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“A Sea of Data,” German media artist Hito Steyerl ’s first solo show in Asia, opens at Seoul’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA). Named after an e-flux essay by the artist, the exhibition includes 23 works, spanning 1990-2000s video art through her more recent (often iconic) installations. It also premieres a new commission: Animal Spirits (2022, image) is a sensor-driven animation of post-pandemic (human) conditions—from remote culture to decentralization.
“And that ad is not an argument for why crypto works. It’s not an argument for what it does or what problems it can solve. It’s just financial FOMO.”
–
New York Times journalist Ezra Klein, arguing the
FTX Super Bowl ad was designed to attract dumb money. In it, misanthropic comedian Larry David dismisses world-changing inventions—the wheel, the light bulb, the dishwasher—through the ages, and repeats the mistake by writing off cryptocurrencies.
“I think the obsession with immutability and stable identity, which is being imposed on commercial blockchain projects, is very un-cyberfeminist and it’s very un-Satoshi Nakamoto. So that’s definitely a site of a struggle.”
– Blockchain artist
Rhea Myers , on tensions between ‘forever’ ledgers and fluid trans identities, during a conversation with
McKenzie Wark
“Making more items in the crypto space ‘soulbound’ can be one path toward an alternative, where NFTs can represent much more of who you are and not just what you can afford.”
– Ethereum co-founder
Vitalik Buterin , proposing a
richer type of NFT: one that ties non-transferable credentials or accomplishments to a particular identity, versus simply serving as fodder for trading and speculation
“These dichotomies abound: are you a wage slave or an entrepreneur? In the casino economy of NFTs and crypto, are you a high roller or are you a mark? In the Web3 space, are you a grifter or a useful idiot?”
“Starting today we are reviewing if and how our current policy on crypto donations fits with our climate goals. And as we conduct our review, we will pause the ability to donate cryptocurrency.”
– The
Mozilla Foundation , after a recent plea for cryptocurrency donations caused social media backlash. The org’s overt pandering to ‘HODLers’ of Bitcoin and Ethereum, both energy-intensive
proof-of-work (PoW) chains, drew harsh criticism from prominent voices in the open source community, including Mozilla co-founder
Jamie Zawinski and Gecko engine designer
Peter Linss .
“We’re talking about something that is going to profoundly disrupt politics. If you thought Super PACs were bad, wait until you find out about the funneling of money through blockchain, completely outside of any regulatory mechanisms.”
– Art historian and Buffalo AKG Art Museum curator
Tina Ryan Rivers , on the dangers of wide-spread adoption of (unregulated) cryptocurrencies. “The art world needs to understand the stakes,” urges Rivers. “It’s much bigger than ‘I don’t like this cartoon monkey.’”
“Industry norms frustrate me. One, is that If you come from a place like Hollywood, you are the one creating the value or the IP, and if you come from a place like the Philippines you are the back office—where the work gets executed after the ideas are formed.”
–
Yield Guild Games co-founder Gabby Dizon, who sees ‘play to earn’ gaming as a way to economically and creatively empower the Global South, describing legacy thinking he hopes will fade into oblivion [quote edited]
“Talking about building this city beside a volcano is like thinking you are rich because you live next to a bank.”
–
Ricardo Navarro , El Salvadoran ecologist and head of the country’s Center of Appropriate Technology (CESTA), on President Nayib Bukele’s plans for a “Bitcoin City” powered by volcanoes. “Geothermal still costs more than oil, otherwise we would already be using more of it,” Navarro notes. Geothermal energy also needs steam and groundwater, Navarro adds, “but we already have problems with not enough water in El Salvador.”
