Art can be an incredible vehicle for making sense of emerging technologies like crypto, crucial in mapping its social impacts and cultural consequences. There is a lot of both starry-eyed idealism and opportunism around some of these technologies, most prominently Bitcoin; there is also a lot of under-informed criticism blaming crypto currencies for some of the failures of capitalism full stop.

I am interested in something else. In my artworks and research, I unpack stories technologists tell us about the world. I try to tease out some of the social and political adjacencies of the technology industry, looking into how social media and startup culture, blockchains and cryptocurrencies, hold powerful cultural influence and have real-world consequences. The way technology is produced and organized affects the wider climate in many ways, and extractive usage and construction of data can mirror the way the natural world has been exploited for asymmetric, short-term gains.

I try to tease out some of the social and political adjacencies of the technology industry, looking into how social media and startup culture, blockchains and cryptocurrencies, hold powerful cultural influence and have real-world consequences.

Since 2015, I’ve been making work that processes and distills the culture surrounding blockchain, right after the cryptocurrency Ethereum’s launch (Ethereum is the second largest crypto project by market cap, and the most used as an operating system). My contribution to the 2016 Berlin Biennial, Blockchain Future States, included a trade fair-style booth about the ideological vision posed by three nascent cryptocurrency projects, and extrapolated their possible cultural impacts. Aspects of that project have continued to feature in my work into the present, through exhibitions like Mine and NFT projects like Dotcom Seance, specifying and intensifying as NFTs and crypto became mainstream concerns over the past couple of years.

With the podcast project Seed Phrase – the core focus and outcome of my fellowship with The New Institute – blockchain adjacent artists and technologists from varied backgrounds join me in conversations teasing out the meaning latent in these paradigm shifts. Their perspectives often differ from one another’s – and from my own – but we share the same fundamental investment in making sense of an often-obscure landscape.

All this, of course, is in step with The New Institute’s commitment to critically probing societal developments and applying that insight to build more resilient and values-driven institutions. As the first Artist Fellow at TNI, my intention for Seed Phrase is to more explicitly stage the kinds of conversations that my work has long sought to raise, contributing to the dialogues that will shape crypto’s future as these technologies continue to evolve.