ARTISTS
Crypto_Manifold
Chronus Art Center is pleased to announce the summer exhibition crypto_manifold, featuring works by artists !Mediengruppe Bitnik, CHEN Baoyang, Simon Denny, Grayson Earle, Sarah Friend, Marija Bozinovska Jones, Paul Kolling & Max Hampshire & Paul Seidler, Matthias Tarasiewicz and Lina Theodorou & Rob Myers. The exhibition will open to the public on June 27, 2020 and remain on view through October 25, 2020.
In 1993, The New Yorker published Peter Steiner鈥檚 cartoon 鈥淥n the Internet, nobody knows you鈥檙e a dog,鈥� poking fun at online anonymity that hides the user鈥檚 identity, or even species, behind a screen. In the past forty years, with the rise of various kinds of P2P (point-to-point) network topologies, many Internet activists have advocated for decentralized autonomous sovereignty. Yet, the inherent lack of virtual trust continues to drive the growth of third-party institutions and 鈥渟uper platforms鈥� that provide online verification and management services. These institutions collect user data, whether in the name of ensuring those users鈥� rights or merely for economic gain. Encroaching governmental intervention and digital capitalism have tarnished the utopian aspirations many initially held for the Internet鈥檚 possibilities. Furthermore, after Wall Street triggered the 2008 global financial crisis, establishing bonds of trust between the public and financial institutions had become ever more necessary.
crypto_manifold presents artists鈥� multifaceted exploration and affective investigation of the panoptic application of blockchain technology. The nine featured projects respectively place technological topics, such as DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), cryptocurrencies and tokens, smart contracts, and crypto algorithms into dialogues with wider social and cultural context. While presenting manifold perspectives, the exhibition also constructs a kind of topological manifold space, hence the title. This technology, impregnated with a vision of rational exuberance as opposed to irrational exuberance accelerated by financial bubbles and market manipulation, proposes a practical way to realize an autonomous future and stands as an economical prototype of the posthuman era. Yet, we remain skeptical of this potential. Bitcoin mining farms consume tremendous natural resources, and debate is polarized between Anarcho-capitalism and avid technocrats. Under such circumstances, could this decentralized infrastructure fix the problems of the current financial system, manifested in an increasing disparity between the rich and the poor, financial capital sovereignty and monopolization, and commodification of both human relation and sensory experience? Or will blockchain technology merely extend such corruption, a digital consensus co-opted by capital?
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Chronus Art Center is pleased to announce the summer exhibition crypto_manifold, featuring works by artists !Mediengruppe Bitnik, CHEN Baoyang, Simon Denny, Grayson Earle, Sarah Friend, Marija Bozinovska Jones, Paul Kolling & Max Hampshire & Paul Seidler, Matthias Tarasiewicz and Lina Theodorou & Rob Myers. The exhibition will open to the public on June 27, 2020 and remain on view through October 25, 2020.
In 1993, The New Yorker published Peter Steiner鈥檚 cartoon 鈥淥n the Internet, nobody knows you鈥檙e a dog,鈥� poking fun at online anonymity that hides the user鈥檚 identity, or even species, behind a screen. In the past forty years, with the rise of various kinds of P2P (point-to-point) network topologies, many Internet activists have advocated for decentralized autonomous sovereignty. Yet, the inherent lack of virtual trust continues to drive the growth of third-party institutions and 鈥渟uper platforms鈥� that provide online verification and management services. These institutions collect user data, whether in the name of ensuring those users鈥� rights or merely for economic gain. Encroaching governmental intervention and digital capitalism have tarnished the utopian aspirations many initially held for the Internet鈥檚 possibilities. Furthermore, after Wall Street triggered the 2008 global financial crisis, establishing bonds of trust between the public and financial institutions had become ever more necessary.
crypto_manifold presents artists鈥� multifaceted exploration and affective investigation of the panoptic application of blockchain technology. The nine featured projects respectively place technological topics, such as DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), cryptocurrencies and tokens, smart contracts, and crypto algorithms into dialogues with wider social and cultural context. While presenting manifold perspectives, the exhibition also constructs a kind of topological manifold space, hence the title. This technology, impregnated with a vision of rational exuberance as opposed to irrational exuberance accelerated by financial bubbles and market manipulation, proposes a practical way to realize an autonomous future and stands as an economical prototype of the posthuman era. Yet, we remain skeptical of this potential. Bitcoin mining farms consume tremendous natural resources, and debate is polarized between Anarcho-capitalism and avid technocrats. Under such circumstances, could this decentralized infrastructure fix the problems of the current financial system, manifested in an increasing disparity between the rich and the poor, financial capital sovereignty and monopolization, and commodification of both human relation and sensory experience? Or will blockchain technology merely extend such corruption, a digital consensus co-opted by capital?
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