Above: Illustration by k_v/DepositPhotos.

Software architect Nissan Dookeran pens a letter to creatives in Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean, inviting them to consider NFT technology as a source of revenue.

Dear Caribbean creatives,

For the last few years I’ve lived away in the absence of Trinidad Carnival among many other, some might inclusively call it Caribbean, parts of my heritage. I’ve observed both locally and now from afar how those tourists or diaspora who have never visited our part of the world for Carnival are often enticed at first by the pretty and traditional mas we play.

They come intoxicated by the vibes the upbeat soca music they’ve heard, something that is distinct in rhythms and difficult to duplicate as it is a product of the unique mix of our historic African, Indian, European and other cultural ancestry in our region and its versatile evolution continues as other cultural beats can be seen integrated with each new work produced.

The prospect of, freely and in public spectacle, being accepted as one dances and wines; a dance style locals know can be seductive but is not necessarily sexual in nature; to music that all but dictates bodily movement of some manner on hearing, and it being acceptable to partner even with strangers you’ve barely shared a word or two beyond the words of consent to dance, is virtually unheard of in some modern countries. (For the uninitiated reading this, Western mainstream media has adopted/corrupted this to the buzzword of “twerking”, but didn’t copy it that well).

Carnival was for me though always about people coming together, from all walks of life, at every societal ring, in one body of people, to celebrate life inclusively and serendipitously with each other as we meet in the streets during Monday and Tuesday. In the melee of activity some participants go to extremes to “free up” themselves, picking up something (anything), adopting private property walls as personal stages, or sadly sometimes, as urinals.

Some have tried to integrate capitalist venture driven ideals in attempts to grow businesses within this cultural commons with ropes, carts, VIP zones and the like. The separation of media facilities and the lack of empathy in facilities afforded to them while others enjoyed more comfortable environments sadly reinforces that growing sense of separation.

It’s not a perfect system of celebration, and decisions made, at individual and institutional levels, continue to drive its reputation and viability one way or another. But the people remain. It is after all, inextricably ours, for better or worse.
One area I have felt the most sadness for is for you and other creatives who make Carnival ours, and continue to be our ambassadors, our promoters, and our most often unrecognised and financially unrewarded innovators for local culture.

Not just in Trinidad but worldwide it is a common problem that creatives are disenfranchised or have no power at a negotiating table to set terms when it comes to generating revenue from your hard work. This is the space I want to address with you, that of having the creative independence you need to thrive, explore and grow as a creative without sacrificing financial viability of this enterprise. Many times it’s a trade off, in doing commissioned works you sacrifice some creative independence to meet the desires of the purchaser.

Without a plethora of middle men claiming percentages of your work, it may not find that exposure to the right audience who finds your work worthy of being paid for in a manner that allows the bills to be paid. A creative’s ability to have negotiating power in this space has been to this point very little if any.

This has now fundamentally changed and you will see this in a “bit” (pun intended) of digital technology called an NFT, nor non-fungible token. This has recently been gaining mainstream acceptance by not just technical persons who invest in things like cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum,, but now also by major and emerging creatives and collectors alike.

Digital goods are nothing new, we buy copies of software online all the time. We pay for access to Netflix and Spotify and Apple Music. Digital Art and Collectibles have also been around for awhile. This is not just the selfies and memes we see frequently pop up on our Instagram and WhatsApp groups.

We, or our children, depending on your generation, today buy “power-ups” or fashion accessories in video games like Fortnite or Roblox to distinguish the game’s digital avatar of us from others. It’s a form of status recognition to some extent, of declaring individual identity of your own personal story. What might not make sense to many is payment for things we can copy freely or view.

We don’t buy the YouTube videos we look at, we have a collection of MP3s we never paid for (bad as that might be), or pay for the latest meme images that come out on our character casts of local public figures.
So the idea of paying for a digital item that can be today copied like any other file may seem foreign, even illogical.

The legality of this copying, and the disenfranchisement of creative rights by “piracy” of works like these has led to things like DRM (Digital Rights Management) to be hotly debated at a high level, and low level actions like where for example photographers like you would “watermark” their signature on to their images when published or sold, which by itself may or may not affect its creative value to a collector, but is one means of ensuring attribution if it is copied, or used in a commercial manner without permission.

