April 2, 2021 FEATURES

April 2, 2021 FEATURES Escape Velocity: NFTs and The Promise of Utopia Nolan Kelly Bitcoin Planet, by oxiyusuf In the infancy of the internet, it was thought by some that we were on the brink of a global communist revolution, as new technologies for sharing would obviate the need for private property. This belief seemed as logical then as it does delusional now; thirty years on, we live in an age with a greater concentration of wealth in fewer hands than ever before, largely because the internet provided new, unregulated terrain for market expansion. But the mandate of the web when it was created was to share

Film still from El Dios Acostado, film by Alex Dolores Salerno. 2020. Courtesy of the Artist March 19, 2021 FEATURES NFT Art: Q&A with Blockchain Entrepreneur and Crypto Investor Aram Barnett Cornelia Smith Above: "To the Moon” // (2021) by 3irdeye on OpenSea Unless you’ve taken a vow of internet celibacy, or have somehow managed to avoid the news cycle of the past two weeks, then you likely have come across the subject of NFT art. NFTs — which stands for non-fungible tokens — are non-divisible assets that exist on the Ethereum blockchain. This clunky wording refers to a complex system of minting a token in a

February 19, 2021 FEATURES Glimmer in the Slick: A Meditation on SOPHIE’s Legacy Caelan Ernest The first time I heard SOPHIE, a couple of friends and I were driving around aimlessly and blasting a few of the singles that would appear on her 2015 compilation record Product. I’ve always been an avid pop listener, and I’d grown exhausted of the recurring trends in the mid-to-late 2010’s mainstream: minimalist beats featuring un-ironic, over-auto-tuned vocals seemingly misplaced against generic EDM drops. My craving for something inventive and exciting ran deep. “Lemonade” is the very first song by SOPHIE that my friends played for me. I was transfixed by