CyberSea (b. 1989) is a generative artist and software architect who turns real-time Bitcoin blockchain data into evolving visual and mechanical artworks. He is known in real life as Michal Szafarski. He entered web3 during the COVID-19 pandemic and discovered generative art after years as a miniature painter and, later, a game programmer. His work draws on fantasy, science fiction and technology, often in vibrant, sometimes trippy colour.
In Deus Ex Machina, he created a generative artwork built to function as a simulated Stirling engine, its pistons and gears driven by real-time Bitcoin block data such as timestamps and block height. Rendered in a brutalist, steampunk style, the piece was described by Vivid Gallery, the Bitcoin Ordinals platform that released it, as the first Ordinals artwork to use Bitcoin block data as its living canvas. CyberSea said his goal was “to create a fully functional machine as an art form, with a touch of dystopian mystery around it”. One edition from the 400-piece collection sold for 0.0128 BTC.
