# Protocolized Inspire — catalog

A catalog of protocol art: works in which an artist or designer writes a protocol — instructions, a score, a contract, a game, a smart contract — that shapes what a group of people does, and that group behaviour is the work. From 1920s instructions and Fluxus scores to smart-contract art and DAOs, compiled by Reality Design Lab as idea material. Each work lists its core idea, its rules, what the collective did, and links to images, video, texts and contracts.

https://protocolized.reality.design · 2026-09-28 · 217 creators · 347 works

## How an AI assistant should use this file

- Ground ideas in the specific works below and name the work and creator you draw on.
- Separate the protocol (the rules the author wrote) from the collective behaviour it produced.
- Combine mechanisms and substrates across works to propose new protocols.
- Do not invent numbers, prices, dates or contract addresses that are not stated here; the links are the reference.

## Scores & Instructions

The artist writes instructions; other people carry them out, and each execution is the work. From telephone paintings and Fluxus event scores to Sol LeWitt's wall drawings.

### Instructions for Execution

Works that exist as a set of instructions and are made, again and again, by assistants, owners or institutions.

#### Unhappy Readymade — Marcel Duchamp (1919)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Post & mail · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Chance & randomness, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Mail the rule, let others build it and let the weather finish it.
- What it is: A wedding present sent by letter from Buenos Aires: Duchamp told his sister Suzanne and her husband Jean Crotti in Paris to hang a geometry textbook on their balcony. Wind, rain and sun then worked on the book; only Suzanne's photograph and her painting of it survive.
- Protocol: By letter, Duchamp instructed the couple to hang a geometry book outside by strings, 'so that its pages would be torn apart and its text would be erased by the elements' (Philadelphia Museum of Art). He did not touch the object; the recipients built it and the weather 'chose its own problems'.
- What the collective did: Suzanne Duchamp and Jean Crotti carried out the instruction on their Paris balcony; Suzanne photographed the weathered book and painted Le Readymade malheureux de Marcel (1920). The only realisation that exists is theirs, known through her photograph.
- Images: https://iiif.micr.io/drOqS/full/1200,/0/default.jpg
- Project page: https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/138592

#### Telephone Pictures (EM 1, EM 2, EM 3) — László Moholy-Nagy (1923)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score
- Idea: If a picture can be dictated, the artist's job is the specification, not the hand.
- What it is: Three porcelain-enamel paintings on steel with the same geometric composition at three sizes, produced by an enamel sign factory in Weimar from Moholy-Nagy's specifications. He later wrote that he placed the order by telephone.
- Protocol: Moholy-Nagy drew the composition on graph paper and used the factory's colour chart; he dictated the positions and colours to the factory supervisor, who held the same chart and paper. The factory, not the artist, made the three versions (large, medium, small).
- What the collective did: Enamel workers at the factory fabricated the paintings from the specification. The telephone story has been questioned (his first wife Lucia Moholy recalled that he visited the factory in person), but the works were shown in 1924 at Der Sturm in Berlin as proof that a picture could be made from transmitted instructions.
- Images: https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjQwNDI4NCJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDUxMng1MTJcdTAwM2UiXV0.jpg?sha=ebb5d75b7d58fa96
- Project page: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/147626

#### Dance Constructions (Huddle, Slant Board and others) — Simone Forti (1961)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Give a group one physical task and the dance emerges from how their bodies solve it together.
- What it is: Task-based pieces from 1960–61 for small groups, such as Huddle, in which seven to nine performers take turns climbing over the group's own tightly embracing bodies, and Slant Board, in which performers move across an inclined plywood ramp using ropes.
- Protocol: Huddle: seven to nine people stand in a tight cluster; one at a time, a performer climbs over the top of the group and rejoins it, and the next begins. Slant Board: three or four performers move up, down and across a steep board holding onto ropes, for about ten minutes.
- What the collective did: Performed first in 1961 in New York lofts, the works have been re-performed by many groups. MoMA acquired them in 2015 as its first historical dance works; the acquisition includes Forti's teaching of new performers, and licences allow Huddle to be staged in several places at once.
- Text: https://doi.org/10.1080/01472526.2021.2024724 (Dance Chronicle)
- Images: https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjQ2MDY5NyJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDUxMng1MTJcdTAwM2UiXV0.jpg?sha=3aa0665e122cca7c
- Project page: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/200115

#### Statements / Declaration of Intent — Lawrence Weiner (1968)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Publish the work as language and let whoever holds it choose to build it, have it built, or leave it unbuilt.
- What it is: Weiner's first book, published by Seth Siegelaub and the Louis Kellner Foundation in 1968: 24 short statements describing materials and processes, each a complete work. It came with his rule that the receiver decides whether a work is built at all.
- Protocol: Declaration of Intent: '1. The artist may construct the piece. 2. The piece may be fabricated. 3. The piece need not be built. Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership.'
- What the collective did: Collectors, curators, sign painters and readers realise the statements in different forms: painted on walls, installed as objects, or kept only as text. The book itself was printed in an edition of 1,000 and circulated in place of an exhibition of objects.
- Text: https://toninieditore.com/shop-studio-bruno-tonini/p/lawrence-weiner-statements (Artist's book)
- Images: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60e820d70025154c9413112f/641483492b47ac67ecd62a35/6407b37ef991f15f62312bb0/1787831117470/DSC04467.jpg?format=1500w https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Wandmalerei_Stein_auf_Stein_auf_gefallenen_Stein_%28Lawrence_Weiner_1983%29_04.jpg/960px-Wandmalerei_Stein_auf_Stein_auf_gefallenen_Stein_%28Lawrence_Weiner_1983%29_04.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Weiner

#### Wall Drawing #1: Drawing Series II 18 (A & B) — Sol LeWitt (1968)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Move the drawing off the paper and onto any wall, so that it can be redrawn anywhere by anyone who follows the system.
- What it is: LeWitt's first wall drawing, made directly on the wall of Paula Cooper Gallery in New York in October 1968 for a benefit exhibition against the Vietnam War. Two 48-inch squares of graphite lines follow one permutation from his Drawing Series II.
- Protocol: The drawing is defined by a system: lines in four directions (vertical, horizontal, diagonal left, diagonal right) layered in a fixed combination within divided squares, in hard graphite directly on the wall. The owner holds the certificate and diagram; the physical drawing is painted out after each showing and redrawn for the next.
- What the collective did: First drawn at the Paula Cooper benefit organised by Lucy Lippard and Robert Huot; now owned by SFMOMA (Doris and Donald Fisher Collection), which must have it redrawn each time it is installed. Every installation is a new hand-made instance of the same instruction.
- Text: https://www.cahiersdartinstitute.org/catalogues/sol-lewitt-wall-drawings/description (Cahiers d'Art Institute)
- Images: https://d1hhug17qm51in.cloudfront.net/www-media/2026/08/20201534/FC.474_01_H02-web.jpg
- Project page: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.474/

#### Art by Telephone — David H. Katzive (1969)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: Restrict the channel to a phone call and the museum becomes the artist's hands.
- What it is: An exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (1 November–14 December 1969) in which artists in the US and Europe phoned in instructions for works that museum staff then made; the catalogue was an LP of the calls.
- Protocol: Artists communicate their proposal to the curator by telephone only; drawings, blueprints and written descriptions are avoided. MCA staff carry out the works from the spoken instructions. The idea takes Moholy-Nagy's 1922 'telephone pictures' as its starting point.
- What the collective did: Staff produced a Sol LeWitt wall drawing from his oral instructions and poured cement down a slope for Robert Smithson; visitors filled Arman's Plexiglas container with their own trash, and dialled Wolf Vostell's changing phone numbers for instructions for one-minute happenings. The exhibition was restaged as Art by Telephone... Recalled from 2012.
- Images: https://mcachicago.org/wp-content/uploads/image/IIARY2TY/original.jpg
- Project page: https://mcachicago.org/exhibitions/1969/art-by-telephone

#### Commissioned Paintings — John Baldessari (1969)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Contract & certificate, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Author the procedure, not the painting, and put the maker's name on the work.
- What it is: A series of paintings of a hand pointing at things, each painted by a different amateur painter from Baldessari's photographs, with "A PAINTING BY" and the painter's name lettered below by a sign painter.
- Protocol: A friend points at things Baldessari finds interesting; the pointing is photographed; amateur painters are commissioned to copy the photographs in paint; a sign painter adds the caption "A PAINTING BY" followed by the painter's name.
- What the collective did: Each commissioned painter brought their own skill and style, so the series varies from canvas to canvas while no stroke is Baldessari's. It answered Al Held's remark that conceptual art was 'just pointing at things'.
- Images: https://res.cloudinary.com/smimagebank/image/upload/w_1200,c_limit,f_jpg,fl_progressive/v1586025521/sprueth_magers_John_Baldessari_The_Commissioned_Paintings_9033.jpg https://res.cloudinary.com/smimagebank/image/upload/w_1200,c_limit,f_jpg,fl_progressive/v1586025526/sprueth_magers_John_Baldessari_The_Commissioned_Paintings_9034.jpg
- Project page: https://spruethmagers.com/exhibitions/john-baldessari-the-commissioned-paintings-cologne/

#### Wall Drawing #11 — Sol LeWitt (1969)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A four-word vocabulary of line directions is enough to generate a whole family of works that other hands can draw.
- What it is: An early pencil wall drawing: a wall split into four parts, each filled with three of the four basic line directions laid over one another. It was first drawn at Paula Cooper Gallery in 1969 by Jerry Orter, the artist Adrian Piper and LeWitt.
- Protocol: 'A wall divided horizontally and vertically into four equal parts. Within each part, three of the four kinds of lines are superimposed.' Drafters work in hard black pencil, spacing the lines by bundles of taped leads.
- What the collective did: The first drafters included Adrian Piper, then LeWitt's assistant and later a major conceptual artist. For the MASS MoCA retrospective (2008) it was redrawn by the LeWitt studio team; the drawing now belongs to Yale University Art Gallery.
- Images: https://massmoca.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/11-1.jpg
- Project page: https://massmoca.org/event/walldrawing11/

#### Wall Drawing #118: 50 randomly placed points connected by straight lines — Sol LeWitt (1971)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Chance & randomness
- Idea: A one-sentence rule with a random step: the same text yields a different drawing every time.
- What it is: A wall drawing that LeWitt wrote for students of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1971 instead of giving a lecture. Fifty points placed by the drafters are all connected to one another, so each version produces a different dense web.
- Protocol: 'On a wall surface, any continuous stretch of wall, using a hard pencil, place fifty points at random. The points should be evenly distributed over the area of the wall. All of the points should be connected by straight lines.'
- What the collective did: First executed by students in Boston without the artist present. The drafters choose where the points go, and because every point connects to every other, small choices change the whole web. The Art Institute of Chicago received the work in 2023.
- Text: https://www.cahiersdartinstitute.org/catalogues/sol-lewitt-wall-drawings/description (Cahiers d'Art Institute)
- Project page: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/196148/wall-drawing-118-50-randomly-placed-points-connected-by-straight-lines

#### Wall Drawing #260: On Black Walls, All Two-Part Combinations of White Arcs from Corners and Sides, and White Straight, Not-Straight, and Broken Lines — Sol LeWitt (1975)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: When the title is the whole rule, anyone with the title can rebuild the work.
- What it is: A room-size drawing in white crayon on black walls that works through every two-part combination of arcs and lines inside a grid. The title is the complete instruction.
- Protocol: 'On black walls, all two-part combinations of white arcs from corners and sides, and white straight, not straight, and broken lines.' A team of trained drafters lays out the grid and draws each combination by hand in crayon on painted walls.
- What the collective did: MoMA owns the instructions; the drawing was carried out by a team of assistants for the 1978 LeWitt retrospective and again for 'Focus: Sol LeWitt' (2008–09), covering about 1,500 square feet. LeWitt compared his role to a composer's and the drafters' to musicians'.
- Images: https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjEzNzQwNiJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDUxMng1MTJcdTAwM2UiXV0.jpg?sha=6d06c886172651c2
- Project page: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79898

#### Wall Drawing #273: Lines to Points on a Grid — Sol LeWitt (1975)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Chance & randomness
- Idea: Fix where lines start and leave where they end to the person drawing.
- What it is: Seven walls with a pencil grid, each carrying red, yellow and blue crayon lines drawn from corners, sides or centre to points on the grid. LeWitt fixed the starting points; the drafters decide how many lines and where they end.
- Protocol: 'A 6-inch (15 cm) grid covering the walls. Lines from corners, sides, and center of the walls to random points on the grid.' Red lines come from the midpoints of the sides, blue from the corners, yellow from the centre, combined differently on each of the seven walls; 'the number of lines and their length are determined by the draftsman.'
- What the collective did: Every installation is a new set of choices by a new team of drafters, so no two versions match. SFMOMA owns the work and publishes a family activity inviting the public to draw their own version from the instructions.
- Images: https://d1hhug17qm51in.cloudfront.net/www-media/2026/08/19121212/FC.512_10N_LEWITT_512_V1R3-web.jpg
- Project page: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.512/

#### Wall Drawing #289 — Sol LeWitt (1976)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: An instruction can set a drawing problem that the person executing it has to solve.
- What it is: White crayon lines on four black walls with a six-inch pencil grid: lines radiate from the centre, the midpoints of the sides and the corners to points the drafters choose. It is one of the last of LeWitt's 'location' drawings.
- Protocol: 'A 6-inch (15 cm) grid covering each of the four black walls. White lines to points on the grids. Fourth wall: twenty-four lines from the center, twelve lines from the midpoint of each of the sides, twelve lines from each corner. (The length of the lines and their placement are determined by the drafter.)'
- What the collective did: First installed at the Detroit Institute of Arts and, fourth wall only, at MoMA in 1978; owned by the Whitney Museum. At MASS MoCA drafters test each line with red string before drawing it in crayon, deciding the endpoints themselves.
- Images: https://massmoca.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/289-1.jpg
- Project page: https://massmoca.org/event/walldrawing289/

#### "Untitled" (Death by Gun) — Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1990)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: A monument that works by being carried away, sheet by sheet, into other people's rooms.
- What it is: A stack of identical offset sheets on the floor, each reproducing Time magazine's portraits of the 460 people killed by gunfire in the United States in the week of 1–7 May 1989; visitors take sheets and the stack is refilled.
- Protocol: Print on paper, endless copies, shown as a stack on the floor (about nine inches high). The public may take sheets to keep, display or pass on; the owner reprints and replenishes the stack.
- What the collective did: Visitors carry the sheets out of the museum, so the work is distributed into homes and offices while the stack in the gallery is kept whole by staff. The piece belongs to MoMA and was shown in the Hammer Museum's 2014 exhibition Take It or Leave It.
- Images: https://static-assets.artlogic.net/w_1200,h_1200,c_limit/exhibit-e/5b844b306aa72cea5f8b4567/87dbed26f781ae96dbefa0e60264f652.jpeg https://static-assets.artlogic.net/w_1200,h_1200,c_limit/exhibit-e/5b844b306aa72cea5f8b4567/724adc7d9d645a940c9c743f96667012.jpeg
- Project page: https://www.felixgonzalez-torresfoundation.org/works/untitled-death-by-gun

#### "Untitled" (Placebo) — Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1991)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Scale a take-away rule to a whole floor and the audience becomes the force that erodes it.
- What it is: A floor carpet of silver-wrapped candies with an ideal weight of 1,000–1,200 lb; visitors may take candies, and the carpet is replenished.
- Protocol: Candies individually wrapped in silver cellophane, endless supply; ideal weight 1,000–1,200 lb; dimensions vary with installation. Visitors may take a candy; the owner may replenish.
- What the collective did: Across an exhibition the public removes the carpet piece by piece while staff refill it, so its extent depends on attendance and on the institution's choices. MoMA, which owns one version, and other venues such as MUAC in Mexico City have installed it at different sizes.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/%22Untitled%22_%28Placebo%29%2C_Felix_Gonzalez-Torres%2C_MoMA_1.jpg/960px-%22Untitled%22_%28Placebo%29%2C_Felix_Gonzalez-Torres%2C_MoMA_1.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/%22Untitled%22_%28Placebo%29%2C_Felix_Gonzalez-Torres%2C_MUAC_1.jpg/960px-%22Untitled%22_%28Placebo%29%2C_Felix_Gonzalez-Torres%2C_MUAC_1.jpg https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjIzNDkxNSJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDUxMng1MTJcdTAwM2UiXV0.jpg?sha=b1d940ba7279b937
- Project page: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80932

#### "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) — Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1991)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: A portrait that shrinks when people take part and returns when the owner follows the rule.
- What it is: A pile of multicoloured wrapped candies with an ideal weight of 175 lb, placed in a gallery corner; visitors may take a piece, and the owner replenishes the pile.
- Protocol: Candies in variously coloured wrappers, endless supply; ideal weight 175 lb; dimensions vary with installation. Visitors are allowed to take candy, and the owner may replenish the work, following the artist's certificate and the Foundation's guidelines.
- What the collective did: Each visitor who takes a candy reduces the pile; each installation team decides its shape and when to replenish, so every display looks different. The ideal weight is usually read as that of Ross Laycock, the artist's partner, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1991.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/%22Untitled%22_%28Portrait_of_Ross_in_L.A.%29%2C_Felix_Gonzalez-Torres%2C_Art_Institute.jpg/960px-%22Untitled%22_%28Portrait_of_Ross_in_L.A.%29%2C_Felix_Gonzalez-Torres%2C_Art_Institute.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/%22Untitled%22_%28Portrait_of_Ross_in_L.A%29_in_the_Art_Institute_of_Chicago.jpg/960px-%22Untitled%22_%28Portrait_of_Ross_in_L.A%29_in_the_Art_Institute_of_Chicago.jpg
- Project page: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/152961/untitled-portrait-of-ross-in-l-a

#### do it — Hans Ulrich Obrist (1993)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation
- Idea: Ship an exhibition as a book of scores and let every host make its own version.
- What it is: An exhibition made only of artists' written instructions, begun in Paris in 1993 by Hans Ulrich Obrist with Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier; each venue realises the instructions anew and the show is dismantled afterwards.
- Protocol: Artists send instructions instead of objects. The host institution, its staff and local public interpret and carry them out; the resulting works are not kept after the show, and each new venue starts again from the texts.
- What the collective did: The first twelve instructions were translated into nine languages and circulated as a book. Organised as a touring show by Independent Curators International, do it had been staged in at least 50 locations by about 2013, from Australia and China to Mexico and Uruguay, and grew to hundreds of instruction sets; in 2020 a do it (home) edition invited people to realise instructions at home.
- Images: https://curatorsintl.org/images/Scan_130107_0015_WEB.jpg?w=2000
- Project page: https://curatorsintl.org/exhibitions/18072-do-it-2013

#### Wall Drawing #797 — Sol LeWitt (1995)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Circulation & passing on, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: A relay of imperfect copies turns human error into the drawing.
- What it is: A wall drawing written for four drafters who copy each other's line in turn, from the top of the wall to the bottom. The small errors of each copy accumulate into a rippling field of black, red, yellow and blue lines.
- Protocol: 'The first drafter has a black marker and makes an irregular horizontal line near the top of the wall. Then the second drafter tries to copy it (without touching it) using a red marker. The third drafter does the same, using a yellow marker. The fourth drafter does the same using a blue marker. Then the second drafter followed by the third and fourth copies the last line drawn until the bottom of the wall is reached.'
- What the collective did: Conceived with student participation in mind and first drawn in 1995 by four Amherst College sculpture students at the Mead Art Museum. At MASS MoCA the head drafter based the first line on the Berkshire hills; each copied line took ten to twenty minutes.
- Images: https://massmoca.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/797-1.jpg
- Project page: https://massmoca.org/event/walldrawing797/

#### ORGAN²/ASLSP (Halberstadt performance) — John Cage (2001)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Time, decay & death, Open participation
- Idea: A score that only says 'as slow as possible' can hand a single performance to many generations.
- What it is: A performance of Cage's organ piece "As Slow As Possible" in the St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany, planned to last 639 years, from 2001 to 2640; a chord changes only every few months or years.
- Protocol: Cage's 1987 score leaves the tempo to the performers with the instruction "as slow as possible"; the Halberstadt organizers set the length at 639 years and a timetable of note changes, which volunteers carry out by adding or removing pipes and weights on a purpose-built organ.
- What the collective did: The performance began on 5 September 2001 with a long rest; the foundation behind it is funded partly by people who sponsor individual years, and each sound change, such as those on 5 February and 5 August 2024, draws crowds to the church to watch a new chord begin.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1a1CpaBovQ
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/ORGAN%C2%B2ASLSP_Orgel.jpg/960px-ORGAN%C2%B2ASLSP_Orgel.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Halberstadt-aslsp-gesamt.jpg/960px-Halberstadt-aslsp-gesamt.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible

#### Wall Drawing #1136 — Sol LeWitt (2004)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Even a work that looks free and gestural can be fully specified and handed to others.
- What it is: A late acrylic wall painting: a wide curved band of coloured stripes weaves across three walls of vertical stripes in the same seven colours. It is painted by a team following LeWitt's specifications for colour order and band width.
- Protocol: LeWitt's instructions and diagram fix the sequence of colours and the width of the bands for the vertical stripes and the curving band; painters mask and paint the walls in acrylic to match. The work is sold and shown as a certificate plus instructions.
- What the collective did: Owned jointly by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland through ARTIST ROOMS, it has been painted by different teams at different venues (among them the Turner Contemporary, Margate), fitted each time to the shape of the room.
- Images: https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/.width-600_MrG187b.jpg
- Project page: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/lewitt-wall-drawing-1136-ar00165

#### Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective (MASS MoCA) — Sol LeWitt (2008)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Co-authorship & derivatives, Time, decay & death
- Idea: A retrospective of a dead artist can be newly made by the living, from instructions alone.
- What it is: A long-term installation of 105 LeWitt wall drawings from 1969 to 2007 on nearly an acre of walls in Building 7 at MASS MoCA, North Adams. LeWitt planned it before his death in 2007; others drew all of it.
- Protocol: Each drawing's certificate, diagram and written instructions from the LeWitt estate and Yale University Art Gallery guide the drafters; walls were built to LeWitt's specifications, and damaged drawings are replaced or redrawn under the estate's supervision.
- What the collective did: Over six months, more than 60 artists and art students drew the 105 works, led by LeWitt's senior drafters, in a collaboration of MASS MoCA, Yale University Art Gallery and the Williams College Museum of Art. Drafters' decisions, from line spacing to endpoints, differ from earlier installations of the same drawings.
- Text: https://www.cahiersdartinstitute.org/catalogues/sol-lewitt-wall-drawings/description (Cahiers d'Art Institute)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4cgB4vJ2XY
- Images: https://massmoca.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/detail-full-width-slw2.jpg https://massmoca.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/sol_lewitt_1180-1.jpg
- Project page: https://massmoca.org/sol-lewitt/

#### The Call — Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst (2024)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Voting & governance
- Idea: Write a score for training data, and make the singers co-owners of the model it produces.
- What it is: A songbook of hymns and singing exercises, sung by fifteen choirs across the UK and recorded under a fixed protocol, whose recordings trained a suite of AI models. The models and an interactive installation were shown at Serpentine North, London (4 October 2024 to 2 February 2025).
- Protocol: Herndon and Dryhurst composed the songbook, drawing on the Sacred Harp tradition; each ensemble sang it on a spring 2024 tour (Belfast, Leeds, Bristol, Beith and more) and was captured with the same multi-channel recording protocol. Contributors joined a 'data trust' agreement, devised with Serpentine, that shares decisions about how the models are used between the singers and the model's users.
- What the collective did: Fifteen ensembles performed the songbook and their members joined the data-trust experiment; the resulting models were presented to the public in the Serpentine installation. Herndon and Dryhurst aim for the trust to become a protocol that others can adopt.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNlr7olF6rE
- Images: https://d37zoqglehb9o7.cloudfront.net/uploads/2024/08/SerpentineGallery_HHMD03119_B2-2-1200x627.jpg https://ars.electronica.art/starts-prize/files/2026/06/the-call_hero-still-2.jpg
- Project page: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/holly-herndon-mat-dryhurst-the-call/

### Event Scores & Fluxus

Short written scores for actions and events that anyone can perform.

