ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Each painting and NFT in Portraits of a Mind features a unique set of coordinates, each referring to a location of historic importance to the history of Bitcoin. In early 2000, a group of West Coast Cypherpunks established a data haven deep in the North Sea. They named it HavenCo. It was the first of its kind. Their location was Sealand, the world’s oldest micronation. The data haven at Sealand emphasized the importance of stateless networks and individual freedom at a time of increased digital surveillance. Many of the individuals that set up and supported HavenCo were part of the same cypherpunk community that gathered around the Cryptography Mailing List at the time of Satoshi's publication of the bitcoin whitepaper.
The exhibition at Sealand is intended to bring the painting and NFT back to the place that it conceptually represents. It hopes to draw focus back to the unusual history of Sealand, its relationship to the cypherpunk community and its more long standing relationship with libertarian philosophy.
The exhibition at Sealand is intended to bring the painting and NFT back to the place that it conceptually represents. It hopes to draw focus back to the unusual history of Sealand, its relationship to the cypherpunk community and its more long standing relationship with libertarian philosophy.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Portraits of a Mind aims to decentralise the original codebase behind Bitcoin into 40 fragments. Each of the 40 paintings and NFTs holds exactly 322,048 digits of Satoshi Nakamoto’s original code. Once distributed globally, these 40 fragments of the code will decentralise the artwork — drawing up a global network of collectors, where no one central authority will hold all the code.
The work is a symbolic expression of Satoshi’s vision, forged out of the very code that lies at the genesis of it all. A digital fingerprint carved out of paint, Portraits of a Mind explores the multi-faceted identities of Satoshi Nakamoto, in turn reflecting on the nature of both identity and portraiture in a newly decentralised age. From Julius Caesar’s Rome to exact coordinates of Hal Finney at the time of the first BTC transaction, these 40 locations together form their own network, covering 5,000 years of human history and act as proxies for the ideas, movements and people that fed into Satoshi Nakamoto’s revolutionary creation.
The work is a symbolic expression of Satoshi’s vision, forged out of the very code that lies at the genesis of it all. A digital fingerprint carved out of paint, Portraits of a Mind explores the multi-faceted identities of Satoshi Nakamoto, in turn reflecting on the nature of both identity and portraiture in a newly decentralised age. From Julius Caesar’s Rome to exact coordinates of Hal Finney at the time of the first BTC transaction, these 40 locations together form their own network, covering 5,000 years of human history and act as proxies for the ideas, movements and people that fed into Satoshi Nakamoto’s revolutionary creation.
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