Artists commonly sign their painted works with similar goals. Iranian-American artist Sabet has a good interview at that says this much better than me, but in essence, what an NFT does is attribute the ownership and authenticity of a digital work by its creator (the creative) to a specific individual (a collector) who purchases the NFT of it and gives specific rights to its use. The NFT is the equivalent of a verifiable and trusted undisputable certificate of authenticity.

It uses the same digital blockchain technology that gives legitimacy of value to cryptocurrency like Ethereum and Bitcoin, which currently values one Bitcoin (token) at many thousands of times more than a standard US dollar.
In the world of an NFT, though, the token here is only a finite number, usually one token matching to your creative work. The value is not in the file the token represents or has embedded in it, which often can be freely viewed in the marketplace it is being sold.

What carries the real store of value for an NFT is the attribution of a market defined monetary value to it by the owner of an NFT. This is initially the creator, but then transfers to the collector who will buy it if the status or story it carries to them by being an indisputably authentic owner of that token is worth the price set.

The owner is also able to carry forward and assert those rights financially as well thru resale of the NFT as well. Think of it like owning the prime lot of Maracas beach (before the messy canal structure, often flooded carpark and imported sand decisions were implemented)

Why this has taken hold with so many artists globally, established and emerging, is that the global marketplace for NFTs connects the creator with the collector without the heavy percentage tax given to the middlemen in existing ecosystems that was required to connect the two parties.

Through the power of social media marketing outlets like Twitter, Instagram and Clubhouse, entrepreneurial creatives shift the balance of power for financial derivatives of their work’s sales and can self-promote to find their niche audience of followers and patrons who attribute a sense of value to their work from a diverse global field of potentials and retain the majority of their selling price for it.

The big thing for creatives selling an NFT though that has made its mass-adoption so quickly though is residuals. You don’t just retain the majority of the revenue from your NFT creation’s first sale, but you can also specify residual royalties (usually 5-10%, but possibly more) of any resales of your work, forever.

So if you’ve sold your NFT for $100, you initally get $100 minus whatever the marketplace charges to facilitate the sale (usually about 2.5% or $2.50 in this example) and “gas” which is the amount of cryptocurrency used to pay for the computing power needed to write the “smart contract” that governs your transaction and sets up the rules for the deal in this undisputable, verifiable, forevermore technology called the blockchain.

If the new owner turns around and sells the item for $200, and your “smart contract” specifies residual royalties, you’re automatically given that percentage of that sale as well (in this case if you say 10%, that would be $20) without needing to even know about the sale.

For emerging NFT artists, that’s quite an incentive since not only does it now become a perpetual income stream so long as the NFT is sold and resold, but as they mature and become recognised, their earlier works, which become more valuable now, still give them residual income when resold. There is incentive for an artist to promote their artwork and push their growth.

Now this isn’t a magic bullet for sure. You have to learn some new technology, yes, like the concepts of digital wallets to hold the cryptocurrency you’re paid for your works in, or store your digital NFT to be sold in. Popular wallets that integrate with your browser include MetaMask which is a good place to start with. You have to learn about “gas” which is the price to create an NFT “smart contract” and can vary in price just like driving on the highway, the more traffic that’s there the more gas it can cost to get you to Port of Spain from San Fernando.

You also have to learn a little about what NFT marketplaces exist to help you with the selling (and re-selling) of your works and the terms each offers. Two of the popular ones are Mintable and OpenSea. Both let you create your first NFTs “for free” without paying any gas fees, however OpenSea requires you pay the gas fee before placing it for sale in the marketplace.

If you’ve gotten a portfolio of digital works already, there are marketplaces that curate artists before allowing them to publish like KnownOrigin. The good news is that options exist for helping with these costs for new artists. I’ve found we’re often classified as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous People of Colour), so in searching for options to help fund “minting” your first NFT this is a good search term to Google for.

You will also become your own marketing team for lack of a better analogy, so will need to get to understanding mediums like Clubhouse, Twitter and Instagram for promoting your work as you search to find your digital tribe of fans and collectors who will support you thru the sales of your work.

You will also find on social media many fellow altruistic creatives out there, and in my short time learning I’ve found such a helpful community and openness in answering my questions, even by those more experienced.
It’s a new technology to some extent yes, but if you equate it to how you had to learn to use a digital camera and Photoshop to digitize and add signatures to your work, it’s just another tool.

