BITCHCOIN

3D Generated Art

We worked with conceptual artist Sarah Meyohas to generate video renders of BITCHCOIN, each with a unique petal code that relates to her Cloud of Petals exhibition.

This series of Bitchcoins are tied to the artist’s 2017 Cloud of Petals Project. Meyohas employed 16 workers for an in-situ data collection ritual at the former research and development center of Bell Laboratories. The men meticulously plucked, preserved, and photographed 100,000 rose petals to amass a dataset used by advanced artificial intelligence capable of producing new, unique petals ad infinitum. To inject human subjectivity into the equation, the workers set aside the one petal per rose that they considered the most beautiful. The 3,291 chosen petals were pressed, preserved, and exhibited as the centerpiece of the artist’s Cloud of Petals exhibition at Red Bull Arts in New York. The petals are the artifacts of a documented performance; materially limited, unique, and distinguished by their alluring minutiae. They are the proof of work of the Bell Labs event. As each Bitchcoin is backed by a relic from this event, the value of the cryptocurrency is intrinsically tied to the inarticulable value of art in the physical world.