Aphantasia  blockchain as medium for art





Artistic intent

The Aphantasia project attempts to explore the blockchain from a more conceptual point of view. We want to explore if blockchain can be a medium for art. We emphasize medium', to distinguish it from projects where the blockchain is being used as a tool in relation to art, for instance to protect intellectual property. Aphantasia runs contrary to the approach taken in the area of intellectual property, which appears only to re-commodify art, serving solely the markets and its agents.

At the end of this text you will find a call for works that respond to the concept of Aphantasia and being@time (introduced later), leading to an exhibition exploring the different experimental forms the medium of the blockchain makes possible, and makes possible to transgress.

Let us begin with two tales of other older chains'  the mythological, unbreakable chain Gleipnir', and the obsolete signal device for trains containing a bat chain'.





Impossible metaphor





Blockchain puller A chain with yellow lights That glistens like oil beads On its slick smooth trunk That trails behind on tracks, and thumps A wing hangs limp and retrieves Bulbs shoot from its snoot And vanish into darkness It whistles like a root snatched from dry earth This train with grey tubes that houses people's thoughts, Their very remains and belongings in faulty circles, Caught in grey blisters With twinkling lights and green sashes Pulled by rubber dolphins with gold yawning mouths That blister and break in agony In zones of rust They guild gold sawdust into dust.



A bat chain refers to the chain that hangs down from a signal post on a train line. The signal device that was pulled down was called a bat and different bats had different colours to signal the train driver the condition of the track ahead, or whether the train could proceed, etc. The bat chain puller was the person who set the signals for the approaching train according to track status reports received by telegraph. The lines: This train with grey tubes that houses people's thoughts, / Their very remains and belongings ' contain a poetic image of what the blockchain technology seems to promise people; and for our purposes, that it would hold both thoughts and things, even if they should be both empty and invisible. The text Bat Chain Puller can also be interpreted as referring to the fact that this job is obsolete in an automated world. In Aphantasia a blockchain puller' is metaphorically reintroduced as a playful, intervening layer and middle-man between the brave new world of blockchain technology and the obsolete' world of human-mediated signs, symbols and meaning.





Art medium?

In what sense could art be made on or of the blockchain? Since the blockchain format is this minimal being@time formulation then one could suppose a corresponding expressive potential gets maximized. The properties of the art work (what it is) is detached from its objective status as a being in time (which is taken care of by blockchain). And perhaps also the being@time formulation partially detaches art from existence. Existence becomes a category, a pure concept of understanding, akin to Kant's philosophy. Such a category is not a classificatory division, as the word is commonly used, but is instead the condition of the (epistemic) possibility of objects in general  that is, any and all objects, not specific objects in particular. Whereby, if our system of abstraction includes existence' as a possible and provable property or category of objects, then existence' isn't essential to them. In other words, a being@time type of object makes existence a non-essential property since existence is already part of its formulation. Or again, an existential medium detaches its produce from existence, as for instance life. As living beings, we can be said to not be attached to existence, and if we think we are then we are wrong since death will disprove us  existence is just a condition of the possibility of living beings in general, not of specific lives in particular.

It might be seen as old-fashionable nonsense to bring quantum mechanics into the argument, but as far as we (don't) understand it, existence appears to be just a condition of a statistical possibility in general, not of specific quantum-real entities in superposition' (neither particles nor waves). As far as a Copenhagen interpretation of this goes, there's no sense in discussing what the quantum entity in super-position is in reality, as existence, except than describing its behaviour in mathematical form  the Schrödinger equation of the wavefunction. In a similar, metaphorical way, we're disengaging existence from the formalism of being@time, seeing it as merely a condition of possibility of art objects in general, not of specific art objects in particular. We believe blockchain makes this possible, as an agent for provability, behaving similar to a quantum measurement leap, forcing a particular existence to appear, based on the experimental-contextual setup of the being@time.

Such an existential or quantum approach touches on fundamental questions about what art is. One could say with this that art is not even immaterial: If conceptual art detached the material object from art, we are considering a type of post / non-conceptual art detached from the concept also. But even under these conditions, we are usually left with something tangible and documentable, attestable, and experienced. Art theorist Peter Osborne makes a point that post-conceptual art isn't a special type of art but rather a historical-ontological' condition of contemporary art in general.[1]

Could this approach be an opportunity to reconsider phenomenology, in particular Husserl and Heidegger, as a way to understand art and art experience? There's a fundamental uncertainty about what this being@time object is or refers to. We could liken it to a phenomenological cloud of unknowing [2] where a method of epoche (suspended  to put in parenthesis) could reveal to us how the object constitutes itself: to hold back judgement, a procedure where we refrain from judging whether something exists, or can exist, as a first step in recognizing, understanding, and describing appearances. To put in parenthesis allows us to put aside questions about the existence of art in addition to all other questions about the art object's physical or objective nature. Being@time as a form of blockchain art detaches object and existence from art and leaves it for us as meant and experienced' according to one's subjective or contextual intentions and intentionality.

In addition to seeing Aphantasia in relation to a form of conceptual art, the project is thus related to phenomenology and its objects of thought or intentional objects from acts of consciousness (noemata). Another meaning of noemata is as a rhetorical figure of an obscure statement which nevertheless is meant to be understood and elaborated. Aphantasia considers art as a condition of a possible intentional object of consciousness in general, including the technological simulacrum / fiction of our medium.