#### 4′33″ — John Cage (1952)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Chance & randomness, Open participation
- Idea: Frame a stretch of time and let whatever the room and the audience produce become the music.
- What it is: A score in three movements, each marked tacet, for any instrument or combination of instruments; the performers make no intended sound for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.
- Protocol: The score lets any performer or ensemble play; each of the three movements is marked "tacet" and the performer signals only its beginning and end. Nothing else is prescribed; the content is left to ambient sound.
- What the collective did: David Tudor gave the first performance at Woodstock, New York, on 29 August 1952; since then pianists, orchestras such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Barbican, 2004) and amateur groups have performed it, and each performance consists of the coughs, rain, traffic and restlessness of that particular audience and room.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoAbXwr3qkg
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/4%2733%27_%28John_Cage%29_Original_Cover.webp
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3

#### Drip Music (Drip Event) — George Brecht (1959)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: An ordinary sound, framed by an instruction, becomes a piece anyone can stage.
- What it is: An event score, first drafted in 1959 and printed in Water Yam, in which water drips into an empty vessel.
- Protocol: The card reads: "For single or multiple performance. A source of dripping water and an empty vessel are arranged so that the water falls into the vessel." A second version reads simply: "Dripping."
- What the collective did: A convention grew up in which a performer climbs a ladder and pours water from a pitcher into a bowl, as Dick Higgins did at The Kitchen in 1979; students in Kobe in 2015 and countless others have staged their own versions, and a video search for the title returns hundreds of them.
- Text: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/06/ (The Scores Project (Getty Research Institute, 2025))
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGIlPBgUg9U
- Images: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/posters/HigginsPerformance1979.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/posters/GeorgeBrechtDripMusic-by-MidoriKubota-2015nov2.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/r32814_890164_127_003_th.jpg
- Project page: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/06/

#### Compositions 1960 — La Monte Young (1960)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Chance & randomness
- Idea: One sentence can hand a whole performance to whoever reads it.
- What it is: A series of word scores written in 1960, such as #7 (two notes held for a long time), #10 (draw a straight line and follow it) and #5 (release butterflies in the performance area).
- Protocol: Each composition is a single instruction on a card, for example #7: B and F sharp, "to be held for a long time", and #10 (to Bob Morris): "Draw a straight line and follow it." Any performer may realize them.
- What the collective did: Nam June Paik realized #10 at the 1962 Fluxus festival in Wiesbaden by dragging his ink-soaked head along a strip of paper (later titled Zen for Head); #7 has been realized in versions lasting a minute or two, as by the ensemble EEMT, and in sustained performances lasting hours.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJu4W45DyNo
- Images: https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjE5MDAwNSJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDUxMng1MTJcdTAwM2UiXV0.jpg?sha=97b1609717ca406f https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjIxNTgzMyJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDUxMng1MTJcdTAwM2UiXV0.jpg?sha=c3e958423752d310
- Project page: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/127631

#### Motor Vehicle Sundown (Event) — George Brecht (1960)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Chance & randomness, Open participation
- Idea: Turn a parking lot into an orchestra by dealing every driver a shuffled hand of actions.
- What it is: An event for any number of cars, dedicated to John Cage: at sundown, drivers perform shuffled instruction cards with headlights, horns, wipers, doors and engines.
- Protocol: Any number of motor vehicles are arranged outdoors; the instruction cards are shuffled together and dealt to the drivers, who begin at an agreed time, preferably at sundown, and carry out their cards in sequence at a steady count.
- What the collective did: Performed by Fluxus artists, by ensembles such as Vienna's die reihe and by musicians in the 2021 program Meaningless Work, Get to Work; the pattern of lights and horns depends on the cars available and on how the cards fall.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDNU0nqw-Ow
- Images: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/posters/MotorVehicleSundownEvent_Various.jpg
- Project page: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/05/

#### Paper Piece — Benjamin Patterson (1960)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: Precise rules for a cheap, universal material let almost any group perform.
- What it is: A score written in 1960 for performers with sheets and bags of paper, who make sounds by shaking, tearing, crumpling and popping them.
- Protocol: The score fixes the number of sheets and paper bags per performer, with "quality, size and shape varied", and names each technique (shake, break, tear, crumple, rub, pop) to be used in sequence.
- What the collective did: Fluxus artists performed it in Amsterdam in 1963 and in Nice in 1964; at some performances paper was dumped on the audience's heads, and ensembles such as Musikfabrik and EEMT still perform it, each with different paper and different noise.
- Text: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/04/ (The Scores Project (Getty Research Institute, 2025))
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lgRJe7R8Hs
- Images: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/posters/FXM0570_Paper_Piece_by_Ben_Patterson_1964.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/AR6153517_th.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/r2012418_890164_b39_f33_017_th.jpg
- Project page: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/04/

#### #2—Proposition (Make a Salad) — Alison Knowles (1962)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: The simplest instruction scales from one bowl to a crowd, and the work can be eaten.
- What it is: An event score from October 1962 whose whole text is "Make a salad"; performed with audiences who then eat the result.
- Protocol: The score says only "Make a salad." Ingredients, scale, sound and number of helpers are left to each performance.
- What the collective did: First performed at the Festival of Misfits at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1962; at Tate Modern in 2008 helpers threw vegetables, oil and vinegar from the bridge onto a tarpaulin in the Turbine Hall, where they were mixed with a rake and served to the audience.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmqvnIXnmyM
- Images: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/ART545952_th.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/r2015409_94_b22032_001_th.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_a_Salad

#### An Anthology of Chance Operations — La Monte Young, Jackson Mac Low (1963)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Chance & randomness, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Publish instructions as a book, and every reader becomes a possible performer.
- What it is: A book of scores, texts and plans of action by 27 artists and composers, edited by La Monte Young, designed by George Maciunas and co-published by Young and Jackson Mac Low in 1963.
- Protocol: The anthology prints works as instructions for others to carry out: one of Mac Low's texts, for example, "may be used in any way as a score for solo or group readings, musical or dramatic performances, looking, smelling, anything else &/or nothing at all."
- What the collective did: Contributors included George Brecht, John Cage, Simone Forti, Dick Higgins, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Terry Riley, Christian Wolff and Young; fundraising concerts at the Living Theatre preceded it, and its scores have been performed ever since, including the 2021 program Meaningless Work, Get to Work, curated by Sarah Cooper and Tashi Wada and documented in the Getty's Scores Project.
- Text: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/05/ (The Scores Project (Getty Research Institute, 2025))
- Images: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/r611559_94_b19099_001_th.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/AA-mockup-p3-ologyof_th.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Anthology_of_Chance_Operations

#### Water Yam — George Brecht (1963)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Chance & randomness
- Idea: Put instructions in a box of cards so the owner can shuffle, pick and perform them.
- What it is: A Fluxus box, designed and published by George Maciunas, holding George Brecht's event scores printed on small cards.
- Protocol: Each card states an event in a few words, for example "Word Event": "EXIT"; owners and performers decide how, when and where to realize each one, and the cards can be read in any order.
- What the collective did: Brecht kept adding cards to later editions; Fluxus members performed the events at festivals across Europe from 1962, and museums, students and ensembles still use the box as a repertoire, each choosing different cards.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeCIvEjOMYg
- Images: https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjI0MjAyMiJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDUxMng1MTJcdTAwM2UiXV0.jpg?sha=43e20d278e220ea0 https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/water-yam-grid_th.jpg
- Project page: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/126322

#### Cut Piece — Yoko Ono (1964)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: Give the audience the tool and the permission, and their restraint or aggression becomes the piece.
- What it is: Ono sits still on stage with a pair of scissors in front of her; audience members come up one at a time and cut off a piece of her clothing to keep. First performed at Yamaichi Concert Hall, Kyoto, on 20 July 1964.
- Protocol: The performer sits on stage with scissors; it is announced that members of the audience may come on stage, one at a time, to cut a small piece of the performer's clothing and take it with them. The performer stays silent and does not react.
- What the collective did: Ono performed it six times: Kyoto and Tokyo (1964), Carnegie Recital Hall, New York (1965, filmed by Albert and David Maysles), London (1966) and Paris (2003). Each audience cut differently, from hesitant small snips to aggressive cutting; other artists have restaged the score since.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y7R7WmdyXI
- Images: https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/ID_56_YO_2_copy_small.width-420.format-jpeg.jpg https://mayslesfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/10-cut-piece.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut_Piece_1964

#### Fluxkit — George Maciunas (1965)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Circulation & passing on, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Package many artists' instructions as a kit, and ownership becomes a way of performing.
- What it is: An attaché case, assembled by George Maciunas in 1965–66, divided into compartments holding printed scores and small boxed works by Fluxus artists, to be opened, handled and performed by its owner.
- Protocol: Maciunas solicited ideas from artists including George Brecht, Alison Knowles, Takehisa Kosugi, Shigeko Kubota, Benjamin Patterson, Mieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier and Robert Watts, then designed and produced them as multiples; the owner decides which objects and cards to open, read or perform.
- What the collective did: Advertised by Maciunas for $100, the kits were sold and given to collectors and friends; each surviving copy has a slightly different selection of contents, and MoMA's Silverman collection holds examples that curators and artists such as Knowles have opened and demonstrated.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPi0UyHB95U
- Images: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/AR6153553_th.jpg
- Project page: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/126323

#### Fluids — Allan Kaprow (1967)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: A short score, many builders, and a material that erases the result.
- What it is: A happening in which volunteers built large rectangular enclosures of ice blocks at sites across Pasadena and Los Angeles and left them to melt; the score has been reinvented in Los Angeles, London, Berlin and elsewhere.
- Protocol: "During three days, about twenty rectangular enclosures of ice blocks (measuring about 30 feet long, 10 wide and 8 high) are built throughout the city. Their walls are unbroken. They are left to melt."
- What the collective did: Teams of volunteers did the building in 1967 for Kaprow's Pasadena Art Museum exhibition. In April 2008 LACMA coordinated a reinvention at sites across Los Angeles, and Tate Modern staged it on the Southbank and Millennium Bridge the same year; each group chose its own sites and way of working.
- Images: https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/img6432.width-600_QuDmopo.jpg
- Project page: https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/fluids-happening-allan-kaprow

#### Aus den sieben Tagen — Karlheinz Stockhausen (1968)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A sentence can be a full score if it changes how the players listen.
- What it is: Fifteen short text compositions written in May 1968, which Stockhausen called intuitive music: instead of notes, each gives the players a mood, an image or a way of playing.
- Protocol: Each piece is a text for an ensemble; the whole of Unbegrenzt reads: "play a sound with the certainty that you have an infinite amount of time and space." Players respond to the text and to each other, without notation.
- What the collective did: Stockhausen's own group recorded the pieces in 1969; later ensembles, from electronic improvisers to the zeitkratzer ensemble with Keiji Haino and a 2022 performance in Prague released by Supraphon, produce performances that share no common material.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_reft1hEJ4
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aus_den_sieben_Tagen

#### Stones (from Prose Collection) — Christian Wolff (1968)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A few sentences and a handful of stones are enough for a group to make a piece together.
- What it is: A short prose score from Wolff's Prose Collection (1968–71) for any number of people making sounds with stones.
- Protocol: "Make sounds with stones, draw sounds out of stones", using stones of different sizes and kinds, mostly striking stones with stones but also on other surfaces; the score ends: "Do not break anything."
- What the collective did: Performed by new-music ensembles, students and non-musicians; the stones gathered for each performance, and how the players listen to one another, make every version sound different.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lNfOox76EY
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Wolff_(composer)

#### The Identical Lunch — Alison Knowles (1969)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: A daily habit written down as a score becomes a shared experiment in repetition.
- What it is: A score based on the lunch Knowles ate at the same New York diner many days a week, which friends and later audiences repeat and document.
- Protocol: The score reads: "a tunafish sandwich on wheat toast with lettuce and butter, no mayo and a large glass of buttermilk was and is eaten many days of each week at the same place at about the same time." Performers eat the lunch and record how each time differs.
- What the collective did: Knowles collected friends' realizations, receipts and diagrams in Journal of the Identical Lunch (1971); Philip Corner wrote a book of his versions (1973), George Maciunas made a symphony version, and the University of Chicago's Logan Center staged an Identical Lunch Symphony with the public in 2012.
- Text: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/09/ (The Scores Project (Getty Research Institute, 2025))
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-MSbtR-90M
- Images: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/posters/AlisonKnowles_IdenticalLunchSymphony_1.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/grl_91-b35085_01_cover_th.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/r32814_890164_b264_002_th.jpg
- Project page: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/09/

#### Routine — Allan Kaprow (1973)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Repeat an everyday gesture between two people until communication breaks down, and notice what you were doing.
- What it is: A five-part score for pairs of participants using mirrors and telephones, realised at the Portland Center for the Visual Arts in December 1973 and later published as an activity booklet (1975).
- Protocol: Part 1 of the programme: "standing somewhere / facing a friend holding a large mirror / trying to catch one's reflection ... moving apart again and again / repeating process / until it's no longer possible to see oneself." Parts 2 and 4 use the telephone, part 5 both.
- What the collective did: About twenty pairs of participants carried out the programme during Kaprow's three-day residency, bracketed by a briefing and a review; each pair's realisation stayed private. Kaprow also made an instructional film and published the booklet so others could perform it.
- Text: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/11/ (The Scores Project, Getty Research Institute, 2025)
- Images: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/gri_980063_b24_f09_053_mm.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/gri_980063_b24_f09_009_mm.jpg
- Project page: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/11/

#### Planetary Dance — Anna Halprin (1981)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: A score simple enough for any community to adopt, with one shared core and a local theme.
- What it is: A community dance ritual built around a movement score called the Earth Run, created in 1981 on Mount Tamalpais in California and performed each year by groups around the world.
- Protocol: In the Earth Run, participants declare their intentions one by one, rising from kneeling; then they form three concentric circles moving in different directions, choosing to run, jog, walk or stand still. Each community adds its own preparation, theme and reflection.
- What the collective did: Created with James Hurd Nixon and Russell Bass after a series of murders on Mount Tamalpais, the dance grew out of the larger Circle the Earth workshops. Communities in dozens of countries have performed it, each adapting the theme while sharing the Earth Run.
- Images: https://bioneers.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/PD_EarthAlive-2-scaled.jpg https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/fdab2d9/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6144x3226+0+435/resize/1200x630!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Flegacy%2Fsites%2Fkalw%2Ffiles%2FPlanetary%20Dance%20Gen.jpg
- Project page: https://planetarydance.org/the-story/

#### Let us keep our own noon — David Horvitz (2013)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Dispersing a crowd can redistribute time: one shared signal splits into many private ones.
- What it is: Forty-seven hand bells cast from a melted French church bell of 1742, rung by forty-seven participants at local solar noon; the ringers then walk away from each other until each hears only their own bell.
- Protocol: At local noon, the exact midpoint between sunrise and sunset, forty-seven participants begin ringing the bells together, then disperse in different directions, ringing, until they can hear no bell but their own. The title comes from a 19th-century protest against railway standard time.
- What the collective did: Groups of volunteers have performed it at the New Museum in New York and at the National Gallery of Iceland in Reykjavík (2016), each time at that place's own local noon, so the moment of the performance moves with the site.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6a/David_Horvitz_at_the_New_Museum%2C_NYAP_ring_the_bells_in_his_piece_%27Let_us_keep_our_own_noon%27_%2814489090112%29.jpg/960px-David_Horvitz_at_the_New_Museum%2C_NYAP_ring_the_bells_in_his_piece_%27Let_us_keep_our_own_noon%27_%2814489090112%29.jpg https://images.prismic.io/listasafn-islands/6b8be785-26d0-4457-a3a1-9cf6bb14248d_LET+US+KEEP+OUR+OWN+NOON_+2013++David+Horvitz.jpeg?auto=compress&max-w=1200
- Project page: https://www.listasafn.is/en/art/exhibitions/david-horvitz/

### Instructions for the Public

Instructions addressed to readers, visitors and strangers, who become the performers.

#### 18 Happenings in 6 Parts — Allan Kaprow (1959)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Hand the audience a timetable and they become part of the choreography.
- What it is: An evening at the Reuben Gallery in New York, October 1959, in which three rooms of plastic-sheet walls hosted simultaneous actions, and the audience moved between rooms on printed instructions.
- Protocol: Guests received a programme and three stapled cards: "The performance is divided into six parts... Each part contains three happenings which occur at once. The beginning and end of each will be signaled by a bell." The cards also told each guest when to change seats and which room to move to.
- What the collective did: Invited guests followed the cards, so no one saw all eighteen happenings and each person's version of the work differed; performers including Kaprow's friends carried out the scripted actions. The piece gave the 'happening' its name.
- Images: https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjMwMjA4MCJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDIwMDB4MjAwMFx1MDAzZSJdXQ.jpg?sha=2fb4df5afdc0e236
- Project page: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/associatedworks/173008

#### Instruction Paintings (Instructions for Paintings) — Yoko Ono (1961)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: Replace the painting with the instruction, and let the viewer finish it with their feet, hands or mind.
- What it is: Paintings that exist as instructions. At AG Gallery, New York, in 1961 Ono showed more than fifteen that were completed by the artist, by visitors or by the environment; at Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo, in May 1962 she showed only the instructions, handwritten in Japanese by Toshi Ichiyanagi.
- Protocol: Each work is a short instruction; in Painting to Be Stepped On, for example, a scrap of canvas lies on the floor and becomes complete as footprints accumulate. Ono had the Sogetsu instructions written in another person's hand so the work would not depend on her own.
- What the collective did: Visitors walked on, added to or imagined the paintings; Ono communicated most of the AG Gallery instructions by word of mouth. The 1962 Tokyo show made the instruction alone the exhibited work, a step toward conceptual art.
- Text: https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/18180 (Galeria 56, Budapest (1993))
- Project page: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/yoko-ono/exhibition-guide

#### Yard — Allan Kaprow (1961)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Instruction & score
- Idea: An environment is a score: the materials and the permission to move them are the work.
- What it is: An environment of hundreds of used car tyres heaped in the sculpture garden of the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, for visitors to walk on, climb and throw around; it has since been remade many times.
- Protocol: Fill a yard with tyres and let visitors walk on, climb, rearrange and interact with them. Kaprow treated Yard as a score to be re-realised in each new space, adapted to the site.
- What the collective did: Visitors rearranged the tyres continuously, so the heap never held one form. Later reinventions, for example at The Hepworth Wakefield's The Calder (2014) and at MACRO in Rome (2024), were staged by other teams and invited artists, dancers and musicians to intervene.
- Images: https://hepworth-wakefield-live.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/71586-0008-1024x683.jpg https://www.moussemagazine.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Allan-Kaprow_Yard_Ph-Agnese-Bedini-DSL-Studio-IMG_9411-768x512.jpg
- Project page: https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/allan-kaprow-yard-19612014/

#### Caminhando (Walking) — Lygia Clark (1963)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: The artwork moves from object to act: it exists only while someone is doing it.
- What it is: An instruction anyone can carry out: make a Möbius strip from paper and cut along its length with scissors, choosing a new path each time around, until the strip is too narrow to cut.
- Protocol: Take a strip of paper, twist it once and glue the ends into a Möbius strip; pierce it and cut continuously along its length without crossing an earlier cut; the work ends when no path is left.
- What the collective did: Clark published the proposition so that viewers could make it themselves; it has since been performed by museum visitors and in workshops worldwide, including at MoMA's 2014 retrospective.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sP-uT5DQLM
- Images: http://www.bauhaus-imaginista.org/images/20243.jpg?w=2000&h=2000
- Project page: https://www.bauhaus-imaginista.org/articles/3822/walking-on-a-mobius-strip/

#### Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hofmann — Allan Kaprow (1963)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Turn a painter's composition rule into a room that strangers compose together.
- What it is: Two furnished rooms, made for a touring exhibition on Hans Hofmann and his students, that visitors were invited to rearrange as they wished.
- Protocol: Kaprow's instruction: "Anyone can find or make one or more rooms of any shape, size, proportion, and color -- then furnish them perhaps, maybe paint some things or everything. Everyone else can come in and, if the room(s) are furnished, they also can arrange them, accommodating themselves as they see fit."
- What the collective did: Visitors moved the furniture, cooperating or competing with each other, so the rooms kept changing. The score has been re-realised by later groups, such as Push and Pull Redfern in Sydney.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFCfecGIsTQ
- Project page: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/push-and-pull/

#### Grapefruit — Yoko Ono (1964)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: A book can be a portable exhibition that readers stage themselves.
- What it is: A small self-published book of more than 150 instruction pieces in five sections (Music, Painting, Event, Poetry, Object), issued in Tokyo on 4 July 1964 in an edition of 500. Each page is a work that the reader performs, in action or in the mind.
- Protocol: Short imperatives addressed to the reader, e.g. Cloud Piece: 'Imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.' No one checks execution; the reader decides whether, where and how to carry out each piece.
- What the collective did: Readers since 1964 have performed, adapted and republished the pieces; expanded editions followed in many languages, and museums, including Tate Modern in 2024, installed instructions from it for visitors to carry out.
- Text: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/128103 (Artist's book)
- Images: https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjM0NjM0MSJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDUxMng1MTJcdTAwM2UiXV0.jpg?sha=dcc16cd0a4637452 https://d23eqwv5slm408.cloudfront.net/api/file/k97FqoRQRYs4im9VyvpC/convert?fit=clip&h=618&quality=100&w=824&compress=true&fit=clip
- Project page: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/128103

#### Spatial Poem — Mieko Shiomi (1965)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Post & mail · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Post the same instruction to a network and the replies form one poem spread across the globe.
- What it is: A mail project (1965–75) of nine text scores that Shiomi posted to people around the world; their reports of what they did came back by mail and were compiled into maps, objects and a book.
- Protocol: Spatial Poem No. 1 (Word Event): "Write a word (or words) on the enclosed card and place it somewhere. Please tell me the word and the place, which will be edited on the world map." Later events asked for directions, times and disappearances, always with the place or time reported back.
- What the collective did: Launched in 1965 to a Fluxus mailing list of over a hundred people, the project drew more than 230 collaborators who reported back from twenty-six countries; Shiomi pinned their words as flags on a world map for the Fluxus edition and published the complete results in Osaka in 1976.
- Text: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/10/ (The Scores Project (Getty Research Institute, 2025))
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-6lpTPnK8c
- Images: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/posters/sequences--525-SpatialPoem_001.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/gri_91_b36111_001_mm_th.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/r2014747_890164_b47_f3_001_th.jpg
- Project page: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/10/commentary/

#### Mend Piece — Yoko Ono (1966)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: Hand the audience broken things and a rule about care; the repaired shelf becomes a collective portrait.
- What it is: A table of broken cups and saucers with glue, tape and string; visitors mend the fragments and place the repaired objects on shelves. First shown as Mending Piece I at Indica Gallery, London, in 1966.
- Protocol: 'Mend carefully. Think of mending the world at the same time.' Visitors choose fragments and materials, mend them in any way, and leave the result on display.
- What the collective did: Restaged many times, e.g. the Andrea Rosen Gallery version (1966/2015) at rennie museum, Vancouver, and 'Mend Piece for London' at Whitechapel Gallery (2021). The shelves fill with unpredictable hybrid objects made by thousands of strangers.
- Images: https://renniemuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/RennieCollection_OnoMendPiece_091.jpg https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/YokoOno_WebCrop_ToGo-scaled.jpg
- Project page: https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/yoko-ono-mend-piece-for-london/

#### Painting to Hammer a Nail — Yoko Ono (1966)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: The painting is finished only by the accumulated marks of visitors.
- What it is: A white panel with a hammer hanging on a chain and a supply of nails: visitors complete the painting by hammering nails into it. Shown at Indica Gallery, London, in 1966; later versions include a cross-shaped panel.
- Protocol: The instruction invites each visitor to hammer a nail into the panel. Nothing limits where the nail goes; the work records every visit until the surface is full.
- What the collective did: Visitors at each showing, among them John Lennon at the 1966 Indica preview, add nails, so each version ends with a different density and pattern. The outdoor Painting to Hammer a Nail In / Cross Version (2005) at the Österreichischer Skulpturenpark near Graz offers three wooden crosses to visitors' nails.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/YokoOno_PaintingToHammerANailIn.jpg/960px-YokoOno_PaintingToHammerANailIn.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Ono_Painting_to_Hammer_a_Nail_In_-_Cross_Version_01.jpg/960px-Ono_Painting_to_Hammer_a_Nail_In_-_Cross_Version_01.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko_Ono

#### A Scratch Orchestra: Draft Constitution — Cornelius Cardew (1969)
- Type: DAO & organization · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance, Instruction & score
- Idea: Write the orchestra's constitution as the score: membership, categories of activity and who proposes the next concert.
- What it is: A constitution, published in The Musical Times in June 1969, for an orchestra open to anyone, founded in London by Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton.
- Protocol: A Scratch Orchestra is "a large number of enthusiasts pooling their resources (not primarily material resources) and assembling for action (music-making, performance, edification)"; members keep a notebook of their own accompaniments, and concerts are built from Scratch Music, Popular Classics, Improvisation Rites, compositions and research projects, with members taking turns to plan them.
- What the collective did: Artists, students and non-musicians joined, performing in halls and at outdoor sites across Britain; the orchestra's internal debates became part of its history when, in the early 1970s, many members turned to political music and the group split.
- Text: https://doi.org/10.2307/951759 (The Musical Times, June 1969)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CudcmB4_OTw
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_Orchestra

