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You have got to keep a plastic mind," says artist Ry David Bradley in this thought-provoking episode about the future of art. Exploring AI’s mind-blowing potential and blockchain’s role in securing provenance, Bradley envisions a world where technology continually redefines creativity. With a deep connection to internet culture, he highlights the brilliance in AI-driven art and predicts a future where NFTs become the standard for buying and selling works, reshaping how we experience and value art.
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Ry David Bradley has been waiting twenty years for this moment. The artist who started making digital work in the Web 1.0 era - in Flash, HTML, After Effects - always believed that the digital IS the physical. Not a representation of it, not a metaphor for it: the actual thing, running on copper and magnetic fields and optical fibres. NFTs didn't change his practice. They validated it.
Ry David Bradley (RDB) is a digital and textile artist whose practice spans video art, large-scale tapestry, and NFTs. He began working digitally in the Web 1.0 era and has never wavered from a core conviction: that digital materials are physical materials. His tapestries are made from digital files using RGB threads - some of the most permanent art objects possible, produced entirely from data. His recent work with ZIEN London involves 8K NFTs (8,000 pixels wide, approximately 70 megapixels) in editions of 300, each paired with a linen print. NFC authentication tags, hard-coded by the manufacturer and minted into the NFT at genesis, bind the physical and digital into a single verifiable object.
The art world has a long-running debate about whether digital art is "real" in the way physical art is real. Ry David Bradley thinks the debate misunderstands both terms. Digital is physical - it runs on cables, copper, hard drives, and magnetic processes that are as material as paint. His practice is built on that conviction, and it produces a coherent aesthetics of digital-physical integration that goes well beyond the usual "phygital" rhetoric. This conversation explores how that conviction developed over twenty years, how tapestry became his most important medium, and what NFC authentication changes about the meaning of ownership.
Digital is physical - literally
The copper in cables, the magnetic fields in hard drives, the optical processes in fibre networks - all of these are physical processes. Bradley's refusal to treat "digital" and "physical" as opposites is not rhetorical; it's technically accurate, and it changes what's possible conceptually.
Tapestry as the most permanent art form
Tapestry can last centuries - longer than most painting supports. Bradley's tapestries are made from digital files using RGB threads, which means a digital work becomes one of the most durably physical objects in the history of art. This is not irony; it's the logical conclusion of his position.
8K NFTs and linen prints as unified object
The ZIEN London project pairs 8,000-pixel-wide NFT files with linen prints. The NFC chip embedded in the print has a UID minted into the NFT at genesis - so the digital and physical are not analogues of each other but the same object in two states.
Twenty years of waiting
Bradley started making digital art in Web 1.0. The structural innovation of NFTs - the ability to sell and transfer provenance for digital works - is something he waited two decades for. His excitement about it is grounded in a long history that most newer practitioners don't have.
"I think all art will be sold as an NFT in the future... it's structurally mind blowing to me, something I've waited for, for like 20 years of my life."
The debate about whether digital works have the same status as physical ones is often conducted without historical perspective. Ry David Bradley has twenty years of digital practice behind him, and his arguments about material reality cut through the philosophical confusion. If you collect or are thinking about collecting digital art, his clarity about what you're actually owning - and why it matters - is essential. Press play.
Unlocked is the podcast by 100 collectors - the global network for digital art collectors. Each episode, we speak with artists, curators, collectors, and builders shaping the digital art world. No market speculation. No hype. Just honest, substantive conversations about art, practice, and what it means to collect today. New episodes release throughout the year. Find Unlocked on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 100 collectors is a membership network. [Explore membership →]