Against the backdrop of blockchain technology we might perceive the simulacrum and fictionalizing elements as extensions of a proof-of-work system, or another form of client puzzle protocol  that the work /object requires some imagination and fantasy on the client side, a threshold which might be common for all arts, and which has as a consequence that the world isn't inundated by it. Not that art should be elitist, but rather to keep it a cold medium, in McLuhan's sense  one of low-definition.[3] These forms of media possess very little information and consequently require from the audience a higher degree of participation and imagination. We have to engage to receive back, or as John Cage stated in relation to Robert Rauschenberg's assemblage art: As the lady said, Well, if it isn't art, then I like it.'[4] (Where art becomes a 'hot' medium, overheated and untouchable, just by naming something art').





Synergy? Gimmick?

Imagine the conceptual artist On Kawara using blockchain as medium, writing I am still alive. On Kawara, 5.8.2017'. This makes it clear that there is no necessary relation between form and content in the blockchain record (On Kawara died in 2014). The blockchain doesn't verify the semantic content of the record, only its form. The relation between form and content remains synaptic'  without a fixed connection, and is better utilized as a creative gap rather than to impose any authenticity. The relation is on the contrary, inverse: imposing authenticity will increase the degree of fictionalization, dissimulation, and exploitation. So it seems the 'blockchain puller' intervenes in faulty circles' in whichever way we deal with it.

A lot of conceptual art can only be known through the documentation which itself isn't the art. Land artist Robert Smithson divided his work into site' and non-site' as a sort of solution to the fictionalization of art via documentation. The integrity implemented in the blockchain format ensures a trustless documentation, in both paradoxical meanings of the word: a documentation which is independent of trusted sources (other than the blockchain); and secondly, trustless in the sense of not worthy of trust; faithless; unreliable; false.



Your work isn't a high stakes, nail-biting professional challenge. It's a form of play. Lighten up and have fun with it.'  Sol LeWitt [5]



On the other side, conceptual art and precarity could be worth a sociological study.

I too, wondered whether I could not sell something and succeed in life. For some time I had been no good at anything. I am forty years old Finally the idea of inventing something insincere finally crossed my mind and I set to work straightaway.'  Marcel Broodthaers [6]



From appearance to conception'  Joseph Kosuth [7]



The blockchain register has a relevance as a catalogue. In addition to built-in functionality for provenance / conception and transactions. Experimentally one could use all these properties and find ways that the technology could be redefined rather as a simulacrum for human consciousness (whatever this is).



Art is art'  Ad Reinhardt [8]



Let's roll!' [9]





Aphantasia

When he thinks about a face, it comes to him as an idea, as an intellectual concept, rather than a mental picture. This has prompted scientists to re-examine an experience that we so often take for granted  our imagination. He thought it was a joke, so he checked with his four-year old daughter. I asked her whether she could picture an apple in her mind, she said yeah, it's green I was shocked.'  Helen Thomson [11]

Aphantasia is the intentional art object being@time in the blockchain medium. It's an invisible thing in the sense that it doesn't mirror itself  its being@time is detached from any objective' properties  and a blind thing in the sense that without such representation it doesn't hold or show any belief of what it is.

This doesn't prevent the thing from existing, on the contrary, to the extent it puts itself in parenthesis it becomes an object to the perceiver, us, even as an impossible belief / metaphor  as in object, to throw or put before, oppose  as if it throws itself out of what it is  a contradiction.

The relation between Aphantasia and being@time is exemplified using the blockchain's own method that cryptographically proves the existence of an object without producing the object. Paul Virilio makes a similar distinction between provability and existence in relation to Gödel's theorem, 12 though he doesn't seem to get it entirely right.[13] However, if understood with a certain poetical license we might make sense of the relation, as Gödel's two incompleteness theorems stated in the language of mathematical logic, expresses that 1) in any formal, consistent system there will be true statements that are unprovable within the system; and 2) a system cannot prove its own consistency. So still with a metaphorical license, we say that Aphantasia represents these blind, unprovable truths within a system  they exist without being producible, even via imagination  being outside it, being not even imaginary, stating the impossibility of imagination, of metaphor. On the other hand, the being@time is cryptographically provable within the system. As stated earlier, if proven existence is a property of an object in the blockchain, then existence isn't essential to it; existence becomes non-essential since it's already part of its formulation; an existential medium like blockchain detaches its produce from existence.

In other words, we say that Aphantasia is blind, while being@time is empty, and so restating with Kant thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.' [14]



To summarize, what is meant by Aphantasia is:

A notion of art where a being@time-formulation on the blockchain provides the basic handle, and which at the same time serves as verifiable documentation.

This being@time as medium or format is a highly abstract entity, in that it is without mental imagery', it is cryptographic, it is not even conceptual; and since conceptual art often relies on mental imagery to complete itself, the being@time medium could rather be considered a type of (post-) (non / anti-) conceptual art. It is certainly structured by information, but in an aphantastic way  it is invisible and blind' as a medium.

Since it cannot exist without being documented, parts of the troubled aspect of conceptual art finds a solution. Still, the 'synaptic' reference (hash) cannot be bridged, it remains coded, requiring an 'act of consciousness' (a noetic simulacrum).

The combination of an existence detached from properties (including existence' as property) and a paradoxical / dissimulated relation to imagery and metaphors makes it a critical field for an exploration of what is art, and what it possibly can be when we leave the spectacle, objects, concepts, and imagination aside, or at least disengage from them.