In a post on his blog, designer Matt Webb offers unflinching analysis of the metaverse. Hashing out a rough definition that it is immersive , multiplayer , and has an economy , he challenges some widely held assumptions about what technologies are required (e.g. VR plus crypto does not a metaverse make). Beyond the obligatory Snow Crash vs. Meta commentary, he draws on his former studio ’s work during the web 2.0 era and his experience establishing London’s Silicon Roundabout tech cluster, noting how common goals create strange bedfellows. Now, Webb sees the same thing with the metaverse, observing “we have crypto-libertarians tech nerds from Web3 somehow aligned with platform monopolist VR-maximalists from Facebook. Their values couldn’t be more opposed yet they are boosters for the same trend.”
“With crypto we’ve decided to do the most American thing ever, to commoditize our rage at the financial system into a financial product. After all, we’re just temporarily embarrassed millionaires and the only problem with CDOs wasn’t the moral hazard, but that you didn’t have a piece of the action.”
– Software engineer
Stephen Diehl , linking crypto to the trauma of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis
In an attempt to become the “Singapore of Latin America,” President Nayib Bukele announces El Salvador will bootstrap an entire city around Bitcoin’s economic prospects. Building on the country’s recent recognition of the leading cryptocurrency as legal tender, the so-called “Bitcoin city” will be located along the Gulf of Fonseca near the base of Conchagua volcano , the geothermal energy of which will be harnessed to power the city and an industrial-scale Bitcoin mining operation. Honouring the libertarian ethos that is common amongst Bitcoin-boosters “the city will have no income, property, capital gains, or payroll taxes.”
“The ‘discontinuation’ of a major marketplace today pushed all my buttons. The URLs for a half-million artworks were destroyed; livelihoods of ~10,000 artists were damaged; the energy and optimism of a creative community was diminished; and the guy who did it left town with $1M.”
–
Golan Levin , media artist and educator, on the end of
Hic et Nunc in a Twitter thread about what NFT-curious artists should know about
“The game ends when you’re so deep in the hole that there is no light anymore, the screen is just black and you have, like, trillions of dollars.”
– Software artist
Sarah Friend , on her alegorical crypto clicker game
Clickmine (2017), “where you get this little procedurally generated piece of land and as you click, you are digging a hole and the hole gets deeper and deeper and deeper, and you get richer and richer and richer.”
“In an economy where most people work long hours, are struggling to get by, and have deeply internalized the status quo, the question becomes: How do I get in? That’s how a million-dollar jpeg of a digital rock turns out to make sense.”
– Tech reporter
Ali Breland , on how widespread financial precarity paved the way for crypto and NFTs. “People trying to shoddily arbitrage their future is just the next logical step in an economy in which every bit of your time needs to be monetized,” he writes.
“If you’re under 20 years old now, why wait 20 or 30 more years to make your hard earned future, if there’s no inhabitable future there anyway? Pump and dump becomes a rational survival technique: 100X or go home.”
“Don’t catalogue eyeballs. Don’t use biometrics for anti-fraud. In fact, don’t use biometrics for anything. The human body is not a ticket-punch.”
–
Edward Snowden , on
Tools for Humanity ’s announcement of
Worldcoin , a forthcoming proof-of-personhood digital identity system and cryptocurrency made available in return for biometric data. “This looks like it produces a global (hash) database of people’s iris scans, and waves away the implications by saying ‘we deleted the scans!’” warns the famous whistleblower.
“The Hollywoodization of crypto is a moral disaster. And for celebrities’ fans, who likely have far less money to lose, it’s potentially a financial one, too.”
– Writers
Ben McKenzie and
Jacob Silverman , on film and sport stars shilling cryptocurrencies—for money. Parsing the Kardashian
Ethereum Max pump-and-dump scheme , the two issue a stern warning: “Crypto and blockchain technology may yet have important roles to play, but the industry executives, venture capitalists, and, yes, the rich and famous people pushing these products haven’t earned your trust—or your money.”
“The lifespan of bitcoin mining devices remains limited to just 1.29 years. As a result, we estimate that the whole bitcoin network currently cycles through 30.7 metric kilotons of equipment per year.”
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