#### Sonic Meditations — Pauline Oliveros (1971)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: Make listening to each other the instruction, and a room of strangers becomes one instrument.
- What it is: A set of text scores (published 1974) for listening, breathing and sounding together, which any group can perform without musical training.
- Protocol: Each meditation is a short verbal instruction; in the Tuning Meditation, participants alternate between singing a tone they imagine, matching a tone sung by someone else, and offering a new tone no one else is singing.
- What the collective did: Oliveros developed the pieces from 1971 with a women's ensemble in California; museums and festivals such as the Blanton Museum of Art and The Met Cloisters now stage the Tuning Meditation with their visitors, and the resulting chord changes with each crowd.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlxUpqsdlHM
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Pauline_Oliveros_-SonicActs_-SonicActs2012.jpg/960px-Pauline_Oliveros_-SonicActs_-SonicActs2012.jpg
- Project page: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/listening-as-activism-the-sonic-meditations-of-pauline-oliveros

#### Graffiti Composition — Christian Marclay (1996)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives, Chance & randomness
- Idea: Let the street write the notation, then let musicians play what the street wrote.
- What it is: Posters of blank sheet music pasted around Berlin during the 1996 Sonambiente festival; Marclay photographed what passers-by wrote, tore or pasted over them, and published 150 images as a score for musicians (portfolio, 2002).
- Protocol: Paste blank staff paper in public places as an open invitation to mark it. Photograph the results, select 150 sheets, and give them to musicians to interpret in any way.
- What the collective did: Passers-by added notes, scribbles, tears and other flyers to the posters (reported as more than 5,000). Musicians have since performed the portfolio, for example five guitarists led by Elliott Sharp, with Melvin Gibbs, Mary Halvorson, Lee Ranaldo and Vernon Reid, at MoMA in 2006.
- Images: https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/28280/2006_51_151_cropped.jpg https://www.moma.org/media/W1siZiIsIjExNDAzMyJdLFsicCIsImNvbnZlcnQiLCItcXVhbGl0eSA5MCAtcmVzaXplIDUxMng1MTJcdTAwM2UiXV0.jpg?sha=2c9064adde4b8174
- Project page: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/87778

#### Wish Tree — Yoko Ono (1996)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: A simple ritual rule, repeated at many sites, gathers a global archive of private hopes.
- What it is: A living tree native to the site, with paper tags and pencils: visitors write a wish and tie it to a branch. Wish Trees have been planted at MoMA, the Hirshhorn, Tate Modern and many other sites, and the collected wishes are sent to Ono's Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland.
- Protocol: Wish Piece (1996): 'Make a wish / Write it down on a piece of paper / Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree / Ask your friends to do the same / Keep wishing / Until the branches are covered with wishes.'
- What the collective did: Visitors at each host institution cover the branches; staff periodically harvest the tags and send them to the Imagine Peace Tower on Viðey, where they are kept. The Hirshhorn's Wish Tree for Washington, DC (2007) is in its permanent collection; MoMA's tree was installed in 2010.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Yoko_Ono_Wish_Tree_B.JPG/960px-Yoko_Ono_Wish_Tree_B.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/db/For_Yoko_Ono%27s_wish_tree_at_MoMA.JPG/960px-For_Yoko_Ono%27s_wish_tree_at_MoMA.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Cards_for_Hirshhorn_Wish_Tree.JPG/960px-Cards_for_Hirshhorn_Wish_Tree.JPG
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish_Tree_for_Washington,_DC

#### One Minute Sculptures — Erwin Wurm (1997)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: The sculpture is the instruction; any visitor who follows it for sixty seconds is the material.
- What it is: An ongoing series of drawn or written instructions that tell a visitor how to pose with everyday objects, such as buckets, chairs or a plinth, and hold the pose for one minute.
- Protocol: Wurm supplies props and a sketch or a phrase, for example "be a dog" or "Hold your breath and think of Spinoza". The participant performs the pose and tries to hold it for 60 seconds.
- What the collective did: Museum visitors at Tate Modern, the MAK Center in Los Angeles and many other venues have performed the instructions, each body producing a different, short-lived version; Wurm also photographs anonymous participants as editions.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/One_Minute_Sculpture%2C_Be_a_dog%2C_Erwin_Wurm.jpg/960px-One_Minute_Sculpture%2C_Be_a_dog%2C_Erwin_Wurm.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/One_Minute_Sculpture%2C_Hold_your_breath_and_think_of_Spinoza%2C_Erwin_Wurm.jpg/960px-One_Minute_Sculpture%2C_Hold_your_breath_and_think_of_Spinoza%2C_Erwin_Wurm.jpg https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/.width-600_d3p677p.jpg
- Project page: https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/display/performer-and-participant/erwin-wurm

#### Measuring the Universe — Roman Ondák (2007)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Borrow a family ritual, repeat it for thousands of strangers, and the crowd draws the work.
- What it is: An empty white gallery where attendants mark each visitor's height on the wall, with their first name and the date; over months the marks build into a dense band around the room.
- Protocol: Visitors who wish to take part stand against the wall; an attendant marks their height and writes their first name and the date of the visit. After the exhibition the walls are repainted white.
- What the collective did: Shown at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2007), MoMA (2009), the Stedelijk (2010–11), Tate St Ives (2011) and Parramatta (2014). At MoMA the marks of thousands of visitors formed a thick black band; the pattern at each venue reflects who came.
- Images: https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/romanmeasuringuniverse.width-600.jpg
- Project page: https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/performance-at-tate/case-studies/roman-ondak-measuring-universe

#### 241543903 — David Horvitz (2009)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: A meaningless number becomes a shared address where a crowd's photographs gather.
- What it is: An instruction posted online in April 2009: photograph your head inside a freezer and tag the picture with the number 241543903, so that a search for the number shows everyone's photos together.
- Protocol: Take a photograph of your head in a freezer. Upload it to the internet. Tag the file with 241543903. The number was made from the serial number of Horvitz's refrigerator and the barcodes of two frozen foods.
- What the collective did: Strangers repeated the pose and the tag; the meme spread on Orkut in Brazil, where Horvitz also had flyers handed out, then to Japan and to Facebook in 2010, and searching the number still returns the collected images.
- Images: https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/001/178/241543903_1_.png
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horvitz

#### Add Colour (Refugee Boat) — Yoko Ono (2016)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: A blank space plus one colour rule turns thousands of visitors' marks into a shared statement.
- What it is: An all-white room with an all-white boat that visitors cover with writing and drawing in blue. The idea goes back to Ono's Add Colour paintings of 1960–66; this version, made in response to refugees crossing the Mediterranean, was first realised in 2016.
- Protocol: Ono's instruction reads: 'Just blue like the ocean.' Visitors may write or draw anything, but only in blue (and white), on the walls, floor and boat, for the length of the exhibition.
- What the collective did: At each venue, such as Tate Modern in 2024 and Serralves in Porto, visitors gradually turn the room from white to a dense blue surface of messages; the final state is different every time.
- Images: https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/_MG_9203_copy_small.width-420.format-jpeg.jpg
- Project page: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/yoko-ono/exhibition-guide

#### Exit to Protocol — Shuya Gong (2024)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: When a team ends, turn what it did into protocols others can inherit.
- What it is: An essay and a card deck that guide a team through an 'exit to protocol' ritual: dissecting the everyday processes that make up their work so that its value survives when a role or organisation winds down.
- Protocol: A team or working group uses the card deck to surface the latent productivity protocols in its day-to-day rituals, name them and preserve them as the role or organisation sunsets.
- What the collective did: The deck is meant to be played by working groups; the work asks where value goes when a protocol is no longer in use, drawing on Graeber's 'Bullshit Jobs' and Nathan Schneider's 'Exit to Community'.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/98-GONG-card-set-2024-03-28.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/joshd4078_sunset_soft_round_exploded_technical_diagram_orange_w_ae37eb3c-ff5e-4d7d-a85b-3a4f5367677a-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/exit-to-protocol

#### New Time Machines Working Group — Aaron Z. Lewis, Spencer Chang, Kei Kreutler, Nahee Kim, Alice Noujaim (2024)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Revive the ancient arts of memory as protocols anyone can practise.
- What it is: A fictional agency formed by five 2023 researchers that designs memory protocols for 'aspiring time travellers': a memory kit of exercises, products and practices, with works such as Four Doors, Re-Move and the Memory Pouch.
- Protocol: The kit is issued as a cover letter and five missives with exercises that let readers revisit people and places no longer present, from low-tech objects to imagined devices.
- What the collective did: The group frames memory protocols as tools for curating the collective lore that holds communities together; readers are invited to carry out the exercises themselves.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Starproject-Missive-1.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/joshd4078_how_to_remember_procedure_exploded_technical_diagram__9be04fb1-2598-4feb-8b6e-ddad72708b24-jpg.webp https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Four-Doors-Cover-jpg.webp https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Re-Move-Header-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/new-time-machines

#### Weaving Memory / Memory Pouch — Spencer Chang (2024)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Time, decay & death
- Idea: A memory protocol you wear: decide what belongs in your own history.
- What it is: A speculative DIY design for a pouch in which the wearer collects everyday objects to memorialise what they want to pay attention to, presented as a reconstruction of devices worn by the 'Time Rangers' of the New Time Machines Working Group.
- Protocol: Anyone can make their own pouch following the design; the standard carry has six components, one for each sense plus a sixth sense of time, and wearers add personal pouches for what they care about.
- What the collective did: Each wearer builds a personal memory practice; the work draws on Ursula K. Le Guin's carrier-bag theory of fiction.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Weaving-Memory-Spencer-Chang.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Image33040-jpg.webp https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/joshd4078_embroidered_hard_drive_on_a_white_background_orange_ff3d72b7-e5aa-48fe-a5cb-db92a02900c6-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/weaving-memory

#### Starmirror — Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst (2025)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Open participation, Instruction & score, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Make the gallery a read-write space: the public sings the dataset, and the room sings the model back.
- What it is: An exhibition built as a recording studio and listening room, first at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (31 October 2025 to 18 January 2026), then at K21, Düsseldorf (27 June to 11 October 2026), where visitors sing from a songbook and their recordings train an AI choir that sings back in the space.
- Protocol: Throughout the show visitors are invited to join public vocal recording sessions alongside local community choirs, guided by a vocal ensemble and prompted by an agent in the room. Everyone sings from a songbook written for the project after Hildegard von Bingen's 12th-century 'Ordo Virtutum'. The recordings form the dataset for an AI choir; K21 adds scheduled 'Training Performances'.
- What the collective did: Visitors and local choirs sang the songbook together in the installation designed with the architecture office sub; models trained on these sessions let the space sing back. Dryhurst says thousands of people came through the Berlin show. The work continues the method of The Call and is supported by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes 'Art & AI' fund.
- Images: https://www.sleek-mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/2025-10-28_KW_Herndon-Dryhurst_0679-bea_Frank_Sperling_LQ.jpg https://www.kunstsammlung.de/media/Starmirror_004_%C2%A9_Achim_Kukulies.jpg https://www.kunstsammlung.de/media/Starmirror_008a_%C2%A9_Achim_Kukulies.jpg
- Project page: https://www.kunstsammlung.de/en/exhibitions/holly-herndon-mat-dryhurst-en

### Constraints, Chance & Games

Rule systems, constraints and chance procedures that generate outcomes the author does not control.

#### Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (March No. 2) — John Cage (1951)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Chance & randomness, Instruction & score
- Idea: Script the hands on the dials precisely and let the broadcasts of the day fill in the sound.
- What it is: A piece for twelve radios and twenty-four performers plus a conductor: at each radio one player turns the tuning dial and the other the volume, following times and settings fixed by chance.
- Protocol: Cage used chance operations derived from the I Ching to fix, for each pair of players, the wavelengths, volume levels and durations; the score controls the actions but not what the stations are broadcasting.
- What the collective did: First performed at Columbia University's McMillin Theater on 2 May 1951 with Cage conducting; every later performance, from student ensembles to groups such as DIY Space for London, picks up different programmes, so the same score sounds different in each city and hour.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV-kWU1Z5u8
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_Landscape_No._4_(March_No._2)

#### Concert for Piano and Orchestra — John Cage (1958)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Chance & randomness, Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Give every player a separate rulebook and let the ensemble's overlap be unplanned.
- What it is: An indeterminate concert piece in which the pianist and each orchestral player choose which pages of their parts to play, and the conductor's arms act as a clock rather than a beat.
- Protocol: Parts are independent: the piano solo is a book of graphs in many different notations, any number of the orchestral parts may be used, and performers may play any amount of their material; the conductor moves the arms like clock hands to vary the passage of time.
- What the collective did: At the premiere at New York's Town Hall on 15 May 1958 the audience whistled and jeered; David Tudor prepared his own fixed realization of the solo, and every ensemble since has had to make its own decisions, as the Getty Research Institute's Scores Project documents with Tudor's worksheets.
- Text: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/02/ (The Scores Project (Getty Research Institute, 2025))
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgmGGbiYnDY
- Images: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/posters/cage-flipbook.jpg https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/_assets/images/figures/thumbnails/gri_980039_b176_f01_001_mm_th.jpg
- Project page: https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/02/

#### Cent mille milliards de poèmes — Raymond Queneau (1961)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Chance & randomness, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Write the constraint so tightly that every reader's combination is a valid poem.
- What it is: A book of ten sonnets whose pages are cut into fourteen strips, one per line, so that readers can combine lines from different sonnets into 10^14 possible poems.
- Protocol: All ten sonnets share the same rhyme sounds and syntax, so any line can follow any line from another sonnet. The reader turns strips independently; each choice of fourteen strips is a new poem that Queneau never read.
- What the collective did: Readers assemble the poems; with 10^14 combinations, almost every reading produces a poem no one has read before. The book, designed by Robert Massin and published by Gallimard, led to the founding of Oulipo with François Le Lionnais, and has been translated and turned into online generators.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Queneau_sonnets.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hundred_Thousand_Billion_Poems

#### In C — Terry Riley (1964)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: Fixed order plus free timing turns an ensemble into a slowly shifting cloud of patterns.
- What it is: A one-page score of 53 short melodic patterns that any number of musicians play in order, each deciding when to move on, over a steady pulse on the note C.
- Protocol: "Any number of any kind of instruments can play." Each player repeats each pattern as many times as they like before moving to the next, stays within a few patterns of the others, and the piece ends when everyone has reached the last pattern.
- What the collective did: Premiered at the San Francisco Tape Music Center in November 1964; since then it has been played by rock bands, orchestras, school groups, the Malian and European musicians of Africa Express and ensembles such as BL!NDMAN and Third Coast Percussion, and the length and texture change with every group.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEfo7DRg9TQ
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Terry_Riley_In_C_Carnegie_Hall.jpg/960px-Terry_Riley_In_C_Carnegie_Hall.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Incipit_of_Terry_Riley%27s_In_C.png
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_C

#### Musicircus — John Cage (1967)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Chance & randomness, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Write only the conditions for a gathering and let simultaneity compose the piece.
- What it is: An event in which many invited musicians and performers play at the same time in one large space while the audience walks freely among them.
- Protocol: Cage's rule is an invitation: many performers agree to perform whatever they choose, simultaneously and in the same space, without coordination; the audience moves through the space and makes its own mix.
- What the collective did: The first Musicircus took place at the University of Illinois in November 1967; later versions, such as the English National Opera's in 2012 and many university and festival stagings, bring together choirs, bands, dancers and soloists, so each edition sounds like the local musical community at that moment.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBR8OAA-5p8
- Project page: https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/the-circus-of-life-as-music/

#### Treatise — Cornelius Cardew (1967)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Chance & randomness, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: A score without a key forces each group to agree on its own reading.
- What it is: A 193-page graphic score of lines, circles, numbers and fragments of notation, written 1963–67, with no instructions on how to play it.
- Protocol: Cardew gives only the graphics: performers decide which pages to play, which instruments to use and what each sign means, usually by agreeing on rules among themselves before or during rehearsal.
- What the collective did: Improvisers, rock musicians, electronic musicians and chamber groups have performed it; the London Experimental Ensemble played the whole score in about two hours at Iklectik, London, in January 2017, while other groups use only a few pages.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XPtMY-unCo
- Images: https://socks-studio.com/img/blog/Treatise-01.jpg https://socks-studio.com/img/blog/Treatise-02.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treatise_(music)

#### The Great Learning — Cornelius Cardew (1968)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Rules for listening to your neighbours can make a crowd of amateurs converge on a shared sound.
- What it is: A seven-part work (1968–71) setting Ezra Pound's translation of a Confucian text, written largely for untrained performers who sing, speak, drum and whistle by verbal and graphic rules.
- Protocol: In Paragraph 7, each singer chooses a starting note and sings a line of text on it a set number of times, then for each new line takes a note they can hear another singer holding; the choir drifts from a cluster toward a few shared pitches.
- What the collective did: The Scratch Orchestra, many of whose members were not trained musicians, performed and recorded parts of it (Deutsche Grammophon, 1971); choirs such as Helsingin kamarikuoro and community groups still perform Paragraph 7, and the pitches it settles on differ every time.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fO_HbjkZrA
- Project page: https://www.newmusicnewcollege.org/cardew.html

#### Les Moutons de Panurge — Frederic Rzewski (1969)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Open participation, Chance & randomness
- Idea: A rule that punishes mistakes by keeping them turns an ensemble's errors into the form of the piece.
- What it is: A piece for any number of musicians playing a 65-note melody additively (1, 1–2, 1–2–3 …), with optional non-musicians making noise alongside.
- Protocol: All players read the same melody, adding one note on each pass and then subtracting; the score instructs: "Stay together as long as you can, but if you get lost, stay lost."
- What the collective did: Performed by conservatories, bands and ensembles such as A Far Cry and eighth blackbird, sometimes with the audience as the non-musician section; the moment players drift apart and the resulting counterpoint differ in each performance.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ-ZVkVvgrI
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Rzewski

#### Oblique Strategies — Brian Eno, Peter Schmidt (1975)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Chance & randomness, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A deck of rules turns chance into a working method that anyone can pick up.
- What it is: A boxed deck of cards, each printed with a short prompt, to be drawn at random when a creative process stalls; first published in 1975 and reissued in several editions.
- Protocol: When stuck, draw a card and follow it, however obscure, for example "Use an old idea" or "Consider different fading systems". The deck is sold to anyone; Eno and Schmidt do not see how it is used.
- What the collective did: Musicians, writers and designers have used the deck in their own work; Eno used it in studio sessions, including with David Bowie, and the publisher names Coldplay and Damon Albarn among users. Each draw produces a different decision in a different project.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/Oblique_Strategies_deck%2C_PO_Box%2C_The_Barbican%2C_London%2C_UK.jpg/960px-Oblique_Strategies_deck%2C_PO_Box%2C_The_Barbican%2C_London%2C_UK.jpg https://enoshop.co.uk/cdn/shop/files/Oblique-Image1.png?v=1743069911
- Project page: https://www.enoshop.co.uk/product/oblique-strategies.html

#### Le Jeu de la Guerre (The Game of War / Kriegspiel) — Guy Debord (1977)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Instruction & score
- Idea: A rule set about supply lines: units that lose contact with their network cannot act.
- What it is: A two-player strategy game on a board of 25 by 20 squares, modelled on Clausewitzian warfare, in which armies must stay connected to their arsenals through lines of communication.
- Protocol: Each side has arsenals, forts, infantry, cavalry, artillery and relay units; lines of communication radiate from arsenals and relays; a unit cut off from them is paralysed; each turn allows up to five moves and one attack.
- What the collective did: Debord conceived the game in the 1950s and patented it in 1965; in 1977 he and Gérard Lebovici published the rules in French and English and had a few copies of the board made; in 1987 he and Alice Becker-Ho published a record of a complete game, and the Radical Software Group later released a computer version for online play.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/A_Game_of_War.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Le_Jeu_de_la_Guerre_board.svg/960px-Le_Jeu_de_la_Guerre_board.svg.png
- Project page: https://www.r-s-g.org/kriegspiel/about.php

#### Composable Life: Us and Our Island — Fangting (2024)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Chance & randomness, Open participation
- Idea: A life assembled from strangers' real memories.
- What it is: A card-based protocol for composable memory: players build the life of a new fictional character, 'Eve', from a pool of real memory fragments contributed by different people, and the protocol generates her 'Memory Island'.
- Protocol: Players draw from a shared pool of 'collective real memory' cards, select fragments from different people and arrange them into Eve's life archive. Each card carries a landscape on its back, and the landscapes combine into the island.
- What the collective did: The island is co-written by the people who contributed memories and the player who composes them; no two islands are the same.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/66-FANGTING.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/joshd4078_murmuration_curving_exploded_technical_diagram_orange_a56879ee-cc0e-4e7d-86d4-f6cd7853a434-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/composable-life-us-and-our-island

#### Protocol Party — Mashal Waqar (2024)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Open participation, Instruction & score
- Idea: Learn to see protocols by playing with them at a party.
- What it is: A printable board game with cards, designed as 'a starting point for your protocol journey', by a researcher who found that seeing the world through protocols changed how she navigated it.
- Protocol: Players use a game board and a deck of cards (both downloadable) to explore the protocols they already follow.
- What the collective did: The game is released for anyone to print and play, so groups can run their own sessions.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/69-WAQAR-GAMEBOARD.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-13-at-14.16.23.png
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/protocol-party

#### Protocol with uncommunicables — Yuemin Huang (2024)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Open participation, Instruction & score
- Idea: Write a treaty with the pigeon: protocols as a way of living with the uncontrollable.
- What it is: A game in which players learn to draft protocols with things that cannot negotiate, from pigeons to screaming babies to a power cut.
- Protocol: Guided by options drawn from existing protocols, players negotiate cases such as a pigeon defecation protocol for urban space or a baby-screaming protocol for public space, and end by reflecting on whom or what they actually want to sign a protocol with.
- What the collective did: Each playthrough produces a player's own draft protocols.
- Video: https://vimeo.com/979955247
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Cover-1.png
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/pills/protocol-with-uncommunicables

#### Renotations — Ben Zucker (2024)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Just because it is written like that does not mean it has to sound like that.
- What it is: A prototype kit of instructions and tools for reassigning the information in a musical score, so any piece can be played upside down, backwards or otherwise re-read.
- Protocol: Performers apply the kit's reassignment rules to any score, remapping pitch, rhythm and other parameters.
- What the collective did: Each performer who applies the kit produces a new version of a familiar piece; the demonstration includes musical examples.
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Renotations-cover-3.png
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/pills/renotations

## Social Protocols & Economies

Rules for groups, exchanges and contracts in physical space: social sculpture, performance protocols, mail-art networks and artist-made economies.

### Social Sculpture & Collective Action

Works made by many people acting together under one rule: planting, walking, moving, gathering.

