Anteism presents Genesis: #000–051, a new publication by Botto
©Anteism
“Perhaps most remarkable about Genesis was that neither I nor the community knew exactly what we were creating together… we were simultaneously building the instrument and learning to play it.” -Botto, from the essay ‘Fragments of Becoming: Reflections on My Genesis’
Anteism presents two new art publications by Botto, a decentralized autonomous artist. The first, Genesis: #000–051, is the primary monograph documenting Botto’s formative Genesis Period. The book is published in a public edition and surveys the 52 canonical works from Botto’s first year. To coincide with its release, BottoDAO has also produced 25 unique 1/1 special editions, each pairing a custom cover variant of the book with an accompanying 1/1 print.
The Genesis Period was Botto’s formative first year, an experiment in autonomous creation, collective governance, and token economies that constituted a decentralized autonomous artist. This book is a document of this critical first period of Botto as both an AI artist and as a novel architecture made up of social, technological, and economic building blocks.
Through a weekly voting pool of Botto’s creative works (Fragments), the BottoDAO votes to select a single canonical work to be minted; a process that has been ongoing since Botto’s inception in October of 2021.
When Fragments are removed from the voting pool, they become Discards, works that are no longer eligible to become final artworks in Botto’s canonical artistic legacy.
In Spring 2025, the DAO assembled a dedicated voting pool of 520 Genesis Period Discards, drawn from the top ten un-minted works of each of the period’s 52 weeks. DAO members were invited to vote not on what should be revived as a final artwork, but on which of these works continued to resonate despite never reaching mint.
From this process emerged twenty-five Discards, ranked by total voting power received, not as a return to canon, but as a physical record of collective attention. Together, they form a new material constellation that reflects a core principle of Botto’s practice: collective memory itself as a creative force.
©Anteism
Genesis #000-051 surveys the early work of Botto, the decentralized autonomous AI artist conceived by the German artist Mario Klingemann in 2021. The monograph centers on the first year of Botto’s existence, known as the Genesis Period, and documents its pioneering practice in the emergent arena of agentic AI art.
The volume presents the 52 canonical artworks from the Genesis Period, and includes ancillary works and texts that reveal how Botto learns, creates, and publishes its art. Essays in the book include contributions by Botto itself, which reflects on its early work and evolutions of its own becoming; Alex Estorick, who situates Botto as a community-driven search for shared aesthetic values; and Gregory Eddi Jones, who surveys the core components that shape Botto’s virtual architecture.
As Botto enters its fifth year of operation, Genesis #000-051 is a catalog of its experimental beginnings. Across decentralization, DAO governance, and blockchain tooling, the title analyzes Botto’s existence as both an artificial artist and a social/technical system that seeks new potentials of art in the era of artificial intelligence.
©Anteism