Examining Portraits in Digital Fashion Art Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) through Baudrillard's Simulation

Abstract

Web 3.0 enables people and machines to connect, evolve, share, and use knowledge on an unprecedented scale and in new ways, drastically improving our Internet experience. The metaverse is a collective, virtual shared space supporting all digital activities. Prompted by the rapid growth of digital art and digital fashion, this theoretical analysis explores using Jean Baudrillard's simulation concept to create unique digital art non-fun-gible tokens (NFTs), allowing them to express and communicate ideas like real-world art. Specifically, this study analyzes 120 digital fashion portraits of humans and animals and classifies them under three types of sim-ulacra covering four stages of Baudrillard's simulation process. The result shows that NFT fashion artworks reflect the core features of a digital reality by connecting and transcending the boundaries of cultures, genders, and nationalities. However, in the final simulation stage (the fourth step), the simulacrum can only coexist in the virtual world as a hyperreal object (the Type Ⅲ of simulacrum): an object more real than reality.