Øx is an exhibition of cryptographic artwork, operating in the intellectual tradition of 1960s conceptualism. In 1968 Lucy Lippard and John Chandler coined the term dematerialization to describe practices which emphasized the symbolic structure and rhetorical conditions of art objects over material form.

Conceptualism represented a continuation of formal aesthetics and a realization of McLuhan’s thesis, the medium is the message. However, the transition to “art as idea” was also motivated by a desire to escape the material constraints that gave rise to the precarious economic conditions of artists.

Notably, publisher and art dealer Seth Siegelaub identified the catalog as an ideal format for artistic experimentation, where the mass production of “print exhibitions” might allow for a radical decentralization of audience and ownership.

Invited as part of the 2017 Ethereal Summit, 0x is an exhibit that brings together works that explore whether distributed cryptographic ledgers now represent a publishing paradigm in which maky of these same ideals might be realized.

Sam Hart, Secret Piece (2017)

Text accompanying the original:

Here envelopes #1 and #2 are replaced with cryptographic envelopes A and B, representing two PGP key pairs using conventional “Alice” and “Bob” nomenclature.

The encrypted secret keys are placed inside transparent envelopes with the opposing public key printed on the exterior, after which the plaintext secrets are destroyed.

Melanie Hoff, Trust Game (2017)

Melanie Hoff’s Trust Game is an online application which arranges an economic exchange between two players. Typically employed in behavioral economics, the reciprocal “game” is used to test whether trust is implicit in a particular transactional setting.

Hoff’s iteration of the game initiates a series of investigations into emerging social and political behavior online, using the browser-based game format as an opportunity to measure complex behavior of participants in a familiar setting.

Nora Khan, The Myth of Satoshi Nakamoto (2017)

The origin story of a global cryptographic ledger and its enigmatic creator. A fiction that became reality, a history inscribed in the blockchain.

A SHA256 signature of the complete text was written to the Bitcoin ledger as proof of existence on May 18, 2017.

Hash: a2389057f6ddc1e696c328b1bfbd9b4d8b572c0710ea5b58822c863416a2186e
Time: 2017-05-18 13:51:44
Block: 467002
Address: 12C7jQMhV9t3LepQGF8VwyEod6WgmDyU2w

Text originally published on November 4, 2015 as part of Futures Along the Blockchain, a digital project by The Actual School, DeForrest Brown, Jr., Lars Holdhus, & Yuri Pattison, with support from Rhizome.

Lars Holdhus, 2C E6 85 DC 0B A7 9F 2C 71 CD 47 52 E2 77 CC D2 96 DB 9B 67 51 F4 34 FD 20 A4 0C 86 5A 02 65 B7 D7 68 B6 FB E5 79 31 03 B6 48 76 26 63 1F 19 DC E0 2C C5 CD 74 A4 80 36 A5 56 83 EF 59 2A E8 31 (2017)

5000 cryptographic tokens were minted to authenticate every artwork produced during Lars Holdus’ natural life. This painting’s facade discloses the private key belonging to its own token, such that the owner of the artwork can never display the work in its entirety without giving it away.

Rhea Myers, Is Art (2016-2017)

Ethereum DApp

init:
    contract.storage[1000] = "may be"

code:
    if msg.data[0] == "toggle":
        if contract.storage[1000] == "is":
            contract.storage[1000] = "is not"
        else:
            contract.storage[1000] = "is"

To Change The Status Of The Contract

1. Click anywhere on the screen.
2. In the dialog that opens, click “Update”.
3. And in the dialog that opens in response to that, click on “Accept”.
4. Watch for the update on both screens.

Late 1960s Conceptual Art and mid 1990s net.art are useful inspiration for thinking about the blockchain and smart contracts. These art movements stood in critical tension with the systems of communication, law and commerce of their eras. Each treated rootless information, whether about sense data or network messages, as the critical subject of art and a new potential artworld. Their promise and their eventual recuperation by the existing artworld chimes with the historical experience of the blockchain.

Is Art takes the Conceptual Art ideas of dematerialisation (art that is not presented in a fixed physical form) and nomination (something that is art because someone or something says it is) and combines them with the net.art idea of the interactive artwork that exists in or interferes with network protocols.

In it, an Ethereum smart contract contains the assertion that it either “is” or “is not” art. A web page connected to the Ethereum network displays the state of this assertion to anyone who can access the contract and allows them switch it between states. When they do so this will become a fact secured in Ethereum’s blockchain with the strength of millions of dollars of computing power a day.

Is this sufficient to determine whether the contract is or is not art? Where and how is the claim really being made and determined? How does this relate to historical examples of such artworks? And how does it relate to other claims of fact stored in other smart contracts?

Simon Denny, Blockchain Future States (2016)

The 0x curatorial program shared an exhibition space with Simon Denny, who brought work from his recent Petzel Gallery show depicting players in the cryptocurrency space as warring factions engaged in an out-sized game of Risk.

Since the work had seen a positive response in the critical art context, Simon and I had a chance to speak throughout the day about the differing response, now exhibiting at a technology conference.

In particular, that the reception of Blockchain Future States was couched in a critical context in the former, while interpreeted as a matter-of-fact rendering of the competitive and volatile crypto environment in the latter. Though interesting and productive responses arrose in both venues, the contrasting tone revealed important differences in audience predisposition.

While competition will be fierce as the corporate map is (re)drawn, opportunities for collaboration and creativity are just as vital. Perhaps the most instructive experience as an artist, was in providing a link between two cultures.

For many, distributed ledgers offer a tool for the reconfiguration of capital. “Success” for such a project, is then contingent on both the vitality of the ecosystem and the value system created within.

FOAM, Tropical Mining Station (2016-2017)

To house the exhibition, decentralized architecture firm, FOAM, led by Ryan John King and Ekaterina Zavyalova, fabricated a temporary inflatable enclosure. The “bubble” is part of a larger investigation into distributed spatial infrastructure designed to accommodate ephemeral requirements, often by engineering tight couplings with local supply chains. For the Ethereal conference, the installation featured an Ethereum miner, able to solve cryptographic puzzles while ventilating waste heat into the structure.

The bubble also recalls the work of artist-collective Ant Farm, who often collaborated with Stewart Brand to publish materials on distributed architecture for the Whole Earth Catalog. In 1971 the group designed a similar “Pillow” inflatable in which the entirety of the Whole Earth Supplement was designed and published.

By discovering connecting threads with events from nearly 50 years ago, we also find an opportunity to enrich the contemporary conversation, learning and building upon those ideas.

My sincere thanks to ConsenSys and to Saraswathi Subbaraman for the opportunity to present this body of work. Also to Sarah Hamerman, for locating documentation of the original Secret Piece in the MoMA archives.

Produced in partnership with ConsenSys