‘fungible’
The word fungible comes from the Latin fungibilis. The Latin verb fungi means ‘to perform’. Something that is fungible is mutually interchangeable with any other ‘thing’ of its kind—one thing can ‘perform’ in place of the other. Digital culture has so far thrived on fungibility: cryptocurrencies, image files, video files, audio files, and beyond can be replicated and shared ad nauseam and each iteration holds the same exchange value.
However, only recently, thanks to blockchain technology, digital culture has gone non-fungible. Some blockchain cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, now offer technology that also supports the storing of extra information that essentially marks certain tokens as completely and utterly unique. These are called non-fungible tokens, or NFTs for short.
In March of 2021, this phenomenon burst into the cultural consciousness with the news that a blockchain entrepreneur purchased a single piece of digital art as an NFT for more than 69 million US dollars. Blockchain technology has revolutionised the notions of fungibility and non-fungibility in digital culture and has far-reaching implications for a range of phenomena that we invite authors to explore, such as (but not limited to):
- The Art World
- Digital Art
- Non-Fungible Tokens
- Digital Ownership
- Digital Commerce and Society
- Digital Economy/e-Commerce
- Fandom and Collecting
- Digital/Crypto Currencies
- Fungible Representations
- Intellectual Property
- Data & Privacy
- Collectibles
- Ticketing
- Games and Gaming
- Virtual Worlds
- Music
- Film
- Memes
- Sports
- Fashion
- Pornography
- Simulacra and Simulation
- Prospective contributors should email an abstract of 100-250 words
and a brief biography to the issue editors. Abstracts should include
the article title and should describe your research question,
approach, and argument. Biographies should be about three sentences
(maximum 75 words) and should include your institutional affiliation
and research interests. Articles should be 3000 words (plus
bibliography). All articles will be double-blind refereed and must
adhere to MLA style (6th edition).
Details
Article deadline: 18 Feb. 2022
Release date: 20 Apr. 2022
Editors: Laura Glitsos, James Hall, and Jess Taylor
Please submit articles through this Website. Send any enquiries to (fungible /at/ journal.media-culture.org.au).