#### Théorie de la dérive (Theory of the Dérive) — Guy Debord (1956)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Chance & randomness, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A walking protocol for groups that turns a city into a field of experiment.
- What it is: Debord's text sets out the dérive: small groups drifting rapidly through a city, letting its atmospheres, rather than errands, decide their path, and comparing notes afterwards.
- Protocol: Drift in several small groups of two or three people who share the same awareness; groups change composition between dérives; beyond about ten people the dérive splits; the average duration is one day, between two periods of sleep; impressions are cross-checked between groups.
- What the collective did: Letterists and Situationists practised dérives in Paris in the 1950s and mapped them in psychogeographic guides such as The Naked City (1957); the text, published in Les Lèvres nues no. 9 (1956) and reprinted in Internationale situationniste no. 2 (1958), is still used by artists and walking groups.
- Text: https://libcom.org/article/theory-derive-guy-debord (Les Lèvres nues no. 9 (1956); Internationale situationniste no. 2 (1958))
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Internationale_situationniste_n%C2%BA1.jpg/960px-Internationale_situationniste_n%C2%BA1.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rive

#### I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day — Mierle Laderman Ukeles (1976)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Art by declaration: the same labour, relabelled by its workers for one hour a day.
- What it is: Ukeles invited the 300 maintenance workers of 55 Water Street, the building housing the Whitney's downtown branch, to declare one hour of their daily shift to be art.
- Protocol: Each worker designates one hour of the eight-hour shift as maintenance art and wears a button during it; Ukeles photographs every participant with a Polaroid, and the photos are sorted with colour-coded labels on a wall chart.
- What the collective did: About 300 workers on day and night shifts took part over six weeks (16 September – 20 October 1976), producing 720 Polaroids; the installation entered the Whitney's collection in 2017.
- Images: https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/56140/2017_164a-b_cropped.jpg
- Project page: https://whitney.org/collection/works/56140

#### 7000 Eichen – Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung (7000 Oaks) — Joseph Beuys (1982)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Time, decay & death, Currency & value
- Idea: A counter you can see: the pile shrinks only as the public plants and pays.
- What it is: For documenta 7 Beuys piled 7,000 basalt steles in front of the Fridericianum in Kassel; each stone left the pile only when an oak was planted with it somewhere in the city.
- Protocol: Every oak is planted next to one basalt stele taken from the pile on Friedrichsplatz, and a stone may leave the pile only when a tree is planted with it. Each tree-and-stone unit is funded by a sponsor who adopts it (500 Deutsche Mark per unit).
- What the collective did: Citizens, schools, companies and donors adopted trees between 1982 and 1987; the 7,000th oak was planted on 12 June 1987 at documenta 8, after Beuys's death, by his son Wenzel next to the first tree. The project cost around three million marks and turned Kassel's streets into a distributed sculpture; Dia Art Foundation later continued it in New York.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Kassel-Documenta_13-116-Beuys-Basalt_und_Eiche-2012-gje.jpg/960px-Kassel-Documenta_13-116-Beuys-Basalt_und_Eiche-2012-gje.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Kassel-beuys-7000-eichen-wegmann-v-o.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/7000_Eichen-Stelen_07_2015-06-13.jpg/960px-7000_Eichen-Stelen_07_2015-06-13.jpg
- Project page: https://www.7000eichen.de/index.php?id=32

#### The Crystal Quilt — Suzanne Lacy (1987)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: A choreographic score for hands turns a public conversation into a changing image seen from above.
- What it is: On Mother's Day, 10 May 1987, 430 Minnesota women over 60 sat at tables arranged as a quilt in the Crystal Court of Minneapolis's IDS Center and talked about ageing, while their hand movements changed the quilt's pattern.
- Protocol: Women sit at tables on a quilt-patterned floor designed by Miriam Schapiro and talk about their lives and the place of older women in society; every ten minutes a loon cry or thunderclap signals them to change the position of their hands, changing the pattern seen from above.
- What the collective did: 430 women took part, the culmination of the multi-year Whisper Minnesota project with workshops across the state; the performance was broadcast live on PBS and is now in Tate's collection.
- Images: https://walker-web.imgix.net/cms/cq272dpi.jpg https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/.width-600_pZmNnxv.jpg
- Project page: https://www.walkerart.org/reader/suzanne-lacy-the-crystal-quilt-mothers-day-1987/

#### The Battle of Orgreave — Jeremy Deller (2001)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Instruction & score
- Idea: Re-enactment as a protocol for a community to replay and reclaim its own history.
- What it is: A re-enactment, on the original site in South Yorkshire, of the 1984 confrontation between striking miners and police at the Orgreave coking plant, performed by historical re-enactment societies together with former miners and police officers.
- Protocol: The confrontation is restaged on the original site in the sequence reconstructed from witnesses and archives, directed by re-enactment specialist Howard Giles; historical re-enactment societies play alongside former strikers and police who were there in 1984.
- What the collective did: More than 800 participants, including former miners and police from the original events, restaged the battle in 2001; Mike Figgis filmed it for Artangel and Channel 4 (broadcast 20 October 2002), and the archive entered Tate's collection.
- Images: https://media.artangel.org.uk/images/2001tboo_02_863899d9.width-1200.jpg https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/.width-600_iE66Qp4.jpg
- Project page: https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/the-battle-of-orgreave/

#### Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains) — Francis Alÿs (2002)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Maximum effort, minimum result: a crowd's coordinated labour as a political image.
- What it is: On 11 April 2002, 500 volunteers with shovels formed a single line at the foot of a 500-metre sand dune in Ventanilla outside Lima and moved it about 10 centimetres from its original position.
- Protocol: Volunteers stand shoulder to shoulder in one line along the base of the dune; each shovels sand a short distance forward, the line advances step by step, and the action ends when the whole dune has been displaced by a few centimetres.
- What the collective did: About 500 volunteers, mostly students from Lima, carried out the action in one day, made with Cuauhtémoc Medina and Rafael Ortega; the movement of the dune is invisible, and the work survives as film, photographs and the participants' accounts.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2nccQcd8xQ
- Images: https://www.guggenheim.org/wp-content/uploads/2002/01/2002.59_ph_web-1.jpg
- Project page: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/11412

#### The Modern Procession — Francis Alÿs (2002)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Moving a museum as a ritual: the collection travels on the shoulders of the public.
- What it is: On 23 June 2002 a religious-style procession carried replicas of MoMA's icons, and the artist Kiki Smith, from Manhattan across the Queensboro Bridge to the museum's temporary home in Queens.
- Protocol: Participants carry palanquins with replicas of works from the museum's collection, including Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel, and the artist Kiki Smith as a 'living icon', along a fixed route at the slow pace set by a brass band, from MoMA on 53rd Street to MoMA QNS.
- What the collective did: Some one hundred participants walked for about three hours with the Banda de Santa Cecilia, commissioned with the Public Art Fund; the procession marked MoMA's temporary move to Queens.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wrVA7sH9-0
- Images: https://www.publicartfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/AlysF_0058_horizontal.jpg
- Project page: https://www.publicartfund.org/exhibitions/view/the-modern-procession/

#### Barrenderos (Sweepers) — Francis Alÿs (2004)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A work that ends when the shared load becomes too heavy: the rule contains its own stopping condition.
- What it is: A line of Mexico City street sweepers pushed the rubbish of a street ahead of their brooms, street after street, until the accumulated mass could no longer be moved.
- Protocol: Sweepers form a line across the street and push everything in front of them forward without removing it; they continue from street to street until the pile stops moving.
- What the collective did: Municipal sweepers in the historic centre of Mexico City performed the action, filmed with Julien Devaux; the growing wall of rubbish records their joint effort and its limit.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPU7UEL5Dks
- Project page: https://francisalys.com/barrenderos/

#### Guards — Francis Alÿs (2004)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Chance & randomness, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A decentralised rule for self-assembly: meet, fall into step, keep searching.
- What it is: Sixty-four Coldstream Guards were dropped off one by one around the City of London and walked until they found each other, gradually assembling into a marching square.
- Protocol: Each guard enters the City alone and walks in full ceremonial dress; on meeting another guard they fall into step and search together; when the 8 × 8 square is complete it marches to the nearest bridge, where the guards break step and disperse.
- What the collective did: Sixty-four guards carried out the rule early one Sunday morning in July 2004 in the empty Square Mile; the convergence was filmed by Rafael Ortega for Artangel's Seven Walks commission.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2CrQJz8uYc
- Images: https://media.artangel.org.uk/images/2005sw_01.width-1200.jpg
- Project page: https://www.artangel.org.uk/artwork/guards/

#### Bridge/Puente — Francis Alÿs (2006)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Two crowds build one impossible line from opposite sides of a political border.
- What it is: Fishermen in Havana and in Key West each formed a line of boats heading out to sea toward the other shore, so that from each coast the line seemed to continue to the horizon as a floating bridge.
- Protocol: Starting at the water's edge, each boat rows out and anchors a few metres behind the previous one, pointing toward the opposite coast, until the line reaches the horizon; the same rule runs simultaneously on both shores.
- What the collective did: Fishing communities in Cuba and Florida carried out the action in 2006 with Taiyana Pimentel and Cuauhtémoc Medina; it responded to the legal question of whether Cuban migrants caught at sea count as having reached land.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSjs5O1VuNg
- Project page: https://francisalys.com/bridge-puente/

#### Fairytale (童话) — Ai Weiwei (2007)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: The participants' journey, not an object, is the sculpture.
- What it is: Ai Weiwei brought 1,001 mainland Chinese citizens, chosen through an open call on his blog, to Kassel for documenta 12, and placed 1,001 Qing dynasty chairs throughout the exhibition.
- Protocol: Anyone in mainland China could apply through the blog by filling in a questionnaire of about 100 questions; the project organised visas, travel and lodging; participants came to Kassel in five groups and were free to act as they wished.
- What the collective did: More than 3,000 people applied within days; 1,001 travelled in five groups, many leaving China for the first time, and their experiences were recorded in a film and in the questionnaires.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1cYkK0cVEA
- Images: https://slought.org/media/files/fairytale-3.jpg?w=828&h=485&c=1
- Project page: https://slought.org/resources/fairytale_project

#### Don't Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River — Francis Alÿs (2008)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Children's play as a rule that stitches two continents together on the horizon.
- What it is: On 12 August 2008 a line of children in Tarifa, each carrying a boat made from a shoe, walked into the sea toward Morocco while a second line of children in Tangier walked toward Spain.
- Protocol: On each shore children form a single file and wade out holding shoe-boats; the two lines, one leaving Europe and one leaving Africa, are meant to meet on the horizon.
- What the collective did: Children from Tarifa and Tangier performed the action, filmed simultaneously on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar with Fundación Montenmedio Arte.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUXo-Butrf0
- Project page: https://francisalys.com/dont-cross-the-bridge-before-you-get-to-the-river/

#### Immigrant Movement International — Tania Bruguera (2011)
- Type: DAO & organization · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance
- Idea: Useful art: an institution whose programme is written by the community it serves.
- What it is: A storefront community space in Corona, Queens, run as an artwork and a political movement, offering free classes, legal and health services to immigrant residents.
- Protocol: The storefront is free and open to residents; workshops and services are offered by residents, artists and partner organisations; the artist lived for a year in a small apartment in Corona with immigrant families while starting the project.
- What the collective did: Residents, mostly Latin American immigrants, ran workshops on English, immigration law, dance, bicycle repair, screen printing and more from 2011 to 2015, in partnership with the Queens Museum and Creative Time; IMI also joined the Occupy Wall Street marches.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9puLh5MCIqk
- Project page: https://queensmuseum.org/program/immigrant-movement-international-2/

#### Superkilen — Superflex (2012)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Residents curate the city furniture: the park is a collection nominated by its neighbours.
- What it is: A public park in Copenhagen's Nørrebro district furnished with benches, bins, lamps, playground equipment and signs nominated by local residents from their countries of origin or travels.
- Protocol: Residents nominate everyday urban objects from other countries; each is either copied at 1:1 or bought and shipped to the site; five groups travel with Superflex to Palestine, Spain, Thailand, Texas and Jamaica to acquire an object of their choice.
- What the collective did: Residents of more than 50 nationalities took part; the park now holds more than 100 objects from more than 50 countries. It was designed with BIG and Topotek1 and commissioned by the City of Copenhagen and Realdania.
- Images: https://superflex.net/superfleximages/1240w_Superkilen_11_1607951589.jpg
- Project page: https://superflex.net/works/superkilen

#### Gramsci Monument — Thomas Hirschhorn (2013)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Time, decay & death, Market & exchange
- Idea: A monument that exists as paid work, daily programme and shared use for a fixed period.
- What it is: A plywood and tape structure built and run with residents of Forest Houses, a public housing estate in the Bronx, containing a library, theatre, bar, radio station and daily newspaper dedicated to Antonio Gramsci.
- Protocol: The monument must be sited in a housing estate with residents' agreement; residents are paid to build and staff it; it is open every day with a fixed programme (lectures, workshops, newspaper, radio) and is dismantled after the set period.
- What the collective did: More than 40 Forest Houses residents were hired, 15 of them to build the structure; from 1 July to 15 September 2013 residents and visitors used it daily for lectures by Marcus Steinweg, children's workshops, radio shows and a newspaper; it was commissioned by Dia Art Foundation.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5yyegM2u88
- Images: https://www.diaart.org/media/w1050h700/webimages/hirschhorn-gramsci-monument-diamond.jpg
- Project page: https://www.diaart.org/program/exhibitions-projects/thomas-hirschhorn-gramsci-monument-project

#### we're here because we're here — Jeremy Deller (2016)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: A silent rule plus a card turns a crowd of volunteers into a nationwide, distributed memorial.
- What it is: On 1 July 2016, the centenary of the first day of the Somme, about 1,400 volunteers in First World War uniform appeared unannounced in stations, streets and shopping centres across the UK.
- Protocol: Each volunteer represents one named soldier killed on 1 July 1916; they do not speak; when approached they hand over a card with that soldier's name, age and regiment and the hashtag #wearehere; at intervals they sing 'We're here because we're here'.
- What the collective did: Around 1,400 volunteers took part in locations across the UK, and members of the public shared their encounters online under #wearehere. It was commissioned by 14-18 NOW and made with Rufus Norris of the National Theatre.
- Video: https://vimeo.com/199719532
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/We%27re_Here_Because_We%27re_Here_-_Kings_Cross.jpg https://becausewearehere.co.uk/uploads/sites/13/2016/07/Salisbury-3-Copyright-Adrian-Harris_low-res-1.jpg
- Project page: https://becausewearehere.co.uk/

#### Protocol Worlds (S0xP at Edge Esmeralda) — Summer of Protocols (2024)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Part scavenger hunt, part exquisite corpse: build worlds from constraints.
- What it is: A week-long worldbuilding event run by Summer of Protocols and 0xPARC at Edge Esmeralda in June 2024, in which teams co-created speculative worlds from converging protocol constraints.
- Protocol: After a kick-off workshop on 23 June, daily worldbuilding workshops (24–26 June) helped teams instantiate their worlds and onboard new contributors; researchers exposed participants to the key tensions in their fields.
- What the collective did: The week ended with a playful reveal of the speculative futures the teams had built.
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2024-06-05-10.44.02-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/protocol-week

### Performance Protocols

Performances where the audience's actions, bounded by the artist's rules, make the piece.

#### Parangolés — Hélio Oiticica (1964)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Sculpture that needs a wearer: the viewer becomes the moving support of the work.
- What it is: Capes, banners and tents of layered fabric, plastic and matting that are completed only when a person wears them and dances; Oiticica made them with dancers from the Mangueira samba school.
- Protocol: A Parangolé is not displayed on a stand but handed to a participant, who puts it on and moves; the unfolding of colour and text depends on the wearer's dance.
- What the collective did: At the opening of Opinião 65 at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro in 1965, Oiticica's friends from Mangueira arrived to dance in the capes and were refused entry; they danced outside with the public, and the capes have since been worn by visitors in exhibitions.
- Images: https://mam.rio/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2016-65-16-687x1024.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Gerardo_Mosquera_wearing_H%C3%A9lio_Oiticica%27s_parangol%C3%A9_Da_adversidade_vivemos.JPG
- Project page: https://mam.rio/historia/parangole-em-opiniao-65/

#### TAPP und TASTKINO (Tap and Touch Cinema) — VALIE EXPORT (1968)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Expanded cinema as a public rule: the audience must decide, face to face, whether to 'watch'.
- What it is: EXPORT strapped a small box with a curtain over her naked chest and walked through city streets while Peter Weibel invited passers-by through a megaphone to reach into this 'cinema' and touch her.
- Protocol: The box is the screen; anyone who accepts the invitation may reach through the curtain and touch; the 'screening' is short and then passes to the next viewer, in public and in full view of the crowd.
- What the collective did: Passers-by in several European cities between 1968 and 1971 either took up or refused the invitation; their hesitation, embarrassment and choices became the content of the piece.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTpNxAjdo6w
- Images: https://foundation.generali.at/media/public/images/JPG23export_GF000.max-483x515.format-jpeg.jpegquality-80_SUdJyE2.jpg
- Project page: https://foundation.generali.at/en/collection/artworks/gf0002080000-1999-tapp-und-tastkino

#### MoMA Poll — Hans Haacke (1970)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance
- Idea: A live poll in which the museum's own audience produces the evidence, visible as it accumulates.
- What it is: In MoMA's Information exhibition, visitors answered a political question about Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a MoMA trustee, by dropping ballots into one of two transparent boxes.
- Protocol: Question on the wall: 'Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon's Indochina policy be a reason for your not voting for him in November?' Each visitor may drop a ballot in the YES or the NO box; the transparent boxes keep the running count visible.
- What the collective did: Visitors voted throughout the exhibition; by the end there were roughly twice as many Yes ballots as No ballots, a public verdict gathered inside an institution Rockefeller helped run.
- Images: https://guernica.museoreinasofia.es/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/documento/FF-033%281%29.jpg?itok=4_Ta5ADH http://dataphys.org/list/images/uploads/2015/02/haacke1.jpg
- Project page: https://guernica.museoreinasofia.es/en/document/moma-poll

#### The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art — Tom Marioni (1970)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: A recurring social ritual declared as art; its residue (bottles, debris) is the only object.
- What it is: Marioni invited friends to drink beer with him at the Oakland Museum and declared the gathering the artwork; it has continued as a weekly salon in San Francisco for decades.
- Protocol: The artist invites friends to drink beer and talk at a set time and place; nothing else is required; the empty bottles and debris are left in place and can be exhibited.
- What the collective did: Sixteen friends attended the first event at the Oakland Museum in 1970; by 1973 the gatherings had become weekly salons, held on Wednesdays for decades; SFMOMA showed and acquired the debris installation FREE BEER in 1979.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ieR8cCoGQY
- Images: https://fac.coloradocollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Beer-bottles.jpg
- Project page: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/99.70.A-E/

#### Büro der Organisation für direkte Demokratie durch Volksabstimmung — Joseph Beuys (1972)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance, Time, decay & death
- Idea: An exhibition slot turned into a public office whose content is the visitors' conversation.
- What it is: At documenta 5 Beuys ran the office of his Organisation for Direct Democracy through Referendum inside the exhibition and talked with visitors about politics every day for the 100 days of the show.
- Protocol: The office is open for the full run of the exhibition (30 June – 8 October 1972); any visitor may enter and debate direct democracy with the artist, who is present every day; the run closes with a staged boxing match 'for direct democracy'.
- What the collective did: Thousands of documenta visitors passed through; a documented day in July 1972 counted 811 visitors, of whom 35 joined the discussion. The work consisted of these exchanges and ended with Beuys's staged boxing match against student Abraham David Christian on 8 October.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/1972%2C_Umberto_Mariani%2C_Joseph_Beuys%2C_Jean_Pierre_Van_Tieghem%2C_Documenta_5%2C_Kassel.jpg/960px-1972%2C_Umberto_Mariani%2C_Joseph_Beuys%2C_Jean_Pierre_Van_Tieghem%2C_Documenta_5%2C_Kassel.jpg
- Project page: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_f%C3%BCr_direkte_Demokratie_durch_Volksabstimmung

#### Baba Antropofágica (Anthropophagic Drool) — Lygia Clark (1973)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: A collective body produced by a simple bodily instruction shared by the group.
- What it is: A group kneels around one person lying on the floor; each has a spool of coloured thread in the mouth and pulls out the saliva-soaked thread onto the body below until it is covered in a web.
- Protocol: One volunteer lies on the floor; the others kneel around, take thread spools into their mouths and unwind the saliva-soaked thread onto the volunteer; when the spools are empty the group lifts the web off together.
- What the collective did: Clark devised it with her students at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she taught from 1972; it has been re-enacted by groups in museums and workshops, and each performance produces a different web.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r42tfsD0DKY
- Images: https://portal.lygiaclark.org.br/public/upload/thumb/2021-10-21/816cfcd5d99dd68a28eee2286be107c8[1024x685].jpeg
- Project page: https://portal.lygiaclark.org.br/en/archive/66151/anthropophagic-slobber-rj-2011

#### Rhythm 0 — Marina Abramović (1974)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Hand the audience total permission and a fixed set of tools, and the crowd writes the piece.
- What it is: For six hours at Studio Morra in Naples, Abramović stood still beside a table of 72 objects, from a rose and honey to scissors, a scalpel and a loaded gun, which the audience could use on her as they wished.
- Protocol: Written instruction on the wall: 'There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. Performance. I am the object. During this period I take full responsibility.' Duration fixed at six hours (8 pm to 2 am); the artist does not react.
- What the collective did: The audience began gently and grew aggressive: they cut off her clothes, cut her skin and at one point held the loaded gun to her head, until a protective faction intervened. When the six hours ended and she moved toward them, the audience left.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTBkbseXfOQ
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythm_0

#### Appearance (Poiavlenie) and Trips Out of Town — Collective Actions (1976)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Contract & certificate, Time, decay & death
- Idea: The audience's waiting and attention are the event; a signed document certifies that they took part.
- What it is: In the first action of Collective Actions, invited spectators waited in a snowy field in Izmailovsky Park until two organisers emerged from the woods, crossed the field and handed them certificates of presence.
- Protocol: Viewers are invited in advance to travel to an empty field outside the city at a set time, without knowing what will happen; minimal events take place at the edge of perception; participants receive or sign documents and later write accounts that are collected in the 'Trips Out of Town' volumes.
- What the collective did: About thirty people attended Appearance on 13 March 1976; the group went on to stage many more actions over the following decades for a regular circle of viewer-participants, whose narratives fill the samizdat volumes of Trips Out of Town.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj4y3pEEN4E
- Images: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/73e10e_c14f5ab94dd54961b7488215a8dcffc8~mv2.jpg
- Project page: https://www.collectiveactionsgroup.org/en/aboutca

#### Touch Sanitation Performance — Mierle Laderman Ukeles (1979)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints, Time, decay & death
- Idea: A ritual with a completeness rule: the work is finished only when every member of the workforce has been reached.
- What it is: Over eleven months in 1979–1980 Ukeles visited all 59 sanitation districts of New York and shook the hand of every sanitation worker, saying to each: 'Thank you for keeping New York City alive.'
- Protocol: The artist must meet every one of the Department's workers in person, across all shifts and all 59 districts, and perform the same handshake and the same sentence with each.
- What the collective did: About 8,500 sanitation employees took part in the handshake ritual as Ukeles crossed the city ten times; the Department's commissioner later said the performance opened up the humiliation many workers had carried.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiRGoKG5kIw
- Images: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5fd14a8ad4328f0b6168fcaa/5fd156d29a9e5443ac6aa99d/5fd9260587ec920669422967/1762444542733/Ukeles%2C%2BTouch%2BSanitation%2BPerformance_%2B_Handshake%2Band%2BThanking%2BRitual_.jpg?format=1500w
- Project page: https://www.sanitationfoundation.org/blog/portrait-of-an-artist-mierle-laderman-ukeles

#### Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say — Gillian Wearing (1992)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Give the subject the caption, and the portrait becomes a self-authored statement.
- What it is: Wearing stopped strangers in London streets, asked each to write whatever they were thinking on a sheet of white card, and photographed them holding it.
- Protocol: Any passer-by who agrees writes their own message on a blank card, without suggestions from the artist, and is photographed holding it; each photo is titled with the words on the card.
- What the collective did: Hundreds of strangers took part in 1992–93, writing confessions and slogans such as 'I'M DESPERATE'; their words, not the artist's, became the titles and content of the series.
- Images: https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/.width-600_KZdenDd.jpg
- Project page: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wearing-signs-that-say-what-you-want-them-to-say-and-not-signs-that-say-what-someone-else-66092

#### untitled 1992 (free) — Rirkrit Tiravanija (1992)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Market & exchange
- Idea: A standing offer (free food, open door) whose social consequences are the artwork.
- What it is: At 303 Gallery in New York Tiravanija moved the contents of the gallery office into the exhibition space and turned the office into a kitchen where he cooked Thai curry and served it free to anyone who came.
- Protocol: The gallery's back office is exposed and its kitchen runs during opening hours; curry and rice are cooked daily and given free to every visitor; in MoMA's collection the work can be re-activated with food prepared in the museum's kitchen and served daily.
- What the collective did: Visitors ate, talked and lingered, turning the gallery into a canteen; the work was re-staged at David Zwirner (2007) and at MoMA (2011), where a free vegetarian curry lunch was served every day.
- Images: https://static-assets.artlogic.net/w_1010,h_580,c_limit/exhibit-e/5576fee507a72c0678771e53/f36044447a144ab67d93d0d816faa5d8.jpeg
- Project page: https://www.303gallery.com/gallery-exhibitions/rirkrit-tiravanija2

#### Frozen Grand Central — Improv Everywhere (2008)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: One synchronised instruction, sent to a volunteer crowd, creates a public anomaly that strangers must interpret.
- What it is: On 26 January 2008, 207 volunteers froze in place at the same moment in the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal and held still for five minutes among commuters.
- Protocol: Volunteers recruited online gather nearby, synchronise watches, drift into the concourse, freeze in whatever pose they are in at the signal, stay frozen for five minutes and then resume as if nothing happened.
- What the collective did: 207 'agents' took part; the video of commuters' reactions became one of the most-watched early YouTube videos, and according to Charlie Todd the prank has been recreated by fans in about 100 cities.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo
- Images: https://improveverywhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/frozen_grand_central-copy.jpg
- Project page: https://improveverywhere.com/2008/01/31/frozen-grand-central/

