BLOCKCHAIN INSPIRES AN AI WEI WEI ARTWORK

How do we ascribe value? Is it a matter of socially agreed judgment? How do we value human life and experience? What does priceless really mean? These are questions raised by dissident Chinese conceptual artist Ai Weiwei in his recent artwork with Irish-American artist Kevin Abosch, called Priceless.

Priceless is two standard ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain with the ticker PRCLS. One of the tokens is not available at all, the other is divisible up to 18 decimal places and is to be given away one quintillionth at a time, for free. That is enough for every person on earth.

A small amount of the distributable token was put into inaccessible digital wallets; the codes for the 12 wallets were printed on paper and sold to art buyers. The codes represent a personal moment in time shared by Ai and Abosch, for example, walking down a street in Berlin, where Ai lives. The pieces of paper are practically worthless, and the codes are a proxy for a fleeting human experience and refer to a valueless token – priceless.

“The relationship between blockchain technology and the mainstream economy has sparked an exciting conversation about how we ascribe value,” says Abosch.

The artist sold the concept of a rose for US$1 million worth of cryptocurrency to a group of 10 collectors last Valentine’s Day. The Forever Rose, an ERC-20 token called Rose on the Ethereum blockchain, is based on Abosch’s photograph of a rose but does not physically exist, nor does it have a virtual visual representation.