Kevin McCoy is a media artist who works with Jennifer McCoy constructing subjective databases of narrative material and miniature film sets built from cameras and moving sculptural elements.In 2014 he created Quantum with technologist Anil Dash at Rhizome's Seven on Seven event,a work often regarded as the first NFT.
McCoy and Jennifer McCoy met in Paris in 1990 and studied together at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, receiving MFAs in electronic art under Pauline Oliveros.Their duo practice developed out of New York's net.art scene, including the bulletin-board community The Thing, run by the artist Wolfgang Staehle.In 2002 McCoy contributed Circler, written in the Lingo programming language, to “CODeDOC”, a Whitney Museum artport exhibition curated by Christiane Paul that paired twelve artists' short programs with their visible source code.The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the duo's Every Shot, Every Episode in the early 2000s.The McCoys received a Creative Capital Award in 2002, a Wired Rave Award in 2005, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011.
McCoy began researching Bitcoin in 2013, drawn to the idea that a blockchain could make a unit of digital information verifiably unique. Rhizome invited him to present the concept at its Seven on Seven event in May 2014, where he was paired with technologist Anil Dash. Together they minted Quantum using a 1997 animated GIF McCoy had made with Jennifer McCoy and Torsten Zenas Burns for the net.art project Maintenance/Web, and coined the term “monetized graphics”, or Monegraph, for the blockchain record.Whitney Museum curator Christiane Paul recalled seeing McCoy and Dash present the idea, then called “monegraphs”, at Rhizome's event that year.Sotheby's included Quantum in its 2021 “Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale”.
McCoy continued exploring blockchain provenance with Quantum Leap, a 2021 companion piece to Quantum.In 2019 the McCoys created Public Key / Private Key for the Whitney Museum, donating a 16mm film to its Special Collection and issuing fifty transferable blockchain certificates to donors chosen from public applicants.In 2022 he received a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, credited for creating the technical foundations that led to NFTs. He is an associate professor in the Department of Art and Art Professions at New York University.
