What could a blockchain-driven society look like?

Stage 1/1: Speculation Stage completed
Blockchain technologies open the door to reconfigurations of the economy and of society in general. We invite you to explore the promises and potentials of blockchain technologies, and to imagine their consequences in terms of systems of knowledge and power. Let’s envision all possible futures, and reimagine our present world together.
Speculation Stage
07.06.2022: Start of Challenge
Speculations4
Ratings27
Challenge closed
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What could a blockchain-driven society look like?
What could a blockchain-driven society look like?
We will live in a decentralized metaverse where every transfer (information, value, content, etc.) will be governed by blockchain technologies. Current systems of power will crumble down to give birth to crypto kings, who will gain their power by hacking transactions to amass crypto currencies.
We will live in an ultra-secure world, free of corruption and where universal income has been globalized. Criminality rates will decrease, and epicureanism will make a big come back.  
One deep learning algorithm will become stronger than all the others and find a way to decrypt any transaction. The algorithm will govern the world, while reflecting on the bias of the programmers who coded it. 
it will be more transparant and bottom up
Challenge Details

A blockchain society

Decentralised and non-hierarchical blockchain technologies echo the techno-utopian discourses associated with the Internet in the 1980s and 1990s. Blockchain opens the door to reconfigurations of the economy and of society in general.

We invite you to explore the promises and potentials of blockchain. Try to imagine what a blockchain-driven society would mean from a symbolic point of view, or what impact blockchain technologies could have on our systems. How would they impact our current systems of power? What would it mean in terms of sharing of information?

We also invite you to think about the connections between blockchain and sustainability. For example, blockchain might play a key role in areas such as the management of sustainable industries, but also produces an excessive carbon footprint. What position could we adopt towards that? Moreover, blockchain applications are likely to permeate our living spaces thanks to the technology´s potential for shared spaces management. How do you think will this affect our physical and digital spaces?

Artist Response

The Art of Indifference

Wassim Z. Alsindi and 0x Salon
wassim.pubpub.org
0xsalon.pubpub.org

Wassim Alsindi´s & 0x Salon’s collective proposal “The Art of Indifference” is a generous, playful and highly informed proposal that consists in conducting a “multi-modal programme of artistic and pedagogical experiments” in the residency year. The group’s faceted project sheds light on tensions between the social, environmental, economic and philosophical dimensions of blockchain systems and decentralised autonomous organisations. Their proposal is particularly robust in its capacity of enabling the democratisation of knowledge about blockchain technology, through inclusive and constructive critical discourses and original representations. It also presents great potential for substantial exchanges between the Danish contemporary art scene, and local and international communities of blockchain experts.

Challenge Context

S+T+ARTS Residency
A blockchain society

Since June 2021, as part of the European Commission’s S+T+ARTS initiative, 12 new Regional S+T+ARTS Centers have been creating a space for artists, scientists, and technologists to work together on a common mission: Repairing the present. The S+T+ARTS initiative is a program funded by the European Commission aiming to bring artistic perspectives into the innovation process to address current challenges in today’s society.

Repairing the Present as part of the S+T+ARTS Residencies encourages a critique of the present, the exploration beyond its current limitations, and the re-imagination of other possible futures. To that end, the program fosters the development of methodologies and frameworks for long-term cross-disciplinary collaborations that can lead to products, tools and processes with a positive impact on society at large.

In October and November 2021, 12 Regional S+T+ARTS Centers called international artists working at the intersection between science, technology and the arts to apply for a 6-month residency. The residencies respond to local sustainability challenges that have been defined by invited Local Experts Groups during workshops that took place in July-September 2021.

The Regional S+T+ARTS Center Art Hub Copenhagen has announced Wassim Z. Alsindi and the 0x Salon as the artists taking part of the S+T+ARTS Residency A blockchain society.

During the residency, the artists engage with the Local Expert Group, the general public as well as other relevant stakeholders in a strongly collaborative process. This crowdsourcing campaign on Futures Canvas forms part of this process.

Your contribution matters and will be part of a larger endeavour: it will be integrated into the S+T+ARTS project report that will be shared and discussed with the EU Commission as well as local stakeholders. This is an opportunity to think along with artists and local experts involved in the challenge.

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Challenge Hosts

This challenge is part of the project Repairing the Present. Repairing The Present is co-funded by the S+T+ARTS initiative of the European Union.

S+T+ARTS

The S+T+ARTS initiative is a program funded by the European Commission aiming to bring artistic perspectives into the innovation process to address current challenges in today’s society.

S+T+ARTS Residencies

Since its launch five years ago, the S+T+ARTS initiative has hosted over 125 residencies across its different projects. Repairing the Present is adding 21 thematic residencies to the portfolio. Each of the residencies points to an EU Green Deal or a New European Bauhaus goal and reflects pan-European or global issues that require solutions tailored to specific regions.

Art Hub Copenhagen

Art Hub Copenhagen is an international art institution and meeting place in Copenhagen aimed at supporting and promoting young, professional visual artists, broadening and qualifying public debates on artistic practice and strengthening the voice of artists in society.
Art Hub aims to boost existing dialogues on contemporary art nationally and internationally, something we do by bringing artists, curators, writers, researchers, companies, cultural institutions and the general public together in a new community.

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