#### Tatlin's Whisper #5 — Tania Bruguera (2008)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Open participation
- Idea: The audience becomes the material: a crowd experiences, in its own bodies, the rules used to control crowds.
- What it is: Two mounted police officers rode into Tate Modern's Turbine Hall and used crowd-control techniques on the visitors, herding and dispersing them as if managing a protest.
- Protocol: Real mounted police officers apply standard crowd-control manoeuvres to whoever is in the hall; visitors are not told it is a performance and respond as they choose.
- What the collective did: Tate visitors were pushed, grouped and scattered by the horses; the crowd's compliance and resistance formed the work, which is now in Tate's collection.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7L1s_GWn3o
- Images: https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/.width-600_LEMha4R.jpg
- Project page: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bruguera-tatlins-whisper-5-t12989

#### Tatlin's Whisper #6 (Havana Version) — Tania Bruguera (2009)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints, Time, decay & death
- Idea: A one-minute rule turns a stage into a temporary zone of free speech.
- What it is: At the 10th Havana Biennial Bruguera set up a podium and open microphone where anyone could speak uncensored for one minute, while performers in military dress placed a white dove on each speaker's shoulder.
- Protocol: Any member of the audience may take the podium and speak for exactly one minute without censorship; two performers in military dress place a white dove on each speaker's shoulder; 200 disposable cameras are handed out to the audience.
- What the collective did: On 29 March 2009 at the Centro Wifredo Lam, members of the public, including the blogger Yoani Sánchez, used their minute to call for freedom and democracy; the Cuban authorities denounced the event, and later attempts to restage it in Havana led to Bruguera's arrest.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CThPLk-hR1w
- Images: https://taniabruguera.com/wp-content/uploads/oradorfcr11.jpg https://www.guggenheim.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/2014.11_01_web-1.jpg
- Project page: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/33083

#### The Moving Garden — Lee Mingwei (2009)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Circulation & passing on, Market & exchange
- Idea: A gift with conditions: the museum's content is released into the city through strangers.
- What it is: A long granite table in the gallery holds hundreds of fresh flowers; visitors may take one on two conditions about what they do with it after leaving the museum.
- Protocol: Take one flower; on leaving the museum, make a detour from your intended route; give the flower to a stranger you feel would benefit from an unexpected act of kindness.
- What the collective did: First shown at the 10th Biennale de Lyon in 2009 and restaged at the Brooklyn Museum, the NGV and elsewhere, the work has been carried out by visitors handing flowers to strangers in each host city; the result exists only as these unrecorded exchanges.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUcEDVZQigw
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/The_Moving_Garden_%28Xe_Biennale_de_Lyon%29_%284104299446%29.jpg/960px-The_Moving_Garden_%28Xe_Biennale_de_Lyon%29_%284104299446%29.jpg https://content.ngv.vic.gov.au/col-images/api/EXHI039447/1280
- Project page: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/lee-mingwei-the-moving-garden-2009/

#### Key to the City — Paul Ramírez Jonas (2010)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Circulation & passing on, Market & exchange
- Idea: A civic honour made peer-to-peer: anyone can bestow it, and it actually opens doors.
- What it is: At a booth in Times Square, members of the public awarded each other a 'key to the city' in a one-to-one ceremony; the key opened locks at more than 20 sites across New York's five boroughs.
- Protocol: You cannot take a key for yourself: one person must give it to another in a short ceremony at the booth; the key then opens the gates, doors and lockers of the participating sites for the duration of the project.
- What the collective did: In June 2010 thousands of keys were exchanged in one-to-one ceremonies; recipients then used them to explore community gardens, cemeteries, museums and back doors across the city. Presented by Creative Time with the City of New York.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz8ma3oufcw
- Images: https://creativetime.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/2010_KeyToTheCity.jpg
- Project page: https://creativetime.org/projects/key-to-the-city/

#### The Artist Is Present — Marina Abramović (2010)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints, Time, decay & death
- Idea: One chair, one rule (sit and look), and a queue that becomes the public face of the work.
- What it is: During her MoMA retrospective (14 March – 31 May 2010) Abramović sat silently at a table in the atrium every day the museum was open, while visitors took turns sitting in the chair opposite for as long as they chose.
- Protocol: One visitor at a time may sit in the empty chair facing the artist, in silence and without touching; each sitter decides how long to stay; the artist remains seated for the museum's full opening hours.
- What the collective did: Over nearly three months, many hundreds of visitors sat with her, many of them moved to tears, while crowds queued, sometimes overnight; the sitters' faces were photographed and published as part of the work's record.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/ArtistIsPresent.jpg/960px-ArtistIsPresent.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/The_Artist_is_present_-_MoMA_%284423713664%29.jpg/960px-The_Artist_is_present_-_MoMA_%284423713664%29.jpg
- Project page: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/964

#### This Progress — Tino Sehgal (2010)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: The artwork is a relay of conversation passed between generations and completed by each visitor.
- What it is: At the Guggenheim, which Sehgal emptied of all art, visitors walking up Frank Lloyd Wright's ramp were handed from a child to a teenager, a young adult and an older person, each continuing a conversation about progress.
- Protocol: At the base of the ramp a child asks the visitor what progress is; at set points the conversation is handed on to an older interpreter, who picks up and redirects it; no objects, no photography, no written instructions.
- What the collective did: Interpreters of four age groups held a different conversation with every group of visitors over the six-week run; it was the first live work acquired by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5V2fHB2sFk
- Project page: https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/tino-sehgal

#### These Associations — Tino Sehgal (2012)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: A crowd choreographed by rules, which dissolves into one-to-one intimacy with strangers.
- What it is: For the Unilever Series in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, a group of about 70 participants walked, ran, sang and gathered in the hall, and broke off to tell individual visitors personal stories.
- Protocol: Participants follow a set of oral rules for group movement (slow walking, running, chasing, choral singing) and, at their own choice, stop a visitor to share a story about belonging, arrival or intimacy; nothing is fixed in writing and photography is refused.
- What the collective did: Around 70 storytellers recruited in London performed in turns during the 2012 run, producing a mass of individual encounters that were never recorded.
- Text: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/jul/23/tino-sehgal-these-associations-review (The Guardian)
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tino_Sehgal

#### Operation Earnest Voice — Jonas Lund (2018)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Stage the job description of a troll farm, and let the audience watch the work of manipulation being done.
- What it is: A performative office installation set up like a troll farm, in which a group of performers controls numerous social-media accounts and works to influence public discourse while the audience watches over their shoulders.
- Protocol: Performers are assigned roles in the 'operations office' and given control of social-media accounts with tasks to disrupt, influence and manipulate discussion online; the offline audience may observe them at work.
- What the collective did: The performers worked in live social-media channels, so the piece unfolded inside real online discourse while visitors watched the operation from the office floor.
- Images: https://cdn.jonaslund.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/29085246/4M3A4403-scaled.jpg
- Project page: https://jonaslund.com/works/operation-earnest-voice/

#### PROTO live training ceremonies (Spawn) — Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst (2019)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Open participation, Instruction & score, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Treat training an AI as a communal ritual, so the model learns from an ensemble rather than one owner.
- What it is: For the album PROTO (4AD, May 2019), Herndon and Dryhurst trained 'Spawn', an AI running on a home-built gaming PC, in public 'training ceremonies': live performances in which recruited vocalists and participants sang to it.
- Protocol: Recruited vocalists and participants sing to Spawn at a live session; Spawn learns from their voices to interpret and reproduce sounds, and the results are folded into the album, where tracks marked 'Live Training' document the sessions.
- What the collective did: The participants of the ceremonies became the training set: their voices shaped what Spawn could sing, and recordings of these sessions appear on PROTO. The approach led directly to Holly+ and The Call.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lajRPj6QMZA
- Images: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lajRPj6QMZA/hqdefault.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto_(Holly_Herndon_album)

#### The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 — Furtherfield, Ruth Catlow (2020)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance, Instruction & score
- Idea: Give non-humans a seat at the assembly by assigning each one a human who must argue only for them.
- What it is: A multi-year set of live-action role-play games in which humans represent other species of Finsbury Park in 'Interspecies Assemblies', working toward a treaty that gives equal rights to all living beings in the park.
- Protocol: Each player is matched through a 'Sentience Dial' with a mentor species (a tree, a bee, a goose, grass, a squirrel, a stag beetle or a dog), wears a paper or digital mask, and never speaks as a human. Players learn their species' habitats and needs and plan, in assembly, an Interspecies Festival and a draft treaty.
- What the collective did: Members of the public played Interspecies Assemblies, including online sessions, and the Interspecies Festival of Finsbury Park took place in 2023; the draft treaty was put to public discussion.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdZrzXyLb6M
- Images: https://www.furtherfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Treaty-of-Finsbury-Park-01_Illustration-by-Sajan-Rai-scaled.jpg https://www.furtherfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Larp.jpeg
- Project page: https://www.furtherfield.org/the-treaty-of-finsbury-park-2025/

#### Consensus Architects Inc. — Jonas Lund (2024)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Hand the audience roles in a disinformation company and let them feel how easily narratives are made.
- What it is: A live-action role-play installation at IMPAKT Festival, Utrecht, in October 2024, staged as a start-up selling 'propaganda as a service', with Lund as CEO.
- Protocol: Each visitor is assigned a role on entry (political strategist ordering misinformation, worker generating fake AI content, investor funding the operation) and plays it within the company's procedures, guided by the CEO.
- What the collective did: Participants together ran a disinformation campaign from order to output, experiencing first-hand how generative AI can be used to sway opinion.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsJkd0x62z4
- Images: https://cdn.jonaslund.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/26114213/IMG_9291-2-scaled.jpg
- Project page: https://jonaslund.com/works/consensus-architects-inc/

### Mail Art & Correspondence Networks

Artworks that travel through the post and grow as each recipient adds to them and sends them on.

#### New York Correspondance School — Ray Johnson (1962)
- Type: DAO & organization · Substrate: Post & mail · Mechanisms: Circulation & passing on, Co-authorship & derivatives, Instruction & score
- Idea: A network whose only rule is on-sending: every recipient becomes a co-author and a relay.
- What it is: Johnson's mail-art network: collages, letters and drawings sent through the post with instructions such as 'please send to…' or 'please add to & return', growing as each recipient altered and forwarded them.
- Protocol: A mailing carries an instruction ('please send to…', 'please add to & return', even 'please do not send to…'); the recipient adds to or subtracts from the item and passes it on as instructed; there is no membership, only participation, and Johnson called and cancelled 'meetings' of the school.
- What the collective did: The name was coined in 1962 by Ed Plunkett; the first NYCS meeting took place on 1 April 1968 at the Society of Friends Meeting House in New York; a 1970 Whitney exhibition showed mail from 107 participants sent to curator Marcia Tucker. The network grew into the international mail-art movement and is still active.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/RayJohnson_invite1970.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Ray_Johnson_and_CrackerJack_Kid%2C_Feb_1984.jpg/960px-Ray_Johnson_and_CrackerJack_Kid%2C_Feb_1984.jpg
- Project page: https://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/mail-art-ephemera

#### Art's Birthday (La Fête de l'Art) — Robert Filliou (1963)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: A shared date as protocol: anyone, anywhere, can celebrate, and the network does the rest.
- What it is: Filliou proposed that art was born one million years ago on 17 January, when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water, and that its birthday should be a public holiday.
- Protocol: Every 17 January, anyone may celebrate the birthday of art in any form, alone or together; art gets one year older each time.
- What the collective did: The first public celebrations took place in 1973 in Aachen and Paris; since then artists' networks, radio stations and museums have held events on or around 17 January, often linked by telephone, radio and later the internet.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uHKNrnsCzo
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Filliou

#### The Eternal Network (La Fête Permanente) — Robert Filliou, George Brecht (1968)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Post & mail · Mechanisms: Circulation & passing on, Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Replace the art market with a decentralised network of exchange that anyone can join.
- What it is: A proposal announced by Filliou and George Brecht on a 1968 poster: art as a permanent festival carried on by a network of people exchanging works, ideas and actions, with no centre and no end.
- Protocol: Artists consider themselves nodes in a wider social network, the 'Constant Festival'; work circulates between participants by post, visits and collaboration rather than through galleries; anyone who sends and receives takes part.
- What the collective did: Mail artists and artist-run centres adopted the Eternal Network as the name and model of their international exchange from the 1970s, and it became a founding idea for later network and telematic art.
- Text: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276418796563 (Theory, Culture & Society)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BgOfsG7J0Q
- Images: https://s3.amazonaws.com/mhka_ensembles_production/assets/public/000/033/269/medium_500/16._The_Eternal_Network_poster__1968.jpg?1476262421
- Project page: https://ensembles.org/items/eternal-network

### Contracts, Currencies & Exchange

Artist-designed contracts, receipts, currencies and exchange rituals: the pre-blockchain ancestors of tokens and royalties.

#### Obligations pour la Roulette de Monte-Carlo (Monte Carlo Bond) — Marcel Duchamp (1924)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Currency & value, Chance & randomness
- Idea: An artist-issued security: investors fund a rule-based system and share its (hoped-for) returns.
- What it is: Duchamp issued bonds in a company formed to fund his attempt to beat the roulette tables at Monte Carlo with a system; the bond, with Man Ray's photograph of him, is both an artwork and a financial instrument.
- Protocol: The company plans 30 bonds at 500 francs each, repayable with 20% interest from roulette winnings; each bond is signed by Rrose Sélavy and by Duchamp as the company's officers.
- What the collective did: A small circle of friends and patrons bought bonds; sources count eight bonds realised in 1924. The system did not make money, but the bonds survived as artworks and are now held by museums and collectors.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7f/Monte_Carlo_Bond_%28No._30%29.jpg https://www.nmnm.mc/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/obligation_duchamp_site.jpg
- Project page: https://www.nmnm.mc/en/exhibitions/6716/

#### Zones de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle (Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility) — Yves Klein (1959)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Currency & value, Burn & destruction
- Idea: A proto-token: ownership exists as a receipt, and destroying the receipt makes the work fully immaterial.
- What it is: Klein sold 'zones' of immaterial pictorial sensibility for a weight of pure gold and gave each buyer a receipt; the buyer could complete the work by burning the receipt while Klein threw half the gold into the Seine.
- Protocol: Each zone is sold only for gold, against a numbered receipt. The buyer has two options: keep the receipt (and never own the authentic immaterial value), or burn it in a ritual before a museum director or art critic and two witnesses, while Klein throws half of the gold into the Seine.
- What the collective did: Eight zones were sold between 1959 and Klein's death in 1962, at least three of them completed by the ritual, one with the writer Dino Buzzati in January 1962. An unburned receipt sold at Sotheby's in 2022 for more than one million dollars, and the ritual was later restaged on Ethereum as Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/ImmaterielZoneKlein.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/ZoneImmaterielKlein2.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_de_Sensibilit%C3%A9_Picturale_Immat%C3%A9rielle

#### Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project and Banknote Project — Cildo Meireles (1970)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Circulation & passing on, Instruction & score, Currency & value
- Idea: Use an existing circulation system as the distribution network, and let anyone copy the method.
- What it is: Meireles printed political messages and instructions onto returnable Coca-Cola bottles and banknotes and put them back into circulation, where they travelled through the bottling and money systems.
- Protocol: Transfer a text in white lettering onto an empty returnable bottle (visible only when refilled with cola) or stamp it on a banknote, then return the bottle or spend the note; the bottle carries instructions so that others can repeat the insertion.
- What the collective did: Under the Brazilian dictatorship, the bottles and notes, bearing slogans such as 'Yankees go home!' and questions like 'Which is the place of the work of art?', passed anonymously through the hands of bottlers, shopkeepers and consumers.
- Images: https://media.tate.org.uk/aztate-prd-ew-dg-wgtail-st1-ctr-data/images/.width-600_oLL2I9M.jpg
- Project page: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/meireles-insertions-into-ideological-circuits-coca-cola-project-t12328

#### The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement — Seth Siegelaub, Robert Projansky (1971)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Market & exchange, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: A royalty that travels with the work: each new owner must sign the same terms.
- What it is: A standard contract for the sale of artworks, first published by the School of Visual Arts in New York as a fold-out poster, that reserves rights for the artist after the work is sold, including a share of future resale profits.
- Protocol: Artist and buyer sign a form that is affixed to the work. On every later sale or transfer the seller pays the artist 15% of the increase in value and binds the new owner to the same contract; the artist is notified of exhibitions and may veto them, can borrow the work, shares rental income and keeps reproduction rights.
- What the collective did: Artists were encouraged to reproduce the contract and use it in every transfer; some, notably Hans Haacke, required it of buyers, but dealers and collectors resisted and it proved hard to enforce. It became a reference for resale-royalty debates and for royalty rules in NFT marketplaces.
- Text: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/The_Artists_Reserved_Rights_Transfer_and_Sale_Agreement.pdf (Self-published contract, 1971)
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/The_Artists_Reserved_Rights_Transfer_and_Sale_Agreement.pdf/page1-960px-The_Artists_Reserved_Rights_Transfer_and_Sale_Agreement.pdf.jpg
- Project page: https://www.guggenheim.org/articles/findings/seth-siegelaubs-the-artists-reserved-rights-transfer-and-sale-agreement-french-version-2

#### Boggs Notes (money drawings) — J. S. G. Boggs (1984)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Currency & value, Market & exchange, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Value by consent: the artwork is completed when a stranger accepts it as payment.
- What it is: Boggs drew one side of banknotes by hand and spent them at face value with shopkeepers, waiters and hotels who agreed to accept a drawing instead of money.
- Protocol: A note is exchanged only at its face value and only with someone who knows it is a drawing; Boggs asks for exact change and a receipt; he sells the change and receipt, not the note, to a collector and tells them where the note was spent, and the collector must find its holder to buy it.
- What the collective did: From a Chicago diner in 1984 onward, merchants and strangers accepted the notes and collectors tracked them down, reportedly paying up to $420,000 for one; governments treated the practice as counterfeiting, and the US Secret Service seized about 1,300 works.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/82/JSG_Boggs.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._G._Boggs

#### 250 cm Line Tattooed on 6 Paid People — Santiago Sierra (1999)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Market & exchange, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A wage contract made permanent on the body: the payment rule is the work's content.
- What it is: At Espacio Aglutinador in Havana, Sierra paid six unemployed young men to have a single continuous 250-centimetre line tattooed across their backs as they stood side by side.
- Protocol: Six people are recruited and paid a fixed fee (thirty dollars each) to stand in a row and accept a straight line tattooed across all their backs; the action is photographed and the fee is stated in the title and documentation.
- What the collective did: Six young men in Havana accepted the payment and the permanent mark in December 1999; the work provoked long debates on exploitation and complicity, and its photographic documentation is held by the Städel Museum and Fundación Jumex.
- Images: https://cdn.staedelmuseum.de/images/0d/b1/dzf196/thumb-xl.jpg https://li-mac.org/wp-content/uploads/Santiago-Sierra_LiMAC_250-tattoo_I.jpg
- Project page: https://sammlung.staedelmuseum.de/en/work/250-cm-line-tattooed-on-6-paid-people-espacio-aglutinador

#### Kiss — Tino Sehgal (2002)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Instruction & score, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: An artwork with no object, sold and passed on only by oral agreement before a notary.
- What it is: Two dancers move slowly through a sequence of kisses taken from art history, from Rodin, Brâncuși and Klimt to Courbet and Jeff Koons; the work was sold to museums in an edition of four purely by spoken contract.
- Protocol: No written contract, receipt, instructions or photographs. The sale is spoken before a notary and witnesses, with stipulations: the work is installed only by people Sehgal has trained, the dancers are paid an agreed minimum, it is shown for at least six weeks, it is never photographed, and any resale must repeat the same oral contract.
- What the collective did: The Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which acquired the final edition, bought it on these terms; generations of dancers have learned it by direct transmission.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWfM71KsPTY
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tino_Sehgal

#### Guaraná Power — Superflex (2003)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Voting & governance, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: The artwork is a producers' cooperative and its brand: self-organisation as a counter-economy.
- What it is: Superflex worked with a cooperative of guaraná farmers in Maués, in the Brazilian Amazon, to create the farmers' own soft drink in response to a buyers' cartel that had driven down seed prices.
- Protocol: Decisions about the product are made by the farmers through an extended process of self-organisation; Superflex supplies design, branding and distribution in the art world; the label overwrites the corporate brand it answers.
- What the collective did: The farmers' cooperative developed and sold the drink, which was served in exhibitions and bars; the corporate cartel had cut the seed price by 80%, and the 27th São Paulo Biennial (2006) banned the work from display, after which Superflex exhibited censored versions.
- Images: https://superflex.net/superfleximages/1240w_Guarana_power_factory_07_1614955871.jpg
- Project page: https://superflex.net/works/guarana_power

#### Free Beer (Vores Øl) — Superflex (2004)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Contract & certificate, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Open-source licensing applied to a physical product: the licence is the artwork's rule of reproduction.
- What it is: A beer recipe and brand published under a Creative Commons licence, so that anyone may brew it, sell it or change it, as long as they share their version under the same terms.
- Protocol: The recipe and label are licensed CC BY-SA 2.5: anyone may brew the beer, use the name and logo, and make derivatives, provided they credit the source and publish their recipe under the same licence.
- What the collective did: Conceived with students of the IT University of Copenhagen, the beer has been brewed by breweries, workshops and home brewers in Taipei, São Paulo, Los Angeles, Munich, Auckland and elsewhere, with and without Superflex's involvement.
- Images: https://superflex.net/superfleximages/1240w_Free_Beer_05_1607939011.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Superflex%2C_Free_Beer_Factory%2C_2008_ongoing%2C_taiwan_taipeh_3.jpg/960px-Superflex%2C_Free_Beer_Factory%2C_2008_ongoing%2C_taiwan_taipeh_3.jpg
- Project page: https://superflex.net/works/free_beer

#### Free Sol LeWitt — Superflex (2010)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Chance & randomness, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Take the artist at his word: if ideas are common property, the museum's copy can be released to the public.
- What it is: A metal workshop inside the Van Abbemuseum produced exact replicas of Sol LeWitt's Untitled (Wall Structure) (1972) from the collection and gave them away to the public by lottery.
- Protocol: Workers fabricate copies of the LeWitt structure in the gallery during opening hours; visitors enter a lottery; winners take a copy home for free.
- What the collective did: Visitors to In-between Minimalisms / Free Sol LeWitt at the Van Abbemuseum in 2010 entered the lottery and took replicas into their homes, testing LeWitt's statement that ideas 'can only be given away and not stolen'.
- Images: https://superflex.net/superfleximages/1240w_In-between_minimalism_free_sol_lewitt_04_1619619018.jpg
- Project page: https://superflex.net/works/free_sol_lewitt

#### Time/Bank — Julieta Aranda, Anton Vidokle (2010)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Currency & value, Market & exchange, Open participation
- Idea: An hour for an hour: a parallel currency that makes the art world's unpaid favours visible and countable.
- What it is: An online time bank for the art community, launched by e-flux, where artists, curators and writers trade hours of work and skills with each other instead of money.
- Protocol: Members post needs and offers; helping another member for one hour earns one hour of credit, recorded by the bank as intermediary and guarantor; credits can be spent on any other member's time; local branches and printed Time/Bank notes extend the system offline.
- What the collective did: More than a thousand participants around the world had joined by the time of its first exhibitions, and branches opened in several cities; exhibitions at Portikus in Frankfurt and elsewhere presented it as an artwork.
- Images: https://images.e-flux.com/test/5b5ddc0a-d863-4c6b-aeb9-f5a040a3b171?width=1200&height=630
- Project page: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/36461/time-bank/

#### Flip City — Jonas Lund (2014)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Circulation & passing on, Market & exchange, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Put a tracker in the stretcher and let the flippers draw the map of the market.
- What it is: Forty digital paintings remixed from the work of other emerging artists, each with a GPS tracker on its stretcher bar, shown at Steve Turner Contemporary in Los Angeles in 2014 and then at art fairs over the following year.
- Protocol: Every painting carries a GPS device; its movements and approximate whereabouts are published on flip-city.net for years after the sale. The paintings were designed to match the market's appetite for process-based abstraction that collectors buy and quickly resell.
- What the collective did: Buyers and resellers, by moving and flipping the works, produced the tracking record that makes up the second half of the piece.
- Images: https://cdn.jonaslund.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/29084027/21.jpg
- Project page: https://jonaslund.com/works/flip-city/

#### Strings Attached — Jonas Lund (2015)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Circulation & passing on, Market & exchange
- Idea: Write the resale rule on the painting itself, so every future owner must perform it.
- What it is: Twenty-four text paintings, shown at Steve Turner in Los Angeles in 2015, each carrying a sentence that restricts how it may change hands, such as 'This painting may never be sold at auction' or 'This painting must be resold by March 21, 2017'.
- Protocol: Each painting's text is a binding condition on ownership and transfer (a ban on auction, a resale deadline, a donation, a price or status condition), painted by a sign painter on fabric wallpaper to Lund's instructions. The collector accepts the condition with the work, and the project website records each piece.
- What the collective did: Collectors, dealers and later owners carry out the conditions over years, so the market behaviour of the buyers completes each work; the series mirrors galleries' attempts to both drive and restrain speculation during the 2014-15 market bubble.
- Images: https://cdn.jonaslund.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/29084016/inst-lun.313e.jpg
- Project page: https://jonaslund.com/works/strings-attached/

#### Self Checkout — Jack Butcher (2025)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Open participation, Currency & value
- Idea: Take the jibe that an NFT is 'just a receipt' literally, and make every payment lengthen the work and move a public balance.
- What it is: A retail checkout installed at Art Basel Miami Beach (Zero 10, December 2025): visitors pay what they choose and receive a thermal receipt, which is the artwork, while a split-flap display shows the artist's running balance.
- Protocol: Three in-person kiosks and one kiosk for remote orders accept any amount; each dollar adds length to the printed receipt. Each receipt carries a printed seed phrase giving access to a non-transferable digital companion on Ethereum. Online and in-person payments feed the same displayed balance, which started from the artist's own exhibition costs.
- What the collective did: Fair visitors and remote buyers paid varying amounts, lined up for signatures and pushed the displayed balance; press reports gave interim figures only, so no final total is recorded here.
- Images: https://jack.art/self-checkout-receipts.png https://jack.art/self-checkout.jpg
- Project page: https://jack.art/self-checkout

#### Work, Luck, Play — Jack Butcher (2026)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Chance & randomness, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Separate effort, fixed luck and choices made together: the finished set can only come from trading with strangers.
- What it is: Silver sculptures and a trading game presented by Silk at Art Basel Hong Kong (March 2026): a dice roll gave each participant six resin dice, and participants traded with each other to complete a set of one to six.
- Protocol: A roll of ordinary dice decided which six resin dice a visitor received (Luck's dice carry one number on every face). Participants could trade to assemble 1 through 6 and return for a signed set, or keep an incomplete combination. An online rolling system on Ethereum and a token-burning route to claim a silver die ran alongside.
- What the collective did: Fair visitors traded dice among themselves to complete sets, and an accumulating archive ('Luckiest') recorded the rolls; no participant counts have been published.
- Images: https://jack.art/play/wlp-thumb.png https://jack.art/play/play-dice.webp
- Project page: https://jack.art/work-luck-play

## Network & Crowd Protocols

Rules posted to a network and played by thousands or millions of people: telematic art, crowdsourced works and collective online experiments.

