, I have in my possession the exact same thing as the so-called "owner."

The only thing that differentiates the NFT "owner" from anyone else is a bookkeeping entry totally divorced from the infinitely-copyable and publicly-available thing it represents.

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