ABCD

Art, Blockchain, Crypto, Decentralized

Art using and/or critiquing contemporary cryptographic currency, asset and smart contract systems.

VR
Smart Contracts
Tokens
Transactions
Visualizations
Publications
Essays and Reviews for Furtherfield

VR


Galerie Default, 2019, blockchain-based virtual environment.

A virtual gallery space for Ethereum Non-Fungible Token art, also on the Ethereum blockchain.

Smart Contracts

Aesthetic Governance, 2015-, Ethereum.

Turning subjective aesthetics into well-managed objective facts using the co-ordinating power of the blockchain.

is1

Artworld Ethereum, 2014, Ethereum.

Bringing the history of (conceptual) art and the ideology of Smart Contracts together to mutually inform and critique each other.

Tokens

Tokens Equal Text, 2019, Ethereum ERC-998 and ERC-721 tokens.

Vaporwave aesthetic text token composition images that play with ideas of ownership and signification.

DEMODAY, 2017, CounterParty Token.

The first show-specific cryptotoken, for the show “Demo Day” at Kunstraum LLC.

dogeart
(Illustration from: http://ofdoge.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/art-doge/, copyright the artist.)
Critical Coins, 2015, Dogeparty Tokens.

Disrupting artistic critique with cryptographic asset tokens.

sierpinski
Dogecode, 2014, Python code and Dogeparty tokens.

A system for storing and executing programs in the “Brainfuck” programming language on the Dogeparty blockchain. Amaze.

colourcoinbalances
Art Coins (Coloured), 2015, Dogeparty tokens.

Making the idea of art ownable as tokens.

mysoul
MYSOUL, 2014, Counterparty and Dogeparty assets.

I have placed my soul on the blockchain, representing it as a cryptographic asset token.

Transactions

Simple Blockchain Art Diagram

Very obviously adapted from MTAA’s “Simple Net Art Diagram“.

Genome Bitcoin Address
Proof Of Existence, 2014, Bitcoin Transaction.

Proving that things exist by placing them into Bitcoin’s cryptographic ledger. Like my genome…

sigil
Crypto Sigils, 2014, various digital media.

Chaos magick cryptography.

Visualizations

squares

Blockchain Aesthetics, 2014-2015, HTML5 and JavaScript.

Making the flow of Bitcoin’s transactions more accessible by visualizing them in realtime as aesthetics (and words) rather than numbers.

Facecoin installed at The New Sublime
Facecoin, 2014, HTML5 and JavaScript.

Securing cryptocurrency by searching for faces in the clouds of its data.

monkeycoin
Monkeycoin, 2014, HTML5 and JavaScript.

Securing cryptocurrency by searching for the complete works of Shakespeare.

Publications

The Large Glass, Burned, 2018, short story.

A piece of theory fiction from a world in which the greatest art has become the cryptographic tokens that once represented art itself.

The Quest For The One True Chain, 2018, short story.

My story for Dogecon 2018, published in “State Machines: Reflections and Actions at the Edge of Digital Citizenship, Finance, and Art”.

Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain, 2017, two pieces of writing.

A collection of Essays from Furtherfield and Torque – includes my short story “Bad Shibe” and my essay “Blockchain Poetics” (not available anywhere else!).

Bad Shibe Book Cover

Bad Shibe, 2017, novella.

“Such future. Very crypto. Much catastrophe. Wow.” Story by Rob Myers, illustrations by Lina Theodorou, afterword by Ruth Catlow. Available for purchase in hardcopy and to download for free in an electronic version.

Geneses, 2016, poem.

A poem consisting of the genesis block hashes from the hundred cryptocurrencies with the highest market capitalization on January the Second, 2016 encoded as BIP-0039 mnemonics.

Essays and Reviews for Furtherfield

Rob Myers brings together the history of conceptual art and the future of Bitcoin-style blockchain technology for what would have been a panel presentation at The White Building for V&A Digital Futures: Money No Object.

(Conceptual) Art, Cryptocurrency and Beyond

With sculptures that sell themselves on eBay and cryptocurrencies for owning GIF images, art is already in the era of smart contracts. It’s time to use the same technology to solve the crisis of art cirticism. Are you ready for the Accelerationist future of critique on the blockchain?

The ABC of Accelerationist Blockchain Critique

“Computers and Capital: The Rise of Digital Currency” at Coinfest 2014 in Vancouver and online is a net art exploration of Bitcoin. Rob Myers takes a look at how the artists involved rise to the task of visualising the social and technical complexities of the popular but troubled cryptocurrency.

Computers and Capital – The Rise of Digital Currency