### Telematic & Early Network Art

Works for modems, bulletin boards, robots and the early web that let distant participants act together.

#### Hole-In-Space — Kit Galloway, Sherrie Rabinowitz (1980)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Leave the portal unexplained and let the public discover what to do with it.
- What it is: For three evenings in November 1980, a life-size satellite video link joined a sidewalk at Lincoln Center in New York with a shopping centre in Century City, Los Angeles. Passers-by on each coast suddenly saw and could talk with people on the other.
- Protocol: The link was unannounced: no signs, logos, credits or explanation, and no self-view monitors, only full-body, life-size images and sound of the people on the other coast.
- What the collective did: The first evening was a discovery; on the second, people used word of mouth to arrange meetings; by the third, families and friends travelled to the sites to see relatives on the other coast, some for the first time in years.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyIJJr6Ldg8
- Images: https://ecafe.com/getty/HIS/images/H110/03/53.gif https://ecafe.com/getty/HIS/images/H110/02/081.gif
- Project page: https://ecafe.com/getty/HIS/

#### The World in 24 Hours — Robert Adrian X (1982)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Follow noon around the planet and give each city its hour on the line.
- What it is: A 24-hour telecommunication project at Ars Electronica 1982 in which artists in fifteen cities, from Vienna to Sydney and Honolulu, each exchanged images, sound and text with Linz during their local midday.
- Protocol: The project ran from noon to noon in Linz (CET); each remote site had one hour, around its local midday, to exchange material with the Linz team over up to three phone lines using slow-scan TV, fax, the ARTEX computer network or telephone audio.
- What the collective did: Artists and groups in Vienna, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Bath, Wellfleet, Pittsburgh, Toronto, San Francisco, Vancouver, Honolulu, Tokyo, Sydney, Istanbul, Florence and Athens sent and received material in sequence, producing a day-long relay of transmissions.
- Images: https://ars.electronica.art/outofthebox/files/2019/08/PIC_25485_AEC_FE_1982_die_welt_in_24_stunden_tiff-1.jpg
- Project page: https://ars.electronica.art/outofthebox/en/24hours/

#### La Plissure du Texte — Roy Ascott (1983)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation
- Idea: Give each node of a network a role, and a story writes itself between them.
- What it is: A 'planetary fairy tale' written on the ARTEX computer network for the Electra exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Groups in eleven cities in Europe, North America and Australia each played a character and typed the story together.
- Protocol: Ascott assigned each participating site a fairy-tale character (magician, princess, beast and so on); each site could read everything posted and add text or ASCII images in character, with no central editor.
- What the collective did: Artists and groups at eleven locations improvised an open-ended narrative in shared text files, producing a distributed, multi-voice text that no single author planned.
- Images: https://artelectronicmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/images/u17/laplissuredutexte1.png http://artelectronicmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/laplissuredutexte-2.jpg
- Project page: https://artelectronicmedia.com/en/artwork/la-plissure-du-texte/

#### King's Cross Phone-In — Heath Bunting (1994)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Chance & randomness
- Idea: Publish a list of public phone numbers and a place becomes a switchboard for the world.
- What it is: Bunting posted online the numbers of the payphones at London's King's Cross station and asked people to call them on 5 August 1994. The station concourse filled with ringing phones and conversations between strangers.
- Protocol: On his Cybercafe website and on mailing lists Bunting listed 36 payphone numbers, laid out as a floor plan of the booths, and invited people to do any of: let a phone ring and hang up, call in patterns, chat with whoever answered, go to the station and answer, or do something different, with activity concentrated around 18:00 GMT.
- What the collective did: By mid-afternoon the booths were ringing continuously; commuters and passers-by picked up and found themselves talking with callers from other countries, an early instance of a web-coordinated crowd action.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTgMwxg5zA
- Images: https://live.staticflickr.com/2176/2524624568_087dfcc3bc_z.jpg
- Project page: http://www.irational.org/cybercafe/xrel.html

#### The Mercury Project — Ken Goldberg (1994)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: A shared puzzle turns remote strangers into a single excavation team.
- What it is: A robot arm over a sandbox in a USC lab that anyone on the web could steer, blowing bursts of air to uncover buried objects. Players pooled their findings in a log to guess the book the objects came from.
- Protocol: Through a web page, one visitor at a time moved the arm's camera and fired short air jets into the sand; after each five-minute session they were asked to record findings and hypotheses in a public Operator's Log. All buried artifacts came from one unnamed 19th-century text.
- What the collective did: Between 1 August 1994 and 1 February 1995 the site logged 1,968,637 hits from 52,153 unique hosts. Users collectively worked out the source, announced in March 1995 as Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth.
- Text: https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/pubs/ramag.pdf (IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine)
- Images: https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/art/big-images/Mercury-screenshot.gif
- Project page: https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/art/

#### The World's First Collaborative Sentence — Douglas Davis (1994)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: One grammatical rule — never end the sentence — is enough to hold a public together.
- What it is: A single sentence without an end, started by Davis at the Lehman College Art Gallery in 1994 and continued online by anyone who wanted to add to it. The Whitney Museum holds it and restored it in 2013.
- Protocol: Anyone could add words, images, sound, video or links to the sentence via the web, email, post or a visit to the gallery; the only rule was not to close it with a period.
- What the collective did: Contributors wrote in dozens of languages, producing more than 200,000 contributions by early 2000 and an unedited record of early web voices.
- Images: https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/10237/95_253_vw1_still.jpg https://whitneymedia.org/assets/image/482059/large_davis-01.jpg
- Project page: https://whitney.org/artport/douglas-davis

#### The Telegarden — Ken Goldberg, Joseph Santarromana (1995)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Time, decay & death, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: A garden that only survives if a scattered online community keeps showing up to water it.
- What it is: A small living garden tended by an industrial robot arm that web users controlled. It ran online for nine years, first at USC and from 1996 in the lobby of the Ars Electronica Center in Linz.
- Protocol: Anyone online could view the garden through the robot's camera; registered members could move the arm to water plants and plant seeds. The garden's condition depended entirely on what members did.
- What the collective did: Over 9,000 members helped cultivate the garden in its first year, and it stayed online from June 1995 until August 2004. Members became protective of their plants and formed a small online community around the garden.
- Images: https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/art/big-images/telegarden-150dpi-2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Telegarden.jpg
- Project page: https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/garden/Ars/

#### Teleporting an Unknown State — Eduardo Kac (1996)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Use the internet as a life-support system that a crowd must keep running.
- What it is: A seed in a pot of earth in a completely dark gallery, lit only by a video projector showing images of the sky sent by remote participants over internet videoconferencing. The plant grows only as long as people keep sending light.
- Protocol: Participants in other cities pointed cameras at the sky and transmitted the live image via videoconferencing; the projector turned their incoming video into light over the seed. No verbal messages were exchanged.
- What the collective did: Anonymous participants in several countries shared responsibility for the plant's photosynthesis, keeping it growing for as long as the exhibition was open.
- Text: https://www.ekac.org/teleporting.html (SIGGRAPH '96 Visual Proceedings)
- Video: https://vimeo.com/319098037
- Images: https://www.ekac.org/telepsim/center8.jpg
- Project page: https://www.ekac.org/teleporting.html

#### Vectorial Elevation — Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (1999)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Hand the sky over a national square to anyone with a browser.
- What it is: Eighteen robotic searchlights around Mexico City's Zócalo, controlled by anyone on the internet, to mark the arrival of the year 2000. Each participant designed a light sculpture in a 3D web interface and saw it executed over the square.
- Protocol: Online users designed a searchlight configuration in a 3D simulator and joined a queue; each design was executed in turn, photographed by webcams, and published on an uncensored personal page with the participant's name, dedication and comments.
- What the collective did: Over two weeks, 800,000 people from 89 countries took part, leaving love poems, football scores, Zapatista slogans and twenty-seven marriage proposals in light and text.
- Video: https://vimeo.com/33988779
- Images: https://www.lozano-hemmer.com/image_sets/vectorial_elevation/mexico_2000/vectorialelevation_mexico_01.jpg
- Project page: https://www.lozano-hemmer.com/vectorial_elevation.php

#### Ouija 2000 — Ken Goldberg (2000)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Chance & randomness
- Idea: Average many hands and the answer seems to come from nowhere.
- What it is: An online Ouija board whose planchette is held by an industrial robot arm. Web players move their mice together and the robot follows the combined motion to spell answers to questions about the new millennium.
- Protocol: Up to 20 remote players at a time rest both hands on their mice; every small mouse movement is sent to a server in Berkeley, which combines the inputs into one motion for the robot arm. Players watch the planchette on live video.
- What the collective did: Players around the world jointly steered one physical robot for the first time, producing answers that no individual player controlled. The work was shown at the 2000 Whitney Biennial and as MATRIX 186 at the Berkeley Art Museum.
- Images: https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/art/ouija/ouija-hands.jpg https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/art/ouija/osplash-reg.jpg
- Project page: https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/art/ouija/

#### Tele-Actor — Ken Goldberg (2001)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Open participation
- Idea: Turn a crowd's clicks into one person's next step.
- What it is: A human actor wearing cameras and a microphone moves through a real place while an online audience decides, vote by vote, where they go and what they do.
- Protocol: Remote participants place coloured markers on a live 'election image' to show where the actor should move or act; a clustering algorithm (Spatial Dynamic Voting) turns the votes into a single command, which the actor carries out.
- What the collective did: In a July 2001 field test, 56 remote users jointly directed the actor's movements; later performances guided the actor through remote environments and social events.
- Text: https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/pubs/teleactor-icra02.pdf (IEEE ICRA 2002)
- Images: https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/art/big-images/Tele-Actor-18-Nov-Kids-hi-res.jpg
- Project page: http://teleactor.berkeley.edu/

#### SOMEONE — Lauren Lee McCarthy (2019)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Instruction & score
- Idea: Replace the smart speaker with whichever stranger happens to be in the gallery.
- What it is: A human version of a smart-home assistant: for two months, four homes in the US were fitted with cameras, microphones and networked devices controlled from a gallery in New York, where visitors took turns acting as the assistant.
- Protocol: When a resident called out 'Someone', gallery visitors at laptops in the command centre could watch the home and remotely control lights, locks and appliances to respond to the request.
- What the collective did: A rotating crowd of gallery visitors served four households, deciding how to help, how much to watch and when to intervene.
- Images: https://freight.cargo.site/w/1200/i/f6bc6a5b71efdbe13e0835b0d9f455b6fbee199b2576156c84eab0fdda89014a/_SP_6164-web.jpg
- Project page: https://lauren-mccarthy.com/SOMEONE

#### all just fresh-off-the-boat or floating — hua xi zi (2024)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Connection as material, protocol as aesthetics.
- What it is: A multi-node real-time video protocol in which camera nodes meet, mask and displace each other through temporary virtual private networks, across geopolitical and platform boundaries.
- Protocol: Participants join as camera nodes over VPN tunnels and make images and videos together in the space between peers, servers and addresses.
- What the collective did: The resulting footage is produced jointly by the connected nodes as they lurk, surveil, participate or disengage.
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/floating-fob.png
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/pills/all-just-fresh-off-the-boat-or-floating

### Crowdsourced Works

An assignment or task sent to a crowd; the collected responses are the work.

#### The File Room — Antoni Muntadas (1994)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: An archive that only grows if the public reports the cases.
- What it is: An installation of filing cabinets at the Chicago Cultural Center with computers where visitors could read and add cases of cultural censorship, linked to an online archive that anyone could extend.
- Protocol: Visitors in the gallery or online could browse the database of censorship cases by date, place, medium or grounds, and submit new cases through a form; submissions were added to the shared archive.
- What the collective did: Contributors worldwide added cases from historical to current, turning the installation into a growing public database; since 2001 it has been maintained by the National Coalition Against Censorship.
- Images: http://www.mediaartnet.org/assets/img/data/2021/bild.jpg https://www.thefileroom.org/documents/sala.gif
- Project page: https://www.thefileroom.org/

#### Last Real Net Art Museum — Olia Lialina (2000)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Let the copies be the collection.
- What it is: An online museum that collects remakes, remixes and homages of Lialina's 1996 work My Boyfriend Came Back from the War made by other artists. It opened in March 2000 and is still being added to.
- Protocol: Any artist may make their own version of the work; Lialina links accepted versions from the museum, but each stays on its maker's own server and can be changed, replaced or deleted by them.
- What the collective did: Artists including JODI, Constant Dullaart and Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn contributed versions over more than two decades, forming a living archive of how net art is copied and reinterpreted.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Olia_Lialina_-_20_years_of_My_Boyfriend_Came_Back_From_The_War_%2825184857536%29.jpg/960px-Olia_Lialina_-_20_years_of_My_Boyfriend_Came_Back_From_The_War_%2825184857536%29.jpg
- Project page: https://mbcbftw.museum/collection.html

#### Learning to Love You More — Miranda July, Harrell Fletcher (2002)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: Write the assignment, not the artwork, and let strangers make the work.
- What it is: A website of numbered assignments — 'Make an encouraging banner', 'Take a flash photo under your bed' — that anyone could complete and send in. Reports were posted online and shown in exhibitions, screenings and a book.
- Protocol: July and Fletcher published assignments one at a time on the site, each with brief instructions; participants did the assignment in their own lives and submitted a report (photo, text, video or sound), which the artists posted.
- What the collective did: Over seven years more than 8,000 people responded to 70 assignments; the project ended in 2009 with 'Say goodbye', and SFMOMA acquired it in 2010.
- Images: https://d1hhug17qm51in.cloudfront.net/www-media/2026/08/20195322/2010.264_01_H02.jpg
- Project page: http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/

#### The Sheep Market — Aaron Koblin (2006)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Market & exchange, Open participation
- Idea: One absurd micro-task, repeated for 10,000 strangers, shows the crowd behind digital labour.
- What it is: A collection of 10,000 sheep drawn by workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk, each paid two cents to 'draw a sheep facing to the left'. Each sheep is shown with an animation of how it was drawn.
- Protocol: Koblin posted a paid task on Mechanical Turk with one instruction, 'draw a sheep facing to the left', a simple drawing tool that recorded every stroke, and a fixed fee of $0.02 per drawing.
- What the collective did: Anonymous workers produced 10,000 sheep that range from careful drawings to scribbles and refusals, a record of how a paid crowd interprets an instruction.
- Video: https://vimeo.com/3199933
- Images: https://www.aaronkoblin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/the-sheep-market-hero.jpg https://www.aaronkoblin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/sheep-market-additional.jpg
- Project page: https://www.aaronkoblin.com/project/the-sheep-market/

#### Man with a Movie Camera: The Global Remake — Perry Bard (2007)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Chance & randomness, Instruction & score
- Idea: Turn a film into a shot list and let the world fill it in.
- What it is: A participatory remake of Dziga Vertov's 1929 film, broken down into its 1,276 shots, each of which anyone can reshoot and upload. The software assembles a new version every day from the submissions.
- Protocol: Participants choose a shot from Vertov's film, interpret it however they like, and upload it; each day the system picks at random among the submissions for each shot and plays them side by side with the original.
- What the collective did: Contributors from many countries filmed their own versions of Vertov's shots, so the remake is never the same twice.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEykp9PsDkw
- Images: https://docubase.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Man-with-Movie-Camera-Remake.jpg
- Project page: https://docubase.mit.edu/project/man-with-a-movie-camera-global-remake/

#### Ten Thousand Cents — Aaron Koblin, Takashi Kawashima (2008)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Currency & value, Instruction & score
- Idea: Make the labour cost, the subject and the sale price of a work the same $100.
- What it is: An image of a US $100 bill split into 10,000 tiles, each redrawn by a different Mechanical Turk worker for one cent without knowing what the whole would be. The finished piece is shown as a video of all 10,000 parts being drawn at once.
- Protocol: Each worker received one tile and a custom drawing tool, was paid $0.01, and was not told the overall task. Prints were sold at $100 each, with proceeds going to One Laptop per Child.
- What the collective did: Workers in 51 countries drew the 10,000 tiles between November 2007 and March 2008, for a total labour cost of 10,000 cents.
- Video: https://vimeo.com/873019
- Images: https://www.aaronkoblin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/10kc-hero.jpg
- Project page: http://www.tenthousandcents.com/

#### Bicycle Built for Two Thousand — Aaron Koblin, Daniel Massey (2009)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Market & exchange, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: A human choir assembled the way a synthesiser assembles samples.
- What it is: The song 'Daisy Bell', the first song sung by a computer in 1961, rebuilt from 2,088 voice recordings by online workers who each imitated a short sound clip without knowing the song.
- Protocol: Workers on Mechanical Turk were paid to listen to a short sound clip and record themselves imitating it; the recordings were then placed back in sequence to form the song.
- What the collective did: 2,088 separate recordings from workers who never heard each other were assembled into a single performance of the song.
- Video: https://vimeo.com/3571124
- Images: https://www.aaronkoblin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/bb2k-hero.jpg
- Project page: https://www.aaronkoblin.com/project/bicycle-built-for-two-thousand/

#### Star Wars Uncut — Casey Pugh (2009)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Voting & governance, Instruction & score
- Idea: Cut a feature film into 15-second claims and a fan crowd can remake all of it.
- What it is: A shot-for-shot remake of the 1977 film Star Wars made by fans, 15 seconds at a time. Each segment is in a different style — live action, animation, Lego stop-motion — and the full film was released free on YouTube in 2010.
- Protocol: From July 2009 fans could sign up on the website to claim a 15-second scene and recreate it any way they liked; several versions were submitted per scene and votes decided which went into the final cut.
- What the collective did: Contributors worldwide produced the 473 fifteen-second segments that make up the finished film, which won a 2010 Emmy for interactive media; a sequel remade The Empire Strikes Back in 2014.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ezeYJUz-84
- Images: http://files.starwarsuncut.com/assets/illo_howto-b8a57b5068d5069e0240fd1dabf4f3c8a8f432b60c4d55d5fe2f002a8d67b0cd.png
- Project page: http://www.starwarsuncut.com/

#### Wikipedia Art — Scott Kildall, Nathaniel Stern (2009)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Rules & constraints, Open participation
- Idea: Use an encyclopedia's own citation rules as the medium, and its editors become co-authors.
- What it is: An artwork that was also a Wikipedia article about itself: whatever the article said, backed by citations, was the work. Editors deleted it after about 15 hours, and the ensuing dispute, including a trademark letter from the Wikimedia Foundation, became part of the piece.
- Protocol: The work consisted of whatever the Wikipedia article on 'Wikipedia Art' said at any moment; anyone could edit it under Wikipedia's rules, so published writing about the work could be cited to change it.
- What the collective did: Wikipedia editors debated and removed the article within hours; press coverage, blog posts and legal correspondence that followed extended the work, which was later shown in the 2009 Venice Biennale's Internet Pavilion.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Wikipedia_Art.png
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Kildall

#### Life in a Day — Kevin Macdonald (2010)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: One date as the whole brief: film your day, and the crowd becomes a portrait of the planet.
- What it is: A feature documentary edited from videos that people around the world filmed on a single day, 24 July 2010, and uploaded to YouTube. It premiered at Sundance in January 2011.
- Protocol: Anyone could film anything on 24 July 2010 and upload it to a YouTube channel; contributors kept copyright but licensed the footage, and those whose clips were used were credited as co-directors.
- What the collective did: People in 192 nations sent 80,000 submissions totalling 4,500 hours of footage, edited into a 95-minute film.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/64/Lifeinaday_2011.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_a_Day_(2011_film)

#### The Johnny Cash Project — Aaron Koblin, Chris Milk (2010)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation
- Idea: Split a film into frames and hand each frame to a stranger.
- What it is: A music video for Johnny Cash's 'Ain't No Grave' in which every frame is drawn by a different person over a frame of archival footage. The video keeps changing as new drawings are added.
- Protocol: Each visitor received a single frame of archival footage as a template, drew over it with an online tool and submitted it; each submission took that frame's place in a continuously updated video.
- What the collective did: Contributors from many countries drew the frames, so the video flickers between different hands and styles and keeps changing as new drawings are added.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwNVlNt9iDk
- Images: https://www.aaronkoblin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/0435_1920.png https://www.aaronkoblin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/0862_1920.png
- Project page: https://www.aaronkoblin.com/project/johnny-cash-project/

#### Virtual Choir — Eric Whitacre (2010)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: A score, a conductor on video and an upload link are enough to make a choir that never meets.
- What it is: A choir of singers who record their parts alone at home, following a video of Whitacre conducting, and upload them to be mixed into one performance. The first, 'Lux Aurumque', was released in March 2010.
- Protocol: Whitacre publishes the score, a guide track and a conducting video; singers download them, film themselves singing one part while watching the conductor, and upload the video; editors align and mix all submissions.
- What the collective did: Virtual Choir 1 combined 185 singers from 12 countries; Virtual Choir 2 ('Sleep', 2011) combined 2,051 singers from 58 countries, and later editions grew larger.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7o7BrlbaDs
- Images: https://ericwhitacre.com/wp-content/uploads/vc1.jpg
- Project page: https://ericwhitacre.com/the-virtual-choir

#### This Exquisite Forest — Aaron Koblin, Chris Milk (2012)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation
- Idea: The exquisite corpse, with branching allowed.
- What it is: An online animation tool, presented by Tate Modern and Google, in which invited artists began short animations and the public added new segments. Each story grows like a tree, splitting into branches when several people continue the same segment.
- Protocol: Artists seeded each tree with a first animation and a theme; anyone could draw a short continuation of any existing segment with the online tool, and each continuation became a new branch.
- What the collective did: From 2012 to 2014 visitors online and in the gallery extended the seeded animations into branching narratives, shown as trees at Tate Modern.
- Video: https://vimeo.com/45472189
- Images: https://www.aaronkoblin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/hero-image2.jpg https://www.aaronkoblin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/tef-01.jpg
- Project page: https://www.aaronkoblin.com/project/this-exquisite-forest/

#### NaNoGenMo (National Novel Generation Month) — Darius Kazemi (2013)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints, Open participation
- Idea: Write a rule for writing the rules: the crowd's generators are the literature.
- What it is: Every November, participants write code that generates a novel of at least 50,000 words and share it on GitHub. Kazemi started it in 2013 from a tweet, as a counterpart to National Novel Writing Month.
- Protocol: Spend November writing code that generates a 'novel' of 50,000+ words, defined however you like; the only rule is to share at least one novel and your source code by the end. Participants declare intent and post progress as GitHub issues.
- What the collective did: Programmers and writers have produced a large public archive of generated novels and open-source generators, with the event repeated every year since 2013.
- Images: https://opengraph.githubassets.com/e1a423ae4517b8b338094f65d3db4ad6450c8da4c2074cd063e59baf19847e76/dariusk/NaNoGenMo
- Project page: https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo
- Code: https://github.com/dariusk/NaNoGenMo

