The Guide to All Things Phygital Art | MakersPlace Blog

What is Phygital Art?

Phygital is a portmanteau of the words “physical” and “digital” and is used to describe the intersection of these two arenas.

Phygital experiences are becoming increasingly commonplace. QR code restaurant menus, Snapchat filters, Pokemon Go, and digital maps apps are all examples of how the digital world is enmeshed with our lived experiences. 

With the explosion of creativity that has followed the digital art revolution, it’s no surprise that artists would wield these tools to break down barriers between what can be seen on a screen and what can be experienced without mediation. 

What follows is an in-depth overview of trends in phygital creations. We hope that this article will inspire readers to continue to push the boundaries of digital art into real life as well as push the boundaries of real life further into the digital. 

Categories of Phygital Art

The Phygital Dilemma

The most obvious use case for phygitalia (my own word) is to include a physical corollary with a digital piece. As soon as the hype around NFTs began in earnest, artists started testing the philosophical boundaries of the endeavor.

First, Damien Hirst famously sold NFTs of 10,000 unique dot paintings for $2,000 each. He told collectors they could burn their NFTs in exchange for the original painting or keep the NFT, at which point, Hirst would burn the painting. The majority of buyers (5,149) kept the physical painting; 4,851 opted for NFTs.

Taking a different approach, Spanish artist Antonio García Villarán created original digital paintings, which he painstakingly recreated as physical paintings. He offered his buyers the same dilemma (though less violent): keep the NFT or the painting; whichever you don’t choose goes to the artist. Of the three unique 1/1 pieces, every collector opted for the NFT over the painting.

And artist Matt Gondek has taken this approach to a perhaps greater extreme with his Fight Club series, for which he and his team created 300 painstakingly hand-crafted spiked baseball bats painted in Gondek’s signature colors. The bats were then photographed, and those photos sold at NFTs. Following the sale, owners could burn their NFTs for the bat or keep their NFT and let the bat be incinerated. 

Phygital Prints

Going beyond the most obvious is someone like Dutch footballer-turned-street artist DOES. Instead of selling merely the NFT and a print, DOES released cinematic behind-the-scenes videos demonstrating every step of a piece’s creation. Buyers of these audiovisual art films received a print of the finished piece.

With a fly-on-the-wall recording of Thelonious Monk composing in private, Javier Arrés’s animated “Brilliant Corner” NFT couldn’t possibly be IRLd (my own word again) without the audio. As the digital art revolution continues to expand the possibilities of what can be…