NEW WORLD ORDER

A mysterious and controversial technology is among us. The Blockchain underpins digital currencies and makes possible dramatic new conceptions of global governance and economy, that could permanently enrich or demote the role of humans – depending on who you talk to.

This exhibition curated by Marc Garrett & Ruth Catlow features artworks that envision future world-making by machines, markets and natural processes, free from interference by states and other human institutions.

Artists Jaya Klara Brekke, Pete Gomes, Rob Myers, Primavera De Filippi of O’Khaos, Terra0, Lina Theodorou and xfx (aka Ami Clarke) imagine a world in which responsibility for many aspects of life (reproduction, decision-making, organisation, nurture, stewardship) have been mechanised and automated, deferred to the blockchain, transferred, once and for all, from natural and social systems into a secure, networked, digital ledger of transactions and computer-executed contracts.

New World Order artworks include a self-owning forest with ideas of expansion, a self-replicating android flower, a tale of lost innocence, a DIY money making rig, a Hippocratic Oath for software developers and a five minute marriage contract.

EXHIBITED WORKS

Terra0 is an artwork and prototype for a self-owning, self-exploiting forest by Paul Seidler, Paul Kolling and Max Hampshire. Initiated by humans, over time the forest sells its raw materials, accumulates capital, buys itself and expands to new territories.

Plantoid is an autonomous blockchain based artwork. When the metal sculpture of a flowering plant receives a certain number of Bitcoins it commissions an artist to create a new artwork. Contributors set the rules surrounding the genetic traits (the dna) and the soul (the governance) of the new “child” Plantoid. Exhibition visitors will be able to buy Bitcoins to tip the sculpture and determine how Plantoid will evolve.

Satoshi means clear thinking, quick witted and wise. It is also the name of the anonymous founder(s) of Bitcoin and the blockchain. The Satoshi Oath by Jaya Klara Brekke and Elias Haase supports developers to consider how their code might affect people and environment. Using three main properties of blockchain technology – immutability, neutrality and decentralisation – The Satoshi Oath presents a set of blocks from which to build an ethics for new blockchain projects: Power, Change, Delegation, Disclosure, Dissensus and Exodus.

Bad Shibe is a sci-fi novella by Rob Myers illustrated by Lina Theodorou dealing with the implications of a new wave of fully financialised planetary-scale automation and the struggle to discern right from wrong when human and machine agency merges. It also invites us to think of humans and societies as much as the effects of technology.

untitled, data collection from domestic ether mining rig, by xfx (aka Ami Clarke) is a video as data capture, showing glimpses of the material parts of an ether mining rig. It conveys the energy used and the sweat equity of a DIY cryptocurrency prospector with finely tuned financial calculations and a (not so free) money mining system.

Handfastr – making commitments wherever you are uses blockchain to reconfigure social pledges. Taking marriage as an example of a social contract, Handfastr whittles it down to a temporary agreement on a smartphone. Created by Corina Angheloiu, Max Dovey and James Stewart at the Blockchain Body Storming Lab at Design Informatics, Edinburgh University.

The Blockchain – Change Everything Forever, a Furtherfield film directed by Pete Gomes was created to diversify the people involved in thinking about blockchain technologies by bringing together leading thinkers, computer scientists, entrepreneurs, artists and activists to answer some of the key questions: What can a blockchain do? Who builds this new reality? How will we rule ourselves? How will the future be different because of the Blockchain?

New World Order is part of an international programme of labs, debates and exhibitions with leading artists and writers testing alternative economies for arts in the network age. Launched at Furtherfield Gallery in London in May 2017, the exhibition will tour to Aksioma (Ljubljana, Slovenia) in January 2018 and Drugo More (Rijeka, Croatia) in February 2018.

Credits and more information about this event HERE.