I’ve adopted it myself as I explore my own creative side, and am happy to chat with you or any others about the finer details and guide you to self-publishing your first NFT as a creative. It’s still a relatively new space, but I lived through Trinidad small businesses missing the global e-commerce revolution entirely, I would hate for our creatives to have a similar experience now that this new platform is here and available to us all.

It doesn’t require you to learn too much, but might require you to introspect a little as you ideate on what is possible with this new thing called an NFT in a local context. Some might call me a dreamer for thinking like this, that this marketplace doesn’t exist for our Carnival, that this can’t help solve our missing Carnival revenue or foreign exchange problem in any kind of way, but I say if someone didn’t dream it and share it with others, then you wouldn’t find others who could also believe in it, and in turn couldn’t endeavour to form the community with each other to make it real and achieve it.

Here are some ideas to explore as this new field of creative commerce takes hold.

• When leaving Trinidad, how many of our masplayers check in (or wish they could check in) their headpiece as part of their journey back home?
• How many days after Carnival Tuesday do mas players keep their “bands” from playing in a particular Carnival band on their hands?
• How long after J’ouvert would the mud mas and paint remain on your skin? Do you smile or feel ashamed if someone notices it? Or do you share *your* Carnival story?
• How many fashion designers yearn to see something they designed be attributed to them instead of the mainstream brand they commissioned their services to? Do they have their original sketches and the iterations between that led to the final?
• How many event promoters would like that ticket holders were verifiably unique (but still possibly anonymous) to avoid hoarding of initial tickets, and would like to retain a portion of sale as a residual if the event became overly popular but still allow the initial purchaser to sell their ticket for more if they wanted to? How many would like to encourage loyalty to past patrons by rewarding a past sale with some future discount or token?
• How many local photographers, artists, musicians, storytellers or songwriters retain the master rights to their original works as part of their commissioned contracts? How many would like to “do something different” from how it was previously packaged and sold to achieve a creative goal, but it is considered too niche to give a large enough percentage to the traditional middle-men to make it economically viable for them to promote and back?

The economic impact of Covid-19 this last year and possibly for the next few to come will be especially hard for creatives. The traditional middle men and institutions have not to date nor can they offer no real options for your benefit.

Some have chosen to completely abdicate any leadership now. The predatory ones will seek to set new terms of commission to your intellectual property as they seek to maximise their percentage of reduced revenues due to new rules in the marketplace. They may even seek to retain rights to your work in this NFT space before you realise how powerful it really is.

Responsible social distancing is going to be strongly enforced. The usual, often expected, overselling of tickets and overcrowding of events may be a thing of the past.
To all creatives though, your works will remain what they are. They bring our culture to life. They tell our story as a people. And they are your intellectual property.

The rights you give to others to use this, remain yours until you set terms for their use. This includes everything and everyone from the costume and fashion accessory designers to choreographers, dancers, musicians, singers, song writers, beat creators and stage designers, to the DJs, photographers and videographers and other media who capture and broadcast the moments these works are showcased.

Traditional and non-traditional artists who design the flags, banners and visual effects too, one of my most memorable digital creations here has been caricature animations of an artist coming to life on a big screen in tandem with the soca star’s stage performance.
With no physical stage or space to present your work to the public for their patronage, through viewing or acquisition, there’s a definite gap now to be filled.

Even the small percentage offered through middle men for various rights to your work on the promise of promoting its sale cannot be guaranteed moving forward. There needs to be an innovation and entrepreneurship spirit infused into its production now. I have offered an option. It is up to our own entrepreneurial spirit to drive where or how far exploring this option as a creative Trinidadian and Caribbean community goes.

About the author

Nissan Dookeran

Nissan Dookeran is a Trinidadian based in Australia who always loves bringing community together in sharing ideas and respectful debates that educate and uplift. He is a professional software architect by day with a history of both global brand names and his own startups to his credit of work, including the Caribbean Tech Forum which he cofounded hoping to create mentorship links between Caribbean diaspora worldwide and the emerging young talents in the region.

He is still discovering his creative voice in crypto-art and photography and is searching for his audience, and his own voice, using traditional media and newer tech like VR/MR experiences. You can chat with him on Clubhouse, follow his technical work in Twitter at @redditech or view his published artistic works.