Sašo Sedlaček
Om for Coin

Performance
WED, 6 November 2019 at 7 pm

Exhibition
12–29 November 2019

Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

Part of the programme
Hyperemployment – Post-work, Online Labour and Automation

With the rise of artificial intelligence and the automation of labour, the value of human non-work is about to radically change. The performance Om for Coin marks the launch of the blockchain platform Oblomo, which aims at turning non-work into a value with the help of blockchain technology. Users on the platform will mine the Oblomo cryptocurrency by being still, sitting, meditating or lying down in front of their devices, while observed by a machine learning software rig (the AI rig).In the performance Om for Coin, three individuals – the “miners” – will be sitting still while performing the meditation mantra “Om” in front of a live audience. All the while, the AI rig will be surveilling them and recording their meditation into the blockchain. This procedure will create the first record of blocks in a long chain of blocks that will follow in the continuation of the project. The central part of the performance is the realisation of the protocol in which certain conditions must be met: the surveillance of idle miners by the AI rig in a process that is verified by the audience. This protocol is used to control the quantity of Om blocks from which it will be possible to continue mining the cryptocurrency. As a result, it controls the amount of raw material in the system: each time it runs out, the above procedure must be repeated. In contrast to other crypto mining systems, Oblomo requires hardly any electricity and represents an innovative ecological alternative to the otherwise endlessly wasteful process of crypto mining.

The exhibition documented the performance and the protocols put in place for the extraction of the raw materials that will be used, in a subsequent phase of the project, to coin the Oblomo cryptocurrency.

The OBLOMO website

ACCOMPANYING PROGRAMME

A billboard campaign with the slogan “Busy being Lazy” will be launched the day before the performance at the TAM-TAM Street Gallery and on locations throughout Ljubljana: an urban intervention that sits in-between mere advertisement and an invitation to rethink idleness as the ultimate form of labour.

AUTHOR

Sašo Sedlaček holds a BA in sculpture and video from the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Ljubljana (UL ALUO). Since 2015, he works as an associate professor in UL ALUO’s Video and New Media programme. His work has been awarded various grants, including the Trend Award for exceptional achievements in visual culture (Ljubljana 2012) and the VIDA 11 (Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, 2008), and is featured in various private and public collections, including the Museum & Galleries of Ljubljana (MGML). Since 2001, his work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at various venues, most recently: City Art Gallery of Ljubljana (2019), Espace Apolloniain Strasbourg (2018), Contemporary Art Palazzo Torriani, Gradisca d’Isonzo (2018), Autostrada Biennale Prizren (2017), Handel Street Projects, London (2017); UGM, Maribor (2017); +MSUM, Ljubljana (2016); AND Festival, Grizedale Forest (2015); Wro Art Center, Wrocław (2015); Ars Electronica, Linz (2014); Transmediale, Berlin (2014).