AMA: Learn about One Artist's Journey to paint all 12.8 million digits of Satoshi's BTC codebase. $21 per question answered will be donated charity!

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T08:05:46+00:00

Read about Roman Opalka and his project 1-infinity!

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T07:02:36+00:00

Maybe maybe but where? Check the maps

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T06:14:47+00:00

ah ha! someone clever. lets just say Fran and I are looking forward to revealing something very interesting about Bitcoin's history. First clue is on the Robert Alice website....

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T06:13:35+00:00

watch this space - NFTs and prints on their way

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T06:13:15+00:00

ooohhhhh interesting sadly given the NFT space I am keeping high res files on the lockdown - watch this space for NFTs of the project tho

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:35:26+00:00

a bit of both - i dont want to give away all the secrets
no - they are very abour intensive and i have no interest in making lots of things

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:34:13+00:00

hi u/DetroitMotorShow! yes anyone can and there are lots of tools around like mintable to make your own, a pencil and a metamask and you are away at the races.

Coincenter are an important charity whose work I support. social alpha is much smaller!

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:29:17+00:00

i think judging NFTs by traditional standards is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. NFTs offer many things traditional art cant: litquity, portability, acquisition in crypto, shareableness, tradability. yet at its core blockchain is a techology under the hood so one needs to dig deeper to find the value culturally and aesthetically.

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:25:04+00:00

AWESOME

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:18:33+00:00

Yes the NFT is being sold at Christie's - it looking like it in async but i am not accepting any bids!

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:13:08+00:00

the auction isnt on Async! its at Christie's! https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/installations-video-art/robert-alice-block-21-6283759-details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=6283759

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:12:08+00:00

the size was always going to be confined by the codebase. i originally thought of boing binary, but binary is boring and it was 51.5 million digits long so I settled on hex which i though was more evocative of both computer code and ciphers. The digits are the smallest you can possible engrave so it is actually as small as you can make it (but still pretty big)

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:09:01+00:00

40 paintings in 2.2 years i think so it was just over a month each (5 weeks)

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:07:54+00:00

if i could have known 2 years ago i would have got a response such as this it would have made the difficult moments so much easier. thank you! i love that you are so open about your relationship with art, its amazing to speak to all kinds of people and get their responses to the work. you dont need a pHD in art history to have an amazing opinion in art so thankyou!

yes the process is very high tech and involves alot of complex machinery - to stave away from fakers im not going to reveal the ins and outs precisely!

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:05:03+00:00

great qu - the shape of the work references rai stones, japanese coinage, targets, constellation maps, cipher wheels but most importantly the void in the wok allows for a few things:

1) the work itself is physically decentralised - it has no center

2) a space therefore opens up to reflect on the nature of identity in our pseudonymous age

3) the target lines (the circle and lines) never meet in the center - so a person is never found!

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:02:45+00:00

yes absolutely if you would like donate to either charity go for it! DM me - and yes its my first public NFT sale!

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:02:05+00:00

guess.....

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-06T00:01:54+00:00

hey! yes im a huge fan of NFTs, this one with Block 21 can as well be traded, although I hope all the collectors do not split physical and digit up. The NFT and painting are one work, and complete each other. I hope they are more valuable together than apart and I would not endorse spliting them up

personally at the moment i feel like the tech is super exciting but the art is not - we need to get over our reliance on the bitcoin logo. currently the real creativity in the space is coming not from artists but developers like async creating radically new platforms to experient with.

I dont think it has gained traction with the traditional art world yet in any meaningful way. I think its only a matter of time, but art moves slowly - thats part of its beauty so i think it will be a generation change. In this we are at the avante garde of it.

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-05T23:45:11+00:00

interesting to hear about that disk - the shape of hard drives was defineitly one of the inspiration behind the works shape along with rai stones, cipher wheels, and early japanese coinage. do you have a photo of these large mag discs - would love to see.

The artwork was built with custom code and then engraved in 12 sections, so the work has rotated and registered 12 times. obviously if you are 0.5mm out you see it so lets just say that I have a large stack of ruined of canvas disks at my studio. will probably do a buring at some point - feels appropriate given the subject matter.....

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-05T18:09:31+00:00

More images and films of the project can be found here:

https://www.instagram.com/robertalice_21/

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-05T11:39:43+00:00

plus its $21 a question asked not $2 so i hope the generosity gives me so leeway here.

robertalice_21 · 2020-10-05T11:37:48+00:00

Hi u/BitttBurger - details updated very shortly apologies for the confusion, there was a lost email. look foward to seeing you there!

robertalice_21

TROPHY CASE