Rhea Myers, Blockchain Artist

My guest today is artist, Rhea Myers. Rhea is a programmer, essayist, researcher, thinker, and art practitioner who has been working in the medium of blockchains for over a decade.

In this conversation, Rhea takes us through some of the works and writing in her 2011-2021 retrospective, Proof of Work, which is a gorgeous book in the print edition.

I've been wanting to interview Rhea for some time. It was exciting to sit down with her for this sprawling and deep conversation about art, technology, culture, politics, and everything in between. I hope you enjoy the show.

As always, this show is provided as entertainment and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice or any form of endorsement or suggestion. Crypto has risks and you alone are responsible for doing your research and making your own decisions.

Links

• Hosted by @nnnnicholas
• Rhea Myers' site
• Rhea's github
• Brainfuck
• Rhea's ongoing shows (at the time of recording)
• GEN/GEN Gazelli Art House London
• Exploring the Decentralized Web – Art on the Blockchain:
• Notes From the Ether
• Mark Fisher Exiting the Vampire Castle
• Charles Harrison)
• Erin Hoffman, "EA Spouse"
• Donald Norman on Jacques Carelman's "Coffeepot for Masochists"
• @cybourgeoisie
• Marguerite deCourcelle
• Thread of excerpts from Rhea's book
• Is Art

Chapters

(00:00:00) Intro (00:17:50) Is Satoshi the best artist (00:18:35) DuChamp’s art coefficient / art leverage (00:19:29) Baron von Munchausen (00:25:00) Fungibility & politics (00:29:00) The World’s First Bitcoin Artist (00:31:27) MYSOUL (2014) (00:35:05) Project based art practice (00:37:10) Do you feel ethical obligation to improve the world? (00:42:30) Facecoin (2014) (00:43:45) Secret Artwork (2018) (00:49:15) Art Coins (Coloured) (2015) (00:50:50) Dogecode (2014) (00:53:00) TORCHED H34R7S (2015), Marguerite deCourcelle, and Cybourgeoisie (00:58:45) Dogecode continued (01:01:30) Bitcoin VMs via Indexing: Counterparty, Dogecode, Ordinals, Ethscriptions (01:17:50) Working as simple as possible with the primitive at hand (01:25:06) Critical Coins (2015) (01:40:00) Andreas Anronopoulos