Art and Creativity: Using the Permanence of the Blockchain as a Record of Your Work

Almost a year ago, I wrote about the heartbreak of one of the Red Dragonfly's "stable" of artists losing the entire photographic archive of her paintings due to a hardware malfunction.

If you're like many artists, you probably like to keep somewhat of a record of your work — perhaps as a way to track your progress and creative evolution; perhaps as a simple inventory/record.

Either way, you're likely to run into a fairly simple question:

How Do I Safely Store This?

Traditionally, the answer was that we would photograph everything and get prints made. If you were particularly safety-oriented, you would make a point of keeping prints and negatives in separate locations. 

The problem with this type of record is, of course, that it's "breakable." Fires, floods and plain old poor storage conditions can cause photographic materials to more or less disintegrate. 

Then came digital media.

Suddenly, we had many more options, and multiple copies were far easier to make. 

Now you could not only make prints of your images, but you could store the digital files on your computer, burn them to DVDs, keep them on memory sticks and more.

But how "safe and permanent" is that, even?

In the case of our heartbroken artist, paper copies of prints were lost in a move and then the digital media destroyed by fire. Leaving her with nothing... to document a 30+ year painting career. Sure, there was a snapshot or two, but no real record.

Online and Cloud Storage

The newest iteration of safe records storage is, of course, online.

"Online" can mean a photo storage utility, your own web site or blog, or a storage utility like dropbox. 

Allegedly, such services are extremely safe, and their selling point is generally that they can offer security, lots of backups and "24/7 uptime."

Whereas these are all great promises, they have one major limitation: The service provider's ability to stay in business. If your photo server shuts down because they've gone bankrupt, you're (in most cases) pretty much hosed.

The other thing that can happen — which millions of distressed PhotoBucket users discovered in 2017 — is that a service will suddenly change their terms of service, which could mean all your stored art images are suddenly held ransom behind a so-called "pay wall." 

In the case of PhotoBucket, users with 10-year old accounts suddenly discovered it would cost them $400 (or more) a year to keep using the service... and even to retrieve their existing files.

Hardly "safe," if you ask me.

Along Came the Blockchain

Which brings us to the latest form of "permanent" record keeping: The Blockchain.

One of the promises — or selling points — of blockchain technology is "permanence." Which is arrived at through this thing we call "decentralization." 

The idea here is that because there is no "company" holding the keys to the blockchain, it can't "die," as long as the network of witnesses keep it going. And because there is a financial incentive to being a witness, if someone "gets tired" of maintaining their witness it's likely there will always be someone behind them, ready to set up a new witness. 

This, however, is not intended to be a technical article, but a functional one.

So the main point here is that Steemit — and by extension the Steem blockchain — is definitely a viable place for artists to store records of their work. And what's more, not only do you get to store your records here, in doing so you also share with others and gain increased exposure!

And who knows, someone might like your "storage posts" enough to throw an upvote or two your way, thereby earning you a few cents (or dollars) for your efforts. Which is a whole lot better than suddenly waking up one morning to a notification that it will cost you $400 to retrieve your precious images. Or, worse, to find them completely GONE!

Thank you for reading! Red Dragonfly is a proud member of the @sndbox creative initiative.

The Red Dragonfly is an independent alternative art gallery located in Port Townsend, WA; showcasing edgy and unique contemporary art & handmade crafts by local and worldwide artists. All images are our own, unless otherwise credited. Where applicable, artist images used with permission.