Boca Raton Museum of Art presents Public by Design: Net-Art, NFTs, & the Democratization of Digital Art

Thursday, March 26th from 6 – 7:30pm Boca Raton Museum of Art presents Public by Design: Net-Art, NFTs, & the Democratization of Digital Art. This panel talk will explore the evolution of net-art, an avant-garde movement rooted in the open architecture of the internet and its complex, often ambivalent relationship with NFTs and digital ownership. Net-art emerged with a radical premise in which art created on and for the internet should remain publicly accessible, ephemeral, and non-commodified. The discussion will take place in person for attending audiences, with select panelists joining virtually as part of a hybrid format. See link for details.

This program is organized and presented in partnership with the Lynn NFT Art Museum and the Loop Art Critique. Panelists: Rodolfo Peraza, Vuk Ćosić, Rhea Myers. Moderator: Ariel Baron-Robbins.

Image: Vuk Ćosić, “Documenta Done (Reaction Video Essay)” (detail). Courtesy of the Artist.

Panelists
Rodolfo Peraza
odolfo Peraza is a Cuban-born, U.S.-based, tech-centered artist. His work focuses on virtual and physical public spaces, XR, and data visualization. Founder of the MUD Foundation Inc. in Miami (2017), established to support and develop tech-centered arts programs and lower barriers to accessing immersive technology in arts and education. Peraza’s work has been exhibited widely, including at SIGGRAPH LA and the Pérez Art Museum. His work is in the permanent collections of the AGO Museum (CA) and the Jumex Collection (Mexico). He was awarded the Cannonball Wavemaker Grant and the Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship in 2021.

Vuk Ćosić
Founding figure of net-art, credited with coining the term “net.art” in the 1990s. Known for conceptual works such as ASCII remakes of blockbuster films and early browser interventions, Ćosić has consistently critiqued technological hype and institutional commodification. He brings historical grounding and a philosophical perspective on net-art’s ethos of openness in contrast to NFT-driven scarcity.

Rhea Myers
Artist, hacker, and writer originally from the UK and now based in British Columbia. Since 2014, her practice has focused on blockchain as both medium and metaphor, using raw transactions, smart contracts, and ERC-721 tokens to probe ownership, property, and the anxieties of digital control. Myers has exhibited internationally at venues including the ArtScience Museum (Singapore), Kunsthalle Zürich, Sotheby’s London, and Chronus Art Centre (Shanghai).

Moderator
Ariel Baron-Robbins
Interdisciplinary artist and professor of animation at Florida International University. Creator of Loop Art Critique, a metaverse-based, anonymously juried residency for digital artists, and curator of the Lynn NFT Museum at the Boca Raton Innovation Campus. She has organized panels and exhibitions including What to Call Digital Art Now? and Art on BRiC Walls, bridging experimental practice with public discourse.