ROBERT ALICE: Narcissus (After Borges) Side Profile

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https://vgybyyjfvrowfvdyezksfsrvenkazlbfy3c6tjjywupr2uqvsdzq.arweave.net/qbAcYSWsXWLUeCZVIso1I1QMrCXGxemlOLUfHVIVkPM/

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Having conducted a full LiDAR scan of the museum and its neo-classical building, Alice takes redesigns the Monnaie de Paris to the designs that Borges’ laid out in his infinite library. With the building rendered transparent and ghostly through the use of LiDAR point cloud technology, the speculative architecture is rendered ephemeral. The work is an enquiry into neo-classical architectures of power and the use of ornament and architectural motif within the aesthetics of centralized monetary systems. Dynamically generative NFTs, the digital side to Ornament and Crisis play with the idea of the infinite library as analogous with the blockchain. Alice has created a large library of literature that relates to the histories of blockchain, anonymity, privacy, hacking culture and libertarianism, before using this as an archive and data source through which to pull new text. The result are endlessly changing artworks in both form and content, as the words continually change forever, tied to the creation of new blocks on the blockchain. The NFT calls the block height of Ethereum and updates itself every 12 number of blocks, tying the very essence and experience of the work with the blockchain as the world’s first truly decentralised library.

This work was first exhibited at the French national museum, the Monnaie de Paris, 29 June to 22 October 2023.

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Taking its title from Jorge Luis Borges’ 1941 short story ‘Library of Babel’ (1941), this new exhibition by Robert Alice investigates blockchains through the lens of Borges’ infinite library. Centred around an infinite library made of discrete rooms filled with every possible text - meaningful and nonsense combined, Borges’ Library of Babel is both a premonition of blockchain structures and post-truth landscapes in the age of AI. The project is a collaboration with LaCollection and marks the first time NFTs were exhibited France's oldest institution (f.864AD).