"Trial & Error" Space at re:publica 22

The web3 is one of the most controversially discussed approaches ever. What for some is the all-round solution for more privacy on the web, platform-independent, decentralised management and distribution, for others is an environmental fiasco and hyper-capitalisation of every last asset. That's precisely why we want to give this complex of topics enough space at re:publica this year and illuminate it from many different angles.

There will be a designated web3 Space at Flutgraben e.V., where the focus on 8 June will be on the perspectives of creative professionals. Curated by Music Pool Berlin, it will be about the many different possibilities that NFTs, DAOs and the web3 in general offer for producers, creative workers, artists and music makers. At the same time, however, numerous problems that arise from this will also be discussed.

You can find more information in the guest article by the two curators Andrea Goetzke and Eric Eitel, both co-founders of Music Pool Berlin, a publicly funded counselling centre for music makers in Berlin. Andrea and Eric have been working on the digitalisation of music culture and the music industry for many years and have already curated programme sections for re:publica in the past.

Guest contribution by Andrea Goetzke and Eric Eitel (Music Pool Berlin)

Various approaches have already aimed to make the internet more decentralised again. What is now becoming clear in the context of the sometimes heated discussion about the decentralised web3, NFTs, DAOs etc. is that many creators, meaning producers, creative workers, artists, musicians etc., share this goal and are experimenting in web3. From their point of view, decentralisation means that they no longer want closed silos that are run with their data (or their productions) - without any say in the matter. Furthermore, they demand fair compensation for their work beyond the zero-point amounts per click or play from platforms such as Youtube, Spotify etc.. For the creators, the web3 has supposedly attractive monetisation ideas in store: from artist tokens to NFT art to blockchain-based music streaming. Speaking of fairness and participation: How would it be if the web3 were to provide a technological solution for cooperative business and the democratic participation processes necessary for this? Decentralised autonomous organisations (or DAOs for short), according to their proponents, have the potential to automate these administrative and nerve-racking grassroots democratic processes, which are extremely complex in the analogue world. All these promises are legitimate and desirable from the curators' point of view.

The technological driver for the latest attempt to create a decentralised "web3" are the much-vaunted blockchains. And that's where the problems start, as most blockchains still have a miserable eco-balance. The new, less computationally intensive proof-of-stake (PoS) method is supposed to improve this significantly. However, Etherium, currently the most important blockchain for mining NFTs, still uses the more computationally intensive proof-of-work (PoW) authentication. Another critical strand of discourse, with an anti-capitalist slant, works away at the supposed main goal of web3, the commercialization of everything digital (quasi diametrically opposed to the older peer-to-peer approach of sharing). The pixel art of the NFT movement, which has now also reached the high-priced, traditional art market, serves as a projection surface.

The curators believe that despite justified criticism, the web3 deserves a space in which it can continue to be imagined, analysed and experimented with - trial and error, in a respectful framework, without bashing and shaming.

The programme on 8 June