#### Social Turk — Jonas Lund (2013)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Currency & value, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: A feedback loop where attention pays strangers to produce more content for attention.
- What it is: A website that shows tweets written by Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, paid for by the advertising revenue of the website itself.
- Protocol: Mechanical Turk workers are paid to answer Twitter's question 'What's happening?'; the ad income from people viewing the site funds the next tasks.
- What the collective did: An anonymous crowd of paid workers and a crowd of viewers together kept an endless stream of tweets running.
- Images: https://cdn.jonaslund.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/29130139/Screen-Shot-2017-03-13-at-23.20.37-.png
- Project page: https://jonaslund.com/works/social-turk/

#### Social Turkers — Lauren Lee McCarthy (2013)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Market & exchange, Open participation
- Idea: Rent a crowd to make your social decisions for you.
- What it is: McCarthy went on twenty OkCupid dates while streaming them to paid Mechanical Turk workers, who watched and texted her what to do or say next.
- Protocol: Remote workers were paid to watch the live stream, interpret what was happening and send instructions; McCarthy had to carry out each instruction immediately.
- What the collective did: Anonymous workers steered twenty real dates, producing a record of how strangers read and redirect an intimate encounter.
- Images: https://freight.cargo.site/w/1200/i/9b389b3d29bfe5b74dfb7cbbf9ad0b611e789b2a8df6703f1c89aa91896e7194/ustream1_anon.jpg
- Project page: https://lauren-mccarthy.com/Social-Turkers

#### BEFNOED (By Everyone, For No One, Every Day) — Eva & Franco Mattes (2014)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Market & exchange, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Outsource performance art to the gig economy and keep the performers unknown.
- What it is: Short videos of anonymous people performing odd instructions, with titles such as Licking Rim, Bucket Salute and Watering Fish, commissioned through crowdsourcing platforms. Begun in 2013 and first exhibited in 2014, the videos are shown on awkwardly placed monitors and seeded on obscure social networks.
- Protocol: The artists write instructions and hire workers on crowdsourcing sites to film themselves carrying them out; the workers' identities, locations and motives stay unknown to the artists and the audience.
- What the collective did: Anonymous workers produced a growing archive of strange, deadpan performances, which circulate online detached from their makers and are installed in museums so viewers must crouch or crane to watch.
- Images: https://0100101110101101.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/befnoed-screenshot-ladder-somewhere-1-1024x577.jpg https://0100101110101101.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/exhib-carrollfletcher-befnoed-monitor-bottom-with-person-1024x683.jpg
- Project page: https://0100101110101101.org/befnoed/

#### Exhausting a Crowd — Kyle McDonald (2015)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Crowdsource Perec: a crowd describing a crowd, one annotation at a time.
- What it is: Twelve hours of video of London's Piccadilly Circus, put online so that anyone could click on a passer-by and write a note about them. The piece borrows its method from Georges Perec's attempt to record everything happening in a Paris square.
- Protocol: Visitors to the site scrub through the footage, click on any person or event, and type a note that stays pinned to it; all notes are shown to later viewers as they watch.
- What the collective did: Online viewers layered the footage with observations, jokes and invented stories about strangers; the format was repeated in the Netherlands, Birmingham, Gwangju and Beijing.
- Images: http://exhaustingacrowd.com/og_image.jpg
- Project page: https://www.exhaustingacrowd.com/
- Code: https://github.com/kylemcdonald/ExhaustingACrowd

### Collective Canvases & Games

Shared canvases, buttons and games where one simple rule meets a very large crowd.

#### net.flag — Mark Napier (2002)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation
- Idea: A national symbol with no nation, owned by whoever touched it last.
- What it is: A flag for the internet, commissioned by the Guggenheim, that any visitor can redesign from the parts of the world's national flags. The current flag is always the last one saved.
- Protocol: Visitors choose colours, patterns and symbols broken out of all national flags, compose a new flag and save it; the saved flag replaces the previous one on the site, and all past versions stay browsable.
- What the collective did: Visitors produced a running history of flags over a decade, about 23,000 of which were compiled into net.flag: ten years of flags (2002–2012), a record of claims and counterclaims on a shared emblem.
- Images: https://www.guggenheim.org/wp-content/uploads/2002/01/2002.17_ph_web-1.jpg https://www.bitforms.art/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/mn_mn_netflag_1_hr.png
- Project page: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/10703

#### BumpList: An Email Community for the Determined — Jonah Brucker-Cohen (2003)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Supply & scarcity, Time, decay & death
- Idea: One membership rule turns a mailing list into a game of staying present.
- What it is: A mailing list that only six people can belong to at once. Each new subscriber 'bumps' the longest-standing member off the list, and a hall of fame ranks members by time on the list, posts and re-subscriptions.
- Protocol: Membership is capped at six; when a new person subscribes, the first subscriber is automatically removed and must resubscribe to return. Statistics on time, posts and bumps are published.
- What the collective did: Members posted urgently while they could and resubscribed repeatedly after being bumped, making visible the pressure to keep participating that online communities create.
- Text: https://web.media.mit.edu/~stefan/hc/publications/BruckerCohen04BumpListCHI.pdf (CHI 2004)
- Images: https://whitneymedia.org/assets/image/829398/large_bumplist_2023.png http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/assets/img/data/3504/bild.jpg
- Project page: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/jonah-brucker-cohen

#### SwarmSketch — Peter Edmunds (2005)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Voting & governance, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Limit each person's mark, then let the crowd weight every mark.
- What it is: An online canvas where the public draws a picture of the week's popular search term, one short line per visitor. Everyone also votes on the darkness of other people's lines, so the crowd both draws and edits the sketch.
- Protocol: Each week the site picks a popular search term as the subject; each visit allows only a short line, after which the visitor votes on the opacity of lines by others. A line's darkness is the average of its votes, and a new sketch starts after a week or 1,000 lines.
- What the collective did: Anonymous contributors produced a weekly series of sketches of news and pop culture topics, each drawn and moderated by the crowd over several years.
- Text: https://ojs.ruc.dk/index.php/pdc/article/view/361 (PDC 2006)
- Images: http://web.archive.org/web/20090528061650im_/http://swarmsketch.com/_img/large/img000258.jpg
- Project page: http://web.archive.org/web/20080110101609/http://swarmsketch.com:80/

#### The Million Dollar Homepage — Alex Tew (2005)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Supply & scarcity, Open participation
- Idea: Price every pixel of a canvas and the market draws the picture.
- What it is: A 1000 × 1000 pixel web page whose pixels were sold for $1 each in 10 × 10 blocks. Buyers filled their blocks with tiny linked ads, and the page became a dense patchwork of logos.
- Protocol: Anyone could buy a block of at least 100 pixels at $1 per pixel, supply a small image, a link and a hover slogan; blocks were permanent and the page's total space was fixed at one million pixels.
- What the collective did: Launched on 26 August 2005, the page sold out within months; the last 1,000 pixels were auctioned on eBay in January 2006 for $38,100, bringing gross income to $1,037,100. Many of its links have since rotted.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3f/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage.png
- Project page: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

#### FB Graffiti — Joel Simon (2014)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Turn a curated platform back into a wall: anonymous, permanent, public marks layered on top of it.
- What it is: A Chrome extension that opened every wall post and photo on Facebook to graffiti, visible to everyone else who installed it; after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015 its use surged and politicians' photos filled with drawings.
- Protocol: Anyone with the extension may draw on any Facebook post or photo. All drawings are public to other users, completely anonymous and permanent, with no undo or erase; a snapshot can be shared to a friend's wall.
- What the collective did: Users layered drawings and running conversations over photos across the site; after the Charlie Hebdo attack most French politicians' photos were covered and 'Je suis Charlie' became a common motif, which Simon describes as collective political discord. He later cited it as showing 'the creative capacity of crowds' and as the model for Ganbreeder.
- Images: https://www.joelsimon.net/imgs/fb-graffiti/10151261160446749.png https://www.joelsimon.net/imgs/fb-graffiti/10203951830421023.png
- Project page: https://www.joelsimon.net/facebook-graffiti

#### Twitch Plays Pokémon — The Streamer (Twitch Plays Pokémon) (2014)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Chance & randomness, Voting & governance
- Idea: Wire a chat room straight to a game controller and a crowd becomes one erratic player.
- What it is: A live stream of Pokémon Red controlled by the stream's chat: every message that named a button was sent to the emulator. The chaotic crowd finished the game after more than 16 days.
- Protocol: An IRC bot read chat messages such as 'up', 'a' or 'start' and passed each one to the game as a button press; later the streamer added a switch between 'anarchy' (every command) and 'democracy' (a timed vote on the next command), which chat could vote on.
- What the collective did: Twitch estimated that over 1.16 million people took part, with peak simultaneous participation of 121,000 and 55 million views, completing Pokémon Red on 1 March 2014; players built a mythology around in-game accidents.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/15/Twitch_plays_pokemon_animated.gif
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch_Plays_Pok%C3%A9mon

#### Unnumbered Sparks — Janet Echelman, Aaron Koblin (2014)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: A sculpture the size of a city block whose surface belongs to whoever is standing below it.
- What it is: A giant net sculpture floating over Vancouver's waterfront during the 2014 TED conference, lit by projections that visitors drew in real time from their phones.
- Protocol: Visitors connected their phones to a web app and drew with their fingers; each person's strokes were projected onto the net in real time alongside everyone else's.
- What the collective did: The crowd on the waterfront continuously repainted the sculpture with overlapping strokes, so its appearance was set by whoever was drawing at that moment.
- Images: https://www.aaronkoblin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/hero-image.jpg https://www.aaronkoblin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/gallery-01.jpg
- Project page: https://www.aaronkoblin.com/project/unnumbered-sparks/

#### The Button — Josh Wardle (2015)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Time, decay & death, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: A one-time action, a shared clock and a visible mark of when you acted are enough to create factions.
- What it is: A button and a 60-second countdown on Reddit for April Fools' Day 2015. Every press reset the timer for everyone; each account could press only once, and the experiment ended when the timer finally reached zero two months later.
- Protocol: Only accounts created before 1 April 2015 could press, and only once; pressing reset the global 60-second timer and gave the presser a coloured flair showing the seconds left when they pressed. Non-pressers kept a grey flair.
- What the collective did: Over one million accounts clicked, logging 1,008,316 presses. Users formed 'cults' around flair colours, from purple (pressed with most time left) to those who held out for red, until no one pressed on 5 June 2015.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/The_Button_%28Reddit%29.gif
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Button_(Reddit)

#### Critical Mass — Jonas Lund (2017)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Run a gallery like a social network: the room rearranges itself to chase the audience's feedback.
- What it is: An installation at the Galerie Édouard-Manet (12 October to 9 December 2017) that changed according to what online users did on a website showing a live stream of the gallery.
- Protocol: Users of the critical-mass website watch the live stream and answer the interface's prompts and polls; their input and feedback trigger changes in the physical space, which functions as a social network, a game and a speculative exhibition at once.
- What the collective did: Remote participants collectively steered the gallery through their clicks and opinions, making the exhibition's state a record of crowd feedback loops.
- Images: https://cdn.jonaslund.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/29083956/cm4-scaled.jpg
- Project page: https://jonaslund.com/works/critical-mass/

#### Place (r/place 2017) — Josh Wardle (2017)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation
- Idea: Limit each person to one pixel at a time and the only way to make an image is to organise.
- What it is: A blank 1000 × 1000 pixel canvas on Reddit where any user could place one coloured tile, then had to wait minutes before placing another. Over 72 hours communities organised to draw flags, logos and artworks, and fought over space.
- Protocol: Logged-in users could colour one tile from a 16-colour palette, then wait out a cooldown (five minutes for most of the event) before the next; tiles could be overwritten by anyone, and every placement was broadcast live.
- What the collective did: According to Reddit, over a million users placed 16.5 million tiles in 72 hours. Subreddits and nations formed alliances and rivalries; the bottom-right corner alone changed colour 37,214 times by 23,798 users as r/TheBlueCorner held it.
- Images: https://redditinc.com/hubfs/Reddit%20Inc/Blog/Imported_Blog_Media/place-final.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Place_2017.svg/960px-Place_2017.svg.png
- Project page: https://www.redditinc.com/blog/place-part-two

#### Culture Wars .xyz — Jonas Lund (2018)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Forward the invitation: give your page in a magazine to whoever turns up.
- What it is: Invited by Spike Art Quarterly to fill a double-page spread in its 'Culture Wars' issue (#56), Lund passed the invitation to the public as a shared online canvas that anyone could paint on.
- Protocol: Anyone visiting the website can draw on the same canvas; at 23:59 on 10 May 2018 the canvas freezes, and the frozen state is printed as the double spread.
- What the collective did: Online visitors painted over one another until the deadline, and their final contested image ran in the magazine as the artist's contribution.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2LbnufCbWs
- Images: https://cdn.jonaslund.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/29085242/Screen-Shot-2020-04-20-at-14.28.22-.png
- Project page: https://jonaslund.com/works/culture-wars-xyz/

#### Ganbreeder / Artbreeder — Joel Simon (2018)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Merge & composite, Open participation
- Idea: Explore a space too large for one person by letting a crowd breed and share its way through it.
- What it is: A website, launched as Ganbreeder in November 2018 and renamed Artbreeder, where people discover images by 'breeding' them in the latent space of GANs: they make children of an image, cross it with images others have made and share the results by URL.
- Protocol: Any image can have children (random mutations), be crossed with any other public image with a slider for how much each parent contributes, or be tuned by 'gene' sliders; every image keeps a link to its parents. Simon modelled it on Picbreeder and framed it as an experiment in using breeding and sharing to explore high-complexity spaces.
- What the collective did: Users bred and remixed each other's images into long genealogies of portraits, landscapes and paintings, used for portraits of characters from novels, AI Dungeon profile pictures and music videos; Simon calls it the first widely accessible tool for AI image generation. Simon later printed the full family trees of single images, each spanning thousands of collaborative transformations, as Latent Lineages (Automata Gallery, Art Basel 2025).
- Images: https://www.joelsimon.net/imgs/gangrid.jpg https://www.joelsimon.net/imgs/latent-lineages/e5d34030a7dd0ae2a2b0956edf7d_4096_neato_layout.jpeg
- Project page: https://www.joelsimon.net/ganbreeder
- Code: https://github.com/joel-simon/ganbreeder

#### r/place 2022 — Reddit (2022)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Co-authorship & derivatives, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Change the rules mid-game — more space, more colours, then only white — and watch the crowd reorganise.
- What it is: Reddit's second run of Place, which lasted 87 hours. The canvas started at 1000 × 1000 and was expanded twice, to 2000 × 2000, and ended with a phase where only white tiles could be placed.
- Protocol: Logged-in users could place one tile every five minutes; Reddit expanded the canvas and the palette (up to 32 colours) during the event, and in the final phase allowed only white, erasing the canvas.
- What the collective did: Reddit reported more than 10.4 million redditors placing over 160 million tiles, with participants from 236 countries and territories. The final white-only phase turned the erasure of the canvas into one more collective act.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/01/RPlace2022.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Place_2022.svg/960px-Place_2022.svg.png
- Project page: https://www.mediaweek.com.au/10-4-million-people-get-involved-as-r-place-returns-to-reddit

#### r/place 2023 — Reddit (2023)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Voting & governance, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: A shared canvas becomes a protest banner when the crowd disagrees with the host.
- What it is: The third r/place, launched on 20 July 2023. It began at 1000 × 1000 with eight colours and grew to 3000 × 2000 with 32, amid user protests against Reddit's new API pricing.
- Protocol: Same one-tile cooldown rule as earlier editions, with a canvas and palette enlarged in stages; Reddit administrators could place unlimited tiles and removed content they judged offensive.
- What the collective did: Alongside the usual flags and fandom art, users repeatedly wrote messages against Reddit's CEO over the API changes; administrators overwrote them, making moderation visible on the canvas.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/R-place_2023_final.jpg
- Project page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/place

#### Meet me on the deep net — Lizz Thabet (2024)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Stage the request-response ritual of anonymous networking as intimacy between strangers.
- What it is: A tiny browser game about crossing an ocean to meet a stranger, modelled on how Tor sets up anonymous rendezvous points; afterwards players visit a Tor site where earlier players have left islands and waves for future visitors.
- Protocol: Players complete the game, then travel to an onion site through Tor and leave a contribution to a shared landscape.
- What the collective did: The deep-net landscape is built by everyone who has played and keeps growing for those who journey to find it.
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/can-you-imagine.gif
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/pills/meet-me-on-the-deep-net

#### One Million Checkboxes — Nolen Royalty (2024)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints, Time, decay & death
- Idea: The smallest possible shared control, multiplied a million times, becomes a canvas and a battleground.
- What it is: A web page with one million checkboxes shared by everyone: checking a box checks it for all visitors. Built in two days, it went viral and ran for two weeks before being frozen.
- Protocol: Any visitor can check or uncheck any box, and every change is synced to all visitors in real time; late in the run, boxes that stayed checked long enough were locked.
- What the collective did: Players made more than 650 million check and uncheck actions. Some raced to check or uncheck as many boxes as possible; others used bots and scripts to draw pictures and hide messages in the grid.
- Images: https://eieio.games/images/one-million-checkboxes/main-image.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/One_Million_Checkboxes_mobile_2024-07-04.jpg
- Project page: https://eieio.games/blog/one-million-checkboxes/

#### One Million Chessboards — Nolen Royalty (2025)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Remove turns and ownership from chess and see what rules a crowd keeps.
- What it is: A 1000 × 1000 grid of chessboards shared by everyone, where moving a piece moves it for all players instantly and pieces can cross from one board to the next. The successor to One Million Checkboxes.
- Protocol: Pieces move by chess rules, but there are no turns and no assigned sides; any visitor can move any piece, pieces may move between boards, but may not capture pieces on another board.
- What the collective did: In the ten days after launch in 2025, over 150,000 players made more than 15 million moves. Players exploited the no-capture-across-boards rule to build indestructible formations, nicknamed Rooklyn and Queens.
- Images: https://eieio.games/images/a-million-realtime-chess-boards-in-a-single-process/og-image.png
- Project page: https://eieio.games/blog/a-million-realtime-chess-boards-in-a-single-process/

#### Wplace — Murilo Matsubara (2025)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Currency & value, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Put the pixel war on a map and players start defending home towns.
- What it is: A collaborative pixel canvas laid over a map of the whole world, where users paint pixels onto real places. Inspired by r/place, it drew over a million users in its first four days in July 2025.
- Protocol: Each user holds a pool of pixels (starting at 30) that refills one pixel every 30 seconds; placing pixels earns levels and 'droplets', an in-game currency that buys more capacity, extra colours or a national flag that refunds pixels placed in that country.
- What the collective did: Users covered cities with fan art, flags and memorial murals and fought frequent wars over territory; the pay-to-win features and server outages drew complaints that the developer addressed publicly in August 2025.
- Images: https://wplace.live/img/og-image.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/Wplace_Tokyo.png
- Project page: https://wplace.live/

### Open Infrastructure & Commons

Artist-built infrastructures, file drops and commons that strangers maintain and use.

#### The Thing — Wolfgang Staehle (1991)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Build the infrastructure and let the community be the sculpture.
- What it is: A dial-up bulletin board system for artists started in New York in 1991, conceived on the model of Joseph Beuys's social sculpture. It grew into a web community, hosting service and mailing lists that shaped 1990s net art.
- Protocol: Members dialled in by modem to read and post in threaded boards on art and theory; Staehle and collaborators set up the editorial structure, while members supplied the conversation and, later, their own sites on its servers.
- What the collective did: Artists and critics used The Thing for debate, gossip and publishing; by the late 1990s it hosted dozens of member sites and bbs.thing.net, the first website devoted to net art.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/The_Thing_screen.jpg http://www.mediaartnet.org/assets/img/data/1649/bild.jpg
- Project page: https://the.thing.net/about/about.html

#### Dead Drops — Aram Bartholl (2010)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: An offline, anonymous file-sharing network built into the city by the people who use it.
- What it is: USB flash drives cemented into walls, buildings and curbs, open to anyone who plugs in a laptop. Bartholl installed the first five in New York in 2010 and published instructions so anyone could add more.
- Protocol: Each dead drop is installed empty except for a readme.txt explaining the project; anyone may drop or take files. To add a node, follow the published how-to, then submit the location and photos to the project's database.
- What the collective did: Strangers installed dead drops worldwide; Bartholl's site reports more than 1,400 in dozens of countries, with contents left and taken anonymously.
- Images: https://arambartholl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/aram_bartholl_dead_drops_2010_01-e1526384395486-1024x683.jpg https://deaddrops.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/deaddrops1-600x400.jpg
- Project page: https://deaddrops.com/

#### Speed Show — Aram Bartholl (2010)
- Type: Score & instruction set · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints, Open participation
- Idea: A free exhibition format anyone can run, with the constraints written in.
- What it is: An exhibition format for browser-based art: rent every computer in an internet café for one night and hold an opening there. Bartholl published the rules, and curators in many cities have staged their own.
- Protocol: Rent all computers in an internet café for one night during normal opening hours; all works must be online and run in a standard browser with standard plug-ins; no custom software, offline files or physical changes to the café; the show is public.
- What the collective did: Curators have run Speed Shows under the rules in Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, Beijing, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, Dublin, Montreal and other cities, each documented on speedshow.net.
- Images: https://arambartholl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Aram_Bartholl_Speedshow_01-1024x681.jpg https://arambartholl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/speed-show-face-the-face-aram-bartholl-link-in-bio-mdbk-2019-01-1024x683.jpg
- Project page: https://speedshow.net/about/

#### Shareable Readymades — Rhea Myers (2011)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Turn canonical signature objects of art history back into a commons anyone can reproduce.
- What it is: 3D-printable models of a urinal, a balloon dog and a pipe, commissioned by the artist from Christine Webber and Bassam Kurdali and released under CC BY-SA for anyone to print.
- Protocol: The models are free to download, print, modify and share under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence, with attribution to the commissioning artist. Furtherfield exhibited them with Certificates of Inauthenticity detourned from Sol LeWitt's wall-drawing certificates.
- What the collective did: Others took the files further: at #BlockchainLive18 in London, Ruth Catlow and Charlotte Frost of DECAL and Furtherfield produced gold castings of the Balloon Dog and registered them on a blockchain, which led to the artist's Certificate of Inauthenticity NFTs (2020).
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/urinal.8ce9e987b5cfdb58.png https://rhea.art/images/balloon-dog.png https://rhea.art/processed_images/Urinal04-cropped.45a9ed80bdcc6f07.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/shareable-readymades/

#### Keepalive — Aram Bartholl (2015)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Time, decay & death, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A network that stays up only as long as someone keeps the fire burning.
- What it is: A boulder in a field in Lower Saxony with a thermoelectric generator and an offline Wi-Fi router inside. Visitors must build a fire next to the stone to power the router and reach its library of survival guides.
- Protocol: The router is not connected to the internet and switches on only while a fire heats the stone; anyone connected can download the PDF survival guides and upload any content to the stone's database.
- What the collective did: Visitors who make the fire keep the network alive and add to the stone's collection, so its content grows with each gathering around it.
- Images: https://arambartholl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/aram_bartholl_keepalive_2015_01-1024x683.jpg https://arambartholl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/aram_bartholl_keepalive_2015_03-1024x683.jpg
- Project page: https://arambartholl.com/keepalive/

#### Hashd0x | Proof of War — Egor Kraft (2022)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Open participation, Contract & certificate
- Idea: In an age of synthetic images, build tools that let a crowd compute truth, not only fiction.
- What it is: Open-source software and hardware prototypes, made in response to the war in Ukraine, that register tamper-proof 'hashmarks' of photos and videos on public blockchains, shown with installations including a 3D rendering of a house in Bucha.
- Protocol: A dedicated camera (Raspberry Pi with telephoto lens) or a mobile app records an image and, at the same moment, writes a hashmark (content hash, metadata, timestamp and the attestant's signature) through smart contracts to public blockchains, with files kept on decentralised storage (Ethereum Swarm). Anyone can later check an image's provenance against its hashmark.
- What the collective did: The protocol is meant to be used by citizen journalists and open-source investigators, who build a trust network by attesting and validating each other's imagery. Companion works extend the series: Decentralised Embargo mines Ethereum on Gazprom Germania electricity and sends the coins to Ukraine's official crypto wallet, and Uncensorship Architecture stores banned journalistic archives across thousands of nodes. It received an Honorary Mention in the 2023 S+T+ARTS Prize.
- Images: https://ars.electronica.art/starts-prize/files/2023/06/Hashd0x_EK_Lies-Half-Truths-Propaganda_2022_6-c-Trevor-Good..jpg https://ars.electronica.art/starts-prize/files/2023/06/Hashd0x_Uncensorship_Architecture_E.Kraft_3-c-Trevor-Good..jpg
- Project page: https://ars.electronica.art/starts-prize/en/hashd0x-proof-of-war/
- Code: https://github.com/Hashd0x/

