ROBERT ALICE: Ekumen

DIGITAL ARTWORK SITE: https://x24gjlntavnoutcsstgsvqvpbc3t3rh4tua2b7yqbgrt6x4r34ga.arweave.net/vrhkrbMFWupMUpTNKsKvCLc9xPydAaD_EAmjP1-R3ww/

SEED ARTWORK HIGH RES: https://mdybtjvoxf33cb5gdridakzeffjvoc664pit2q7ghdgpiqvaaula.arweave.net/YPAZpq65d7EHphxQMCskKVNXC97j0T1D5jjM9EKgBRY

Giclee and Cyanotype Print on Paper, 121 x 68 cm.
NFT: Updating on Block Height. Length: Infinity, 14295 x 8040 px.

A new body of work within the Blueprint series, Stasis Fields transform and ‘rewire’ historical monetary blueprints from the archives of the Monnaie de Paris — the world’s oldest mint founded in 864 AD — into speculative cosmic structures. These cosmologies speak to our oldest decentralized network of all: the stars. The series will be shown at the Monnaie de Paris, as part of Alice’s second solo show at the museum. The exhibition is a celebration of the acquisition by the Centre Pompidou of 382181_Garden City (2023) from the Blueprint series. At the core of this series is an exploration of how blockchains question another of our oldest concepts - the nature of time. Unknown to many, before they were called blockchains, Satoshi Nakamoto originally called them timechains. Blockchain’s for the first time in human history create a globally shared, absolute state of time: block height. This poses radical questions for the philosophy of time - reasserting the concept of absolute time over relativistic time. Stasis Fields, a science fiction term for a space where time stands still, explores these questions through the aesthetics of black holes and the ensuing singularity - a place where itself time breaks down.

THE DIGITAL COMPONENT

Each work includes a digital and physical component. The NFT is an interactive digital artwork that updates every Bitcoin block height ad infinitum. The digital artwork begins with a seed artwork before collapsing and regrowing generatively into unique cosmological structures every new block. They are explorable in three dimensions, adding a fourth dimension of time as it grows and collapses generatively every Bitcoin block (~10 minutes). Made of glyphs that form and reform into sentences, the cosmological structure is influenced by the concept of a mempool and the blockchain as an infinite library. The work follows on from Alice’s interest in Borges’ Library of Babel (1944), and builds a decentralised library on the subjects of time, science fiction, cryptography on the blockchain.