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Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain Artists Artists Re:Thinking Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain Artists Re:Thinking A future-artefact of a time before the blockchain changed the the world. This interdisciplinary book includes artistic, theoretical and documentary engagements with the technology some have described as the new internet. Blockchain With contributions by Jaya Klara Brekke, Theodoros Chiotis, Ami Clarke, Simon Denny, Design Informatics Research Centre, Max Mar Edited by Ruth Catlow, Dovey, Mat Dryhurst, Rachel O’Dwyer, César Escudero Andaluz, Primavera De Filippi, Rory Gianni, Peter Gomes, Elias Haase, Juhee Hahm, Max Hampshire, Kimberley ter Heerdt, Holly Herndon, Helen Kaplinsky, Paul Kolling, Elli Kuruş, Nikki Loef, Rob Myers, Martín Nadal, Noemata (Bjørn Magnhildøen), Edward Picot, PWR Studio, Paul Seidler, Surfatial, Hito Steyerl, Lina Theodorou, Pablo Velasco, Ben Vickers, Mark Waugh, Cecilia Wee, Martin Zeilinger. ‘Furtherfield and Torque have brought us a collection of writings and art that cut through the mainstream blockchain hype and reveal the diverse creative visions that can be embedded into the technology. The book strikes a great balance between technical Nathan Jones & Sam Skinner c Garrett, explanation of blockchains, cryptocurrency and smart contracts and the broader politics, culture and philosophy that surrounds the innovations. Above all, it inspires us to believe we can still invent our own futures and grow the technologies that we need to realise them.’ – Brett Scott, author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money ‘This book is on a mission to make one of the most influential yet unknown technologies of today intelligible for each and every one of us.’ – Josephine Bosma, author of Nettitudes – Let’s Talk Net Art ISBN 9780993248757 90000 > Edited by Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, 9 780993 248757 Nathan Jones & Sam Skinner 1 / Ruth Catlow: Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain Introduction 3 / Nathan Jones & Sam Skinner : A Quasi Proto Preface Torque Editions & Furtherfield Editions Torque Edited by Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Nathan Jones & Sam Skinner & Sam Jones Nathan Garrett, Marc Catlow, Ruth by Edited Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain the Artists Re:Thinking 5 / Contents Ruth Catlow: Ruth 9 Nathan Jones & Sam Skinner A Quasi Proto Preface Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain Introduction 21 Ruth Catlow Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain Introduction DOCUMENTS 41 The Design Informatics Research Centre FinBook: Literary Content as Digital Commodity 51 Primavera De Filippi Plantoid – The Birth of a Blockchain-Based Lifeform 63 Paul Seidler, Paul Kolling & Max Hampshire terra 0 – Can an Augmented Forest Own and Utilize Itself? 73 Martín Nadal & César Escudero Andaluz Critical Mining: Blockchain and Bitcoin in Contemporary Art 85 Peter Gomes The Blockchain: Change Everything Forever 91 Jaya Klara Brekke & Elias Haase Breaking Chains and Busting Blocks: Commentary on the Satoshi (Hippocratic) Oath for Blockchain Developers 99 Kimberley ter Heerdt & Nikki Loef 01.01.20 101 Pablo Velasco Role Play Your Way to Budgetary Blockchain Bliss 107 Ruth Catlow & Ben Vickers Your DAO Work Booklet 129 PWR Studio A Shared Timeline 133 Ami Clarke Text as Market 6 / 141 Sam Skinner Blockchain Future States – An Interview with Simon Denny FICTIONS 159 Cecilia Wee Flying Under A Neutral Flag 171 Elli Kuruş History of Political Operating Systems: Interview with Dr. L. Godord Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain Introduction 179 Surfatial All That Happened Ruth Catlow: 187 Rob Myers & Lina Theodorou Bad Shibe 199 Theodoros Chiotis Defixio Nervorum 201 Juhee Hahm Do it (Hand-to-Hand) Yourself // Surfing Guide 219 Edward Picot Babel THEORY 223 Hito Steyerl If You Don’t Have Bread, Eat Art!: Contemporary Art and Derivative Fascisms 233 Ben Vickers immutability mantra 239 Rob Myers Blockchain Poetics 251 Max Dovey Love on the Block 261 Helen Kaplinsky Collections Management on the Blockchain: A Return to the Principles of the Museum 7 / 275 Mark Waugh Artists Rights in the Era of the Distributed Ledger Catlow: Ruth 287 Martin Zeilinger Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About the Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain Introduction Blockchain* (*But Were Afraid to Ask Mel Ramsden) 297 Rachel O’Dwyer Does Digital Culture Want to be Free? How Blockchains are Transforming the Economy of Cultural Goods 309 Bjørn Magnhildøen, Noemata Aphantasia – Blockchain as Medium for Art 319 Marc Garrett Interview with Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst 327 Biographies 337 Index 342 Colophon 9 / Nathan Jones & Sam Skinner Nathan Jones & Sam Skinner A Quasi Proto Preface What this book is about, what is inside, and why we did it : The blockchain