Contract Killers: World-Renowned Artist Nancy Baker Cahill Creates NFT Contract Project On Tezos

Nancy Baker Cahill

Nancy Baker Cahill is a world-renowned artist and public speaker based in Los Angeles, California. She is known for her work

at the intersection of fine art, social justice, and emerging technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality.

 Alongside ‘Drive Studios’ she also created the free, augmented reality (AR) public art platform – the 4th Wall App.

An especially notable project was the Liberty Bell augmented reality public art presented simultaneously in six cities in the United States: Boston, MA, Charleston, SC, Philadelphia, PA, Rockaway, NY, Selma, AL, and Washington, DC.

The public artwork will be geolocated at a series of sites and experienced on smartphones and tablets through Baker Cahill’s free 4th Wall app. This project, roughly 15 months in the making, lives at the vibrant intersection of public art, social consciousness and tech.

The art was very popular and even had a feature article in the New York Times.

Contract Killers

Now, Nancy Baker Cahill has collaborated on creating ‘Contract Killers’ a project including NFTs that are paired with physical assets, rewards, and consequences outlined in a written ‘contract’ between the artist and the buyer.

The project has been created using the Tezos blockchain and the smart contract interactions can be seen here on Better Call Dev. 

An interesting point of note, that is to be found in the written contract that accompanies the project is the fact that the digital asset to which the NFT points will be stored on a secure IPFS.

The contract provides particular safeguards in relation to the asset, which are not normally found when purchasing NFTs which have no attached contracts. For example, particular rewards that the owner may receive are specifically outlined in the accompanying document.

Such safeguards form part of the motivation for the project, to turn the spotlight onto how NFTs relate to social contracts.

It has been deemed an environmentally friendly project that considers ‘broken and violated social contracts in the artists space and in society as a whole’.

Elaborating on the series Snark Art describes the symbolism of the pieces in more detail:

Each handshake, recorded in front of a selected charged location, represents a realm of obligation and agreement where trust evaporates, where stated contracts continue to fail individuals and communities.

Additionally, accompanying essays offer three different perspectives on the dangers of the collective amnesia induced by the rush to embrace, mint, and sell NFTs.

These articulations aim to remind those swept up in the NFT hype of the responsibilities we all have to each other and our planet.

The NFTs can be seen here on Snark Art and were dropped on the 18th of May and sold out in minutes. The series was created with the collaboration of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Executive Director Hesse McGraw; and noted art attorney, Sarah Conley Odenkirk, partner at the law firm of Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP. TQ Tezos were also involved as can be seen here.

NFTs:
Contract Killers

Essays:
Nancy Baker Cahill (Artist)
Hesse McGraw (Executive Director, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston)
Sarah Conley Odenkirk (Partner, Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP)

Contract:
Contract Killers Agreement