A new kind of bouquet is available for purchase this Valentine\u2019s Day\u2014and each is filled with fake flowers filched from video games.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s the idea behind \u201c<\/span>Out-Game Flowers<\/span><\/a>,\u201d Jill Magid\u2019s new\u2014and first-ever\u2014NFT project, minted through the young crypto-art platform <\/span>Artwrld<\/span><\/a>. Available starting today, the artist\u2019s digital bouquets are comprised of flowers that were hacked, without permission, from the source codes of classic games including Final Fantasy<\/em>, Minecraft<\/em>, and more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Each plant has a <\/span>special value within its native virtual world<\/span><\/a>. In Magid\u2019s bouquets, you may find the Silent Princess from The Legend of Zelda<\/em> series, which can be used for a stealth boost effect, or the Fire Flower from Super Mario Bros<\/em>, which grants its users the power to throw balls of flame. Some flowers even have significant worth outside their games: So powerful is the Black Lotus from World of Warcraft<\/em>, for instance, that players are sometimes willing to pay<\/a> exorbitant real-world prices to get ahold of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A small bouquet from Jill Magid\u2019s \u201cOut-Game Flowers\u201d NFT collection. Courtesy of the artist and Artwrld.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you\u2019re not already hooked by Magid\u2019s conceit, consider some extra context. When it comes to established artists making NFTs, the truth is that the number of poorly thought-out projects far outweighs the interesting ones. But Magid, who said she \u201c<\/span>strongly dislikes the vast majority of NFTs,\u201d<\/span> doesn\u2019t do anything that\u2019s poorly thought-out. Whether she\u2019s <\/span>hijacking a public TV monitor<\/span><\/a> or <\/span>having herself surveilled by police<\/span><\/a>, her work is always meticulously researched, and she often inserts herself into the very systems she\u2019s interrogating.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In other words, if there was ever an artist to make an interesting NFT, it\u2019s Magid.<\/span><\/p>\n The artist\u2019s bouquets are, at face value, simple NFTs\u2014which is to say that they look and act like digital collectibles, equal parts art object and speculative asset. But few elements in Magid\u2019s practice are ever simple; knotty, complex systems are what she\u2019s most interested in, and, sure enough, beneath the flowers are conceptual layers ready to be peeled away.<\/span><\/p>\n A large bouquet from Jill Magid\u2019s \u201cOut-Game Flowers\u201d NFT collection. Courtesy of the artist and Artwrld.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To understand those layers, it\u2019s helpful to understand the project\u2019s genesis. It goes back to <\/span>Tender<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Magid\u2019s 2020 Creative Time artwork<\/span><\/a>, for which she laser-engraved the phrase \u201cTHE BODY WAS ALREADY SO FRAGILE\u201d on the edge of 120,000 pennies.<\/span><\/p>\n Front of mind for the artist then was the ironic metaphorical contradiction between pandemic-era rhetoric around the struggling economy, which was often characterized as a financial \u201cbody\u201d in need of resuscitation, and the rhetoric around human lives, so often reduced to data points on death toll graphs. To Magid, the ubiquitous penny\u2014a financial token worth virtually nothing that suddenly became symbolically charged as a vector of transmission\u2014symbolized the intersection of the bodily and the economic<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n To disseminate the engraved pennies, Magid dropped them off, roll by roll, at bodegas around New York City. While doing so, she began to think about the flowers for sale outside so many of the stores. (She even recreated rows of bodega flowers for a <\/span>Tender<\/span><\/i>-related <\/span>exhibition at the Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth<\/span><\/a>.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2023\/02\/lgbq_04-576x1024.png\")
<\/p>\n