BY KAYLEY HAMILTON © BLOCKBUSTER WEB 3.0 PLATFORM
Celebrity tattoo artist BANG BANG sold the world’s first rewritable and reprogrammable tattoo as a 1/1 NFT for 100 ETH.
If you are a fan of tattoos at all, or have admired photos of celebrity’s tattoos like Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Adele or even LeBron James, then you have seen BANG BANG’s work.
Keith “BANG BANG” McCurdy, owner of BANG BANG Tattoo Studios (New York City’s most-followed business on social media), was named by Vogue as ‘the most famous tattoo artist in the world.’ And now, BANG is becoming the most famous tattoo artist in Web3.
The ‘Magic Ink’ tattoo — futuristically fitting for Web3 — recently sold as a 1/1 NFT for 100 ETH. Magic Ink is a lab developed technology that allows tattoos to change on demand from their original form in your skin.
This ‘skin-tech’ tattooing originally came from scientists in the Atlas Institute at the University of Colorado who were working to help solve the issue that we as humans are unable to detect the presence of UV light, and incorporating ink with biomedical benefits to alert wearers of dangerous UV.
“As an artist I realized an interesting thought: Let’s take this further and create a variable in tattooing that’s never existed before,” Bang shared with Blockster.
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By creating an encapsulated UV dosimeter, a dye is able to react to UV light in a bio-safe capsule, which allows for the tattooed image in your skin to change over and over, painlessly and instantly using light to turn it on and off.
“It really looks like magic,” says the tattoo artist. “So when I found this, the name just kind of came out organically and ‘Magic Ink’ stuck.”
As an artist at the forefront of innovation, it was only fitting for BANG to use Magic Ink to redefine the age-old tattoo industry and turn the first of its kind into an NFT.
“We realized NFTs with utility have incredible value and a historical value that’s just starting,” the artist told Blockster, who believes that NFT technology is going to start a new era in tattooing.
The 1/1 Magic Ink tattoo NFT sold for 100 ETH (about $150,000 at the time of this writing), making it the most expensive tattoo ever sold. The holder of the Magic Ink NFT is entitled to receive the first Magic Ink tattoo by Bang himself, and is credited as the first tattoo enthusiast in the world to own a rewritable tattoo.
“The owner of that very first one is credited with being the person that’s helping us bring [Magic Ink] from the lab to the world,” shares Bang, who tells Blockster he hasn’t made the tattoo yet but is excited to do so soon. “It really is a marker in history for change in tattooing.”
The NFT also includes a visual art piece by Bang, which is another first of its kind. “I’ve actually never made tangible art before or even digital art other than a tattoo in my career,” Bang explains. “All of my work one day will fade away, so I think there’s a little bit of interest there.”
Bang believes that everything will live on the blockchain one day, and he and his team are currently discussing the real-world and digital overlap of how consumers can one day own a digital proof point attached to their physical BANG BANG tattoo.
And as far as Magic Ink goes, Bang tells Blockster that tattoo fans are already stopping him on the street asking about this elusive new tattoo technology. “People hear the idea of a rewritable tattoo and they’re not clear on how it works. It’s confusing because it doesn’t exist… until now.” As a veteran artist and leader in the industry, Bang had seen it all, until Magic Ink. “It made me completely change my career and focus on this.”
To hear more about the Magic Ink tattoo technology and NFT, watch Blockster’s full interview with Bang here.
