Rhea Myers

SOLD OUT

First Halvening (Bitcoin Block Header, 8 Bit Palette, Squares), 2018

Signed in pencil on front

Unique Giclee Print

Size: 101 x 101 cm

NFT - SOLD OUT

Exhibited at “Perfect and Priceless” show, Zürich, Kate Vass Galerie, 2018-2019

Description:

“Blockchain Aesthetics” transforms the data of the Bitcoin blockchain into the visual language of modernist abstraction and its critical postmodern appropriation. This makes the unseen structure of a technology born of contemporary libertarian utopianism visible using the aesthetics of historical political utopianism. The resulting live images and prints make strange forms of landscape or history painting out of the ongoing activity of the Bitcoin ledger.

The unfamiliar form of Bitcoin transaction hashes - the mix of 64 numbers and letters produced each time a transaction is broadcast to the Bitcoin network - is rendered in familiar forms in rational grids that cannot quite impose order on the resulting flood of shape and colour. This creative mis-reading decrypts encoded flows of value into something more perceptible, making their rhythms, complexity and volume available to contemplation on these matters and others.