is janus-faced. On one side its traits of transparency and Preface A Quasi Proto decentralization promise much in terms of fairness and accountability, but on the other its monetary roots born as a financial payment system, albeit grounded in open-source software, mean its implementations are often stridently capitalistic. Furthermore, those involved in its development seem to oscillate between radical ethical standpoints and reductionist technological determinism. The blockchain engenders what has been called a ‘digital metalism’ 1 with the ability, like a modern philosopher’s stone, to transmutate life through a distributed ledger. That such a pecuniary minded technology is being touted as a new technology to underpin a newfangled internet, compels an exploration of both its current state and how it may be rethought. A Performative Map En masse, this whole collection operates as performative explainer of sorts, with the book containing multiple entry and exit points on the subject through which an understanding, unique to each reader, of both present incarnations and possible futures may emerge. Jump to Ruth Catlow’s introduction for some essentials, and fur- ther technical elucidations within essays by Martín Nadal and César Escudero Andaluz, Rob Myers and Rachel O’Dwyer. The book’s contributors represent the best of a transdisciplinary and enquiring spirit – required to understand and rethink the blockchain – and come from a wide variety of backgrounds, to kludge, critique and refunction their way through the terrain. We hope this inventive character makes what can be an obscure or off-putting field, which is principally controlled by developers and venture capitalists, a more live and open space. Many works perform a quasi DIY dissection and montaging of the blockchain, acting as a subversive mapping of its individual parts, functions, and wider infrastructure. Such approaches respond to how this technology, if indeed it is to become a powerful tool of organizing 10 and mediating life, necessitates a need to make claims upon and inter- / vene in it. Within the book, the diverse ecology of blockchains, smart contracts and cryptocurrency, are dynamically deployed and engaged with as new subjects of enquiry, new methods for organizing, and new mediums for art. A Quasi Proto Preface A Quasi Proto : Finbook Embodying this spirit, exploiting the blockchain as subject, method, and medium, we are excited to be able to include FinBook, which both enables an interactive experience of a proto-blockhain technol- ogy and intervenes within the book itself, linking articles to a financial Nathan Jones & Sam Skinner trading portfolio. We encourage you to use the QR codes to access an online portal where you can rate the chapters in this book by as- signing them value tokens. Additionally, FinBots operating inside the FinBook interface will themselves be assigning and trading these value tokens, in a speculative pastiche of the kinds of ways cultural value might combine with modes of financial trading under a blockchain- based cultural regime. Art & the Blockchain Hybridity It is interesting to note how FinBook and other artist projects within this book, which employ hybrid versions of blockchain technology or revel in its speculatory unknowns, are representative of both the blockchain’s nascent state and complexity, and the degree to which the blockchain is, or is not, being employed and translated more broadly. Many in the business world for example are adopting what might be called a blockchain-lite by opting for ‘federated’ and private incarnations, rather than its fully decentralized and transparent form, and favouring more and more the term Distributed Ledger Technology.2 As Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, has stated: ‘the concept of one blockchain to rule them all – a unique blockchain carrying a unique digital currency and used for all distributed-ledger applications – is obsolete’.3 But we should add – it’s still early days. In the course of editing the collection over the last year, we have observed the ebb and flow of the hype that surrounds the blockchain, and its struggle to implement more concrete manifestations. There continues to be huge disagreement and uncertainty regarding its future viability and adoption. In this environment, initiatives emerging from commons and open source communities such as Hyperledger 4 11 and Dyne’s Freecoin,5 create new territory in parallel (and compete / ideologically and economically) with multi-billion dollar, massively Nathan Jones & Sam Skinner global and ‘closed’ enterprises such as the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance of companies including JP Morgan and Microsoft.6 This wild west-style context is amplified by hackers, who are an unknown quantity with much to gain potentially by exploiting weaknesses in untested code, and the vulnerability (perhaps unsuitability) of current technical infrastructure.
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