Bitcoin is a relatively new digital currency, which functions as a ‘cryptocurrency’. The idea of using cryptography (rather than a central authority) to control the creation and transactions of such ‘digital money’ created the basis for the cryptocurrency ecosystem of today.
Exhibition
Date: 15 – 18 May
Location: A Lab
Time: 12.00 – 19.00 hrs
The work ‘Bitcoincloud’ comments on the swiftness of new media arts, as artworks in this domain rarely enter the art market. ‘Bitcoincloud’ is an interactive artwork which becomes ‘worth’ more as its audience grows. Modified LED-fans, motion sensors and a Bitcoin mining rig make up the interactive Bitcoincloud.
Replicating the principles of the ‘economics of attention’, this installation mines (creates) new bitcoins depending on the number of its visitors. The dynamics of attention allow the installation an ambiguous existence: it is part of the art market at the same time as it is setting itself apart from this market by capitalizing on its own economic attention-value, and tracing the trajectory of the exchange rate of the electronic cryptocurrency “Bitcoin“. ‘Bitcoincloud’ is part of a series of experiments in ‘art and value’ undertaken by the research network ‘Artistic Bokeh’.
Biography
Matthias Tarasiewicz started the work ‘Bitcoincloud’ in 2011. He co-founded the CODED CULTURES initiative (media arts festival and research platform) and is active as curator, researcher and technology theorist. Tarasiewicz researches in the fields of artistic technologies, experimental documentation and cryptocurrencies. He runs the Artistic Bokeh initiative (international platform to develop new exhibition and presentation formats for media arts) and is project lead of the “Artistic Technology Research Lab” at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.
www.bitcoincloud.at
@artisticbokeh