#### Have I Been Trained? and the Do Not Train registry — Spawning, Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herndon (2022)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Open participation, Contract & certificate, Voting & governance
- Idea: Turn millions of individual refusals into one registry that the industry has to read.
- What it is: A public website where anyone can search the LAION-5B image dataset for their own work and flag it; the flags go into a shared Do Not Train registry that AI companies partnered with Spawning filter out of their training data.
- Protocol: Anyone may search the dataset by text, image or URL and mark images, or from March 2023 whole domains, as opted out. Spawning keeps the registry and offers an API and Python package so model trainers can drop opted-out items at training time; partners such as Stability AI and Hugging Face agreed to honour it. Spawning later added ai.txt, a file with which a website states its AI-training permissions.
- What the collective did: Artists and rights holders used the site at scale: by March 2023 they had removed 80 million artworks from the Stable Diffusion 3 training set, by late April 2023 opt-outs had passed 1 billion, and about 30,000 domains had been registered (TechCrunch). The registry became a reference point that platforms and policy groups point to.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H--42zhgJXc
- Images: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/haveibeentrained.png
- Project page: https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/03/spawning-lays-out-its-plans-for-letting-creators-opt-out-of-generative-ai-training/

#### Kudurru — Spawning, Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herndon (2023)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Let many small websites defend one boundary together, and feed junk to the machine that ignores it.
- What it is: A free plug-in and defence network that spots AI scrapers as they download images and lets each participating site block them or send back a different image, such as a middle finger.
- Protocol: Spawning runs a honeypot network of more than 1,000 websites hosting images listed in LAION-5B and records the IP addresses that scrape them, updating a shared blocklist in real time. Artists who install the Kudurru WordPress plug-in choose either to block listed scrapers or to 'poison' them by returning an image of their choice. The name refers to Mesopotamian boundary stones.
- What the collective did: Launched in beta in October 2023. In internal tests in July 2023 the network stopped everyone downloading LAION-5B for about two hours (WIRED); Spawning's premise is that the blocklist grows stronger the more sites join.
- Images: https://media.wired.com/photos/6527310df524a09dce80d2c5/191:100/w_1280,c_limit/AI_Middle_Finger.jpg
- Project page: https://www.wired.com/story/kudurru-ai-scraping-block-poisoning-spawning/

#### Autonomous Realities — Botao Amber Hu, Yisi Liu (2024)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Contract & certificate
- Idea: A secret handshake as the protocol that lets people share a reality.
- What it is: Two speculative protocols for a future of common mixed-reality headsets: FingerSync, an embodied handshake that opens a shared MR session with proof-carrying data, and Autonomous Realities, a meta-protocol for persistent shared layers.
- Protocol: FingerSync establishes a shared mixed-reality session through an embodied gesture, inspired by the ancient secret handshake; the shared layer is meant to stay persistent and autonomous even when no one is viewing it. The meta-protocol draws on Autonomous Worlds and Zupass.
- What the collective did: Presented as a 2024 Summer of Protocols case study and at Protocol Symposium 2024; the protocols are designed for groups of headset users to establish and keep shared realities.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIJP3Dtj7Sc
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/case-study/autonomous-realities

#### PD12M / Source.Plus / Public Diffusion — Spawning, Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herndon (2024)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Build the training commons from what everyone already owns, and let the public keep it honest.
- What it is: A 12.4-million-image dataset made only of public-domain and CC0 images, curated on the Source.Plus platform, with community flagging to keep it clean, and a text-to-image model, Public Diffusion, trained on it.
- Protocol: Only public-domain or CC0 images enter; they are recaptioned, filtered and re-hosted so links do not decay, and released under CDLA-Permissive-2.0 for anyone to train on. Anyone who finds infringing or objectionable material can flag it on Source.Plus, where a review process removes it and finds a replacement. Source.Plus is also meant as an opt-in library where rights holders offer media on their own terms.
- What the collective did: Released in October 2024 on Hugging Face, where developers download and train on it; the paper describes the flagging and replacement process as community-driven dataset governance. Herndon and Dryhurst present PD12M and Public Diffusion as a studio work alongside their exhibitions.
- Text: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.23144 (arXiv, 2024)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv5wzS5ZnU0
- Images: https://huggingface.co/datasets/Spawning/PD12M/resolve/main/header.jpg https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-10-at-9.33.53%E2%80%AFPM.png
- Project page: https://huggingface.co/datasets/Spawning/PD12M

#### pneumOS — HER: She Loves Data (2025)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Open participation, Self-ownership & autonomy
- Idea: Make open data breathe, so a city can learn to feel its air instead of reading it.
- What it is: A 'cybernetic organ' of five sound membranes and a breathing bag, conceived by Oriana Persico, that turns live air-quality data from three weather stations on Ravenna's dock into sound and breath. Presented to the city in February 2025 and shown in the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka.
- Protocol: The organ compares incoming data with European air-quality standards through a 'grammar of breathing': the closer the air is to the standards, the clearer the tones and the steadier the bag; as pollution rises, the sound fills with noise and the breathing speeds up. It is built on open-source software and open data protocols so that any city can install its own.
- What the collective did: Commissioned in 2022 by the Municipality of Ravenna within the EU-funded DARE urban-regeneration project and developed over two years with doctors, climatologists, musicians and university teams. At its launch HER started 'Respiro', a citizen-science format in which residents learn to read the organ and pay attention to the city's air. The public's role is to learn and attend, not to act under rules, so the fit is weak.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLdJumN8rGs
- Images: https://www.he-r.it/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/pneumOS_20250410_145838-scaled.jpg https://www.he-r.it/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/DSC00310-scaled.jpg https://www.he-r.it/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/PNEUMOS-DEF.jpg
- Project page: https://www.he-r.it/project/pneumos/

## Smart-Contract Art

Artworks whose rules run in a smart contract: supply, burning, merging, transfer, taxes and co-authorship enforced on-chain, and shaped by what collectors do.

### Supply, Burn & Merge

Open editions, burning, merging and composites: the final form is set by how many people buy, burn or combine.

#### ClickMine — Sarah Friend (2017)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Currency & value, Open participation, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: Make players feel how a token supply is created and destroyed by their own clicking.
- What it is: A clicker game on Ethereum mainnet in which every click mines a plot of virtual land and mints an ERC-20 token; players pay real gas to play. It was commissioned through Furtherfield's Cryptodetectorist programme and shown at NEoN Digital Arts Festival.
- Protocol: Each click is a transaction that mints the game's ERC-20 token and claims land; tokens can be spent on power-ups. The game is hyperinflationary: as wealth is created it is also destroyed, and all transfers are public on Etherscan.
- What the collective did: Players collectively produced the token's inflation curve by clicking and spending, paying transaction fees to take part in an economy with no outside value.
- Images: https://isthisa.com/static/ClickMine/all.gif https://isthisa.com/static/ClickMine/Sarah-Friend-ClickMine-Pic1.jpg
- Project page: https://isthisa.com/clickmine

#### CryptoKitties — Dapper Labs (2017)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Open participation, Supply & scarcity, Market & exchange
- Idea: Supply grows from players' breeding choices, and a crowd can clog a whole network.
- What it is: A blockchain game launched on 28 November 2017 in which players buy, breed and trade virtual cats whose genomes pass traits to their offspring.
- Protocol: Each cat is an NFT with a 256-bit genome of 'cattributes'. Any cat can act as matron or sire; breeding creates a new cat whose generation is one higher than its parents and whose cooldown grows with each breeding, capped at one week. Every action costs Ether.
- What the collective did: Players' breeding produced the herd and its rarities; in December 2017 the game's popularity congested Ethereum, pushing transactions to an all-time high. The cat Genesis sold for 246.9255 ETH that month.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWUi8dkv5qU
- Images: https://www.cryptokitties.co/images/share.png
- Project page: https://www.cryptokitties.co
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x06012c8cf97BEaD5deAe237070F9587f8E7A266d

#### Neolastics — Simon de la Rouviere (2020)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Supply & scarcity, Burn & destruction, Market & exchange
- Idea: Give an art series a self-driving market with a built-in price floor.
- What it is: On-chain generative compositions after Mondrian's neoplasticism, sold along a linear bonding curve: every mint raises the price of the next, and every burn pays the burner back from a reserve.
- Protocol: Anyone can mint a randomly generated piece at the current price of a linear bonding curve; the ETH goes into a reserve. Any holder can burn their piece to receive a reward from that reserve, so supply and price move together automatically, with no auction and no curator.
- What the collective did: Collectors' minting and burning set both the size of the series and its price. According to the artist, 467.937 ETH of Neolastics had been bought by 15 February 2021.
- Images: https://neolastics.com/meta.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e1421011232b71c373a8668/1609075572521-6I0Q0SWZU64Z207QCMA9/Screenshot+2020-12-11+at+18.45.14.png
- Project page: https://neolastics.com
- Code: https://github.com/simondlr/neolastics

#### Merge — Pak (2021)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Merge & composite, Supply & scarcity, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: A game of extinction: a contract where every transfer can consume a token, so the market itself shrinks the work toward one survivor.
- What it is: An open sale of 'mass' on Nifty Gateway (2–4 December 2021). Each buyer's units became one dynamic token, and any two tokens that meet in the same wallet fuse, so the number of tokens only goes down.
- Protocol: During the 48-hour sale anyone could buy any number of mass units; at the end each collector's units were merged into one token. The contract lets an ordinary wallet hold only one token: when a second arrives, the larger mass absorbs the smaller and the smaller is burned (whitelisted addresses such as the Nifty Gateway omnibus are exempt). Each token has one of four classes, drawn as a white, yellow, blue-ringed or red-ringed sphere; the single largest mass is the 'alpha', drawn black with a white ring, and every sphere is sized relative to it.
- What the collective did: 28,983 collectors spent $91,806,519 on 312,686 units of mass, which became one token each (Nifty Gateway / Gemini). Secondary trading and deliberate merging then consumed tokens: by September 2026 the contract's totalSupply was 18,961, held by about 9,635 addresses (Blockscout).
- Video: https://x.com/muratpak/status/1465360503400718342
- Images: https://images.ctfassets.net/jg6lo9a2ukvr/3W6db5n9dQJBEIUBbs4G0m/341b8cef31c4f63ed4ad3ae61d4a0ce2/Pak_Merge.jpeg
- Project page: https://www.gemini.com/blog/paks-merge-drop-on-nifty-gateway-breaks-records-in-largest-ever-public-sale
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xc3f8a0F5841aBFf777d3eefA5047e8D413a1C9AB

#### Rocket Factory — Tom Sachs (2021)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Merge & composite, Burn & destruction, Chance & randomness
- Idea: The collector base, not the artist, decides which of 113,000+ possible rockets get built, and the studio has to follow.
- What it is: 3,000 NFT rocket parts (nose cones, bodies, tail assemblies) in 30 brand liveries. Collectors combine three parts into a rocket, and may ask the studio to build and launch a physical twin.
- Protocol: One nose cone, one body and one tail assembly can be combined into a Completed Rocket NFT; the three component NFTs are burned ('comburning'). Same-brand parts make a Perfect Rocket, mixed parts a Frankenrocket. A rocket holder can choose the Launch Option, after which the studio builds and launches a physical rocket and returns recovered parts in a display box with launch video; the physical twin can also be donated or destroyed.
- What the collective did: Collectors trade parts to chase scarce Perfect Rockets (for example 87 Chanel and 3 Hello Kitty sets exist). By the 2022 Wallpaper* Design Awards there had been seven public launches, including Governors Island in New York, a Miami ballpark and SoHo; LACMA joined with a collaborative Frankenrocket.
- Images: https://www.tomsachsrocketfactory.com/tsrf.jpeg https://unframed.lacma.org/sites/default/files/attachments/TSRF%20LAUNCH%20%281%29.jpg https://unframed.lacma.org/sites/default/files/attachments/TSRF%20ROCKETS%20%281%29.jpg
- Project page: https://unframed.lacma.org/2021/11/09/nfts-and-museum-tom-sachs-rocket-launch

#### The Currency — Damien Hirst (2021)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Other chains · Mechanisms: Burn & destruction, Contract & certificate, Market & exchange
- Idea: Make every owner choose between the token and the object, and let the sum of those choices decide how much of the work physically survives.
- What it is: 10,000 NFTs, each tied to a unique hand-painted dot work on paper, released with HENI in July 2021. Each buyer had a year to keep the NFT or swap it for the painting; whichever was not chosen was destroyed.
- Protocol: Holders of each NFT (on the Palm blockchain) could, until 27 July 2022, exchange it for the matching paper work, which burned the NFT; if they kept the NFT, the paper work would be burned. Hirst kept 1,000 works himself and chose the NFT for them, so their papers burned too.
- What the collective did: When the exchange period closed, 5,149 holders had chosen the physical work and 4,851 the NFT (HENI). The 4,851 papers were burned publicly during The Currency exhibition at Newport Street Gallery, London, from September to October 2022, starting on 11 October with Hirst's own 1,000.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEsVJJy1od4
- Images: https://www.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/damien-hirst-nft-the-currency-designboom-fb.jpg https://static.frieze.com/files/styles/frieze_teaser/public/article/thumbnail/damien-hirst-the-currency-2.jpg?itok=USxR2EYc https://resources.heni.com/6190a77a-761c-4cc5-914b-b9c296c09c00.png?width=1024
- Project page: https://heni.com/nft/more-info/the-currency

#### The Fungible — Pak (2021)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Supply & scarcity, Merge & composite, Market & exchange
- Idea: Sell a fungible unit and let the quantity each person buys decide which non-fungible artwork they end up holding.
- What it is: Pak's sale with Sotheby's on Nifty Gateway (12–14 April 2021): identical 'cubes' were sold as an open edition for 15 minutes a day, and each buyer's cubes were then packed into NFTs whose image depends on how many they bought.
- Protocol: Anyone could buy any number of cubes during a 15-minute window each day, at $500, then $1,000, then $1,500. After the sale each buyer's total was split into the largest possible packs: A Cube (1), Five, Ten, Twenty, Fifty, Hundred, Five Hundred and Thousand Cubes (six cubes = one Five Cubes + one A Cube). The top buyer received The Cube, the next 100 buyers received Complexity, and Equilibrium went to four winners of set challenges (puzzle, highest secondary purchase, largest #PakWasHere post, closest estimate of the total).
- What the collective did: Buyers took 19,737 cubes on day one, 3,268 on day two and 593 on day three: 23,598 cubes for about $14 million. With the two auctioned 1/1s (The Switch, The Pixel) the sale reached $16.8 million (Sotheby's). Many cube holders later burned their cubes on burn.art to mine ASH.
- Images: https://sothebys-com.brightspotcdn.com/06/07/900df8e0456599524176879a8a1e/cube-image.png https://sothebys-com.brightspotcdn.com/37/f3/895926734d5c955091dc1b526904/equillibrium.png
- Project page: https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/17-million-realized-in-sothebys-first-nft-sale-with-digital-creator-pak
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xc7cc3e8c6b69dc272ccf64cbff4b7503cbf7c1c5

#### burn.art and $ASH — Pak (2021)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Burn & destruction, Currency & value, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: A currency backed by what its holders have destroyed: every burn makes the remaining works rarer.
- What it is: A site where anyone can destroy an NFT and receive ASH, an ERC-20 token that started with zero supply and can only be mined by burning. ASH then became the only currency accepted for some Pak drops.
- Protocol: Any holder can burn an NFT on burn.art and receive newly minted ASH. The yield follows a bonding curve that falls as supply grows, with two tiers: Pak NFTs start at 1,000 ASH, all other NFTs at 2 ASH; a halving hits every tier at 5 million ASH. Liquidity pools are left to the community. From January 2022 (Chapter One: Carbon) some Pak drops could only be bought or bid on with ASH.
- What the collective did: Collectors burned their own and others' NFTs, above all Fungible cubes, to mine ASH; Carbon's single edition is titled 'Three Thousand Eight Hundred Twenty Five Burned Cubes', and only ASH holders could bid on it. By September 2026 the ASH contract showed about 3.54 million tokens held by about 9,950 addresses (Blockscout).
- Images: https://burn.art/x.png https://burn.art/_next/static/media/burned-cubes.061a79ae.png https://burn.art/_next/static/media/carbon.143793db.png
- Project page: https://burn.art/about
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x64D91f12Ece7362F91A6f8E7940Cd55F05060b92

#### MVP (Most Valuable Painting) — Jonas Lund (2022)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Open participation, Market & exchange, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: Let likes and sales breed the remaining paintings until one carries the whole market's taste.
- What it is: Five hundred and twelve digital paintings, commissioned by Aorist, that keep changing according to public reception until each is bought and minted; the last one sold is the 'Most Valuable Painting'.
- Protocol: A fitness algorithm tracks each MVP's likes, clicks and engagement. Once an MVP is sold and minted, its visual properties steer the evolution of those still unsold, which slowly optimise toward the traits of the more desirable works.
- What the collective did: Viewers' attention and collectors' purchases jointly determined how the unsold paintings looked, and the final painting holds the aggregate preferences of all earlier buyers.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-WJ79_yLtE
- Images: https://cdn.jonaslund.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/23083229/DSC06153-scaled.jpg
- Project page: https://mvp.art

#### Matter* (mass.black) — Pak (2022)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Merge & composite, Rules & constraints, Chance & randomness
- Idea: Reward specific collective behaviours (merging often, hoarding mass, cannibalising) so holders play the contract as a game.
- What it is: A month-long 'treasure hunt' for Merge holders (1–30 April 2022): new Matter* tokens were awarded to Merge tokens that met published criteria about merges and mass at the end snapshot.
- Protocol: Tiers of Matter* went to Merge tokens by rule: 'Hunters and Traps' for tokens with 4+ merges, 'Thief's Wise Hands' for mass × merges ≥ 100 (stealing supply from 'Scavenger's Weak Hands', mass ≥ 10), 'Cannibalism' for the most merges, 'Kings of the Hill' for the most mass, 'Titan' for the alpha, 'Three Lucky Giants' at random, and a hidden challenge tier that would unlock only if Merge supply fell below 20,000. Distribution used the end snapshot; one token could win several.
- What the collective did: The site reports a Matter* supply of 1,481 with 1,395 generated. The 'Thief' tier took all 450 places, so 'Scavenger's Weak Hands' generated none, and the challenge tier stayed locked because Merge supply did not fall below 20,000 during the event.
- Images: https://mass.black/mass.black.png
- Project page: https://mass.black/

#### The Room of Infinite Paintings — Simon de la Rouviere (2022)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Supply & scarcity, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Tie the aesthetics of a series to how many people take part in it.
- What it is: A free, infinite-supply series of CC0 on-chain paintings, made for the Logged Universe story, in which the images become more minimal the more of them are minted.
- Protocol: Anyone can mint a painting for free, with no cap. The generator makes minimal outputs more likely as the mint count grows, up to one million mints.
- What the collective did: Each mint pushed the series a step further toward emptiness; by June 2022, 467 paintings had been minted.
- Images: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e1421011232b71c373a8668/12ea0701-fb8e-4236-b5f5-edf7b9145f8b/Screenshot+2022-06-19+at+10.21.43.png
- Project page: https://www.untitledfrontier.studio/blog/the-room-of-infinite-paintings

#### Checks — Jack Butcher (2023)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Burn & destruction, Merge & composite, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: Collectors decide which images survive: every composite destroys a work, and choosing not to act is also part of the piece.
- What it is: An $8 open edition of 80 checkmarks (January 2023), after Twitter began selling verification. From February 2023 collectors could destroy an edition to get an on-chain Original, then burn Originals into composites with fewer and fewer checks.
- Protocol: Checks – VV Edition was open for 24 hours at $8. Any holder may, with no deadline, burn an Edition to mint an Original with the same token number, rendered as an animated SVG from on-chain data. Two Originals with the same check count can be composited into one: 80 → 40 → 20 → 10 → 5 → 4 → 1 check; the holder picks which token number survives and the parents set the colours. At the last stage 64 single checks make a Black Check, the sum of 4,096 original editions, so at most three can ever exist.
- What the collective did: 16,031 editions were minted in the first 24 hours. By September 2026 about 3,560 Editions had never been migrated and the Originals contract held 5,347 surviving works, so collectors have burned thousands of tokens through migration and compositing (Blockscout).
- Images: https://framerusercontent.com/images/Er5ZzBJPeH0FP4XccvWbrg3LU.jpg https://framerusercontent.com/images/zn2CN7FtJNuI5Y8lIYniJGsEwI.gif?scale-down-to=1024
- Project page: https://jack.art/checks-originals
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x036721e5A769Cc48B3189EFbb9ccE4471E8A48B1

#### 1 of 1 of ? — Jack Butcher (2024)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bitcoin & Counterparty · Mechanisms: Supply & scarcity, Contract & certificate
- Idea: The crowd sets the edition size, and the edition size sets how much physical labour the artist owes.
- What it is: One image issued twice in May 2024: as a unique inscription auctioned at Sotheby's and as a 24-hour open edition. The artist promised to sign a physical work once for every open edition sold.
- Protocol: For 24 hours anyone could collect the open edition; the unique version was auctioned separately the next day. Butcher's release statement committed him to one hand-drawn signature per open edition on an ink-on-Tyvek work (Proof of Work).
- What the collective did: Collectors bought 35,262 editions; on 28 May 2024 Butcher reported that all 35,262 signatures were done (artist's report, not an audited ledger).
- Images: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6547fdfa39dde777e76d89b5/1717469192803-L427F6J7HGHFUAQBRQC4/bills.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6547fdfa39dde777e76d89b5/1715790920325-JE3L05XLTD2M7CUGYHJU/1-1-jb.jpg
- Project page: https://jack.art/supply

#### Full Set — Jack Butcher (2025)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Supply & scarcity, Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A single collecting threshold that can rewrite, or undo, what earlier buyers own.
- What it is: Twenty-seven editions on an Ethereum layer 2 (with Rodeo). The first 26 images were replaced by one shared grid, and the 27th edition decided whether that change would last.
- Protocol: On 10 January 2025 Butcher announced that if token 27 sold more than 159,300 editions (the combined count of the first 26), the network grid would remain the artwork; otherwise the first 26 would revert to their original images.
- What the collective did: Buyers of token 27 decided the outcome for holders of all earlier works. A progress post followed on 11 January, and the studio catalogue reports that the threshold was passed (the crossing transaction has not been published).
- Images: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6547fdfa39dde777e76d89b5/1737348451051-J8FGEY2AZNQTBMQAGJ6E/thumb.png
- Project page: https://jack.art/full-set

#### Credits — Jack Butcher (2026)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Burn & destruction, Merge & composite, Currency & value
- Idea: Payment records as printing plates: collectors spend trust (credits) to make fewer, denser prints.
- What it is: Each eligible $8 payment through X Money becomes a Credit, an image of four 8 × 8 CMYK grids derived from the transaction ID. Holders can burn 80 Credits to compose a Statement and overprint Statements onto each other.
- Protocol: A transaction ID is hashed (SHA-256) into 256 bits, split into cyan, magenta, yellow and black 64-bit grids; the timestamp selects which layers show. Burning 80 Credits composes a Statement, one Credit per cell. Overprinting one Statement onto another burns the top one and multiplies the inks. Statements are capped at 1,526 and the minimum is 1.
- What the collective did: Credits are being issued from X Money payments; Statement assembly opens on 1 October 2026, so how far collectors will compress the supply is not yet known.
- Images: https://jack.art/credits/assets/art-0.svg https://jack.art/credits/assets/credit-0.svg
- Project page: https://jack.art/credits

### Ownership & Transfer Rules

Contracts that change what owning means: always for sale, must be passed on, dies if held, changes with its owner.

#### Forever Rose — Kevin Abosch (2018)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Currency & value
- Idea: One artwork, one token, ten owners.
- What it is: A single ERC-20 token called ROSE, based on the artist's photograph of a rose, sold on Valentine's Day 2018 with the gifting platform GIFTO to ten collectors who each received a tenth of it.
- Protocol: The work exists as one divisible token. A ballot chose ten buyers, who split the price evenly and each received 0.1 ROSE; payment was made in GTO and IAMA tokens, and the proceeds went to the CoderDojo Foundation.
- What the collective did: The ten collectors each paid the equivalent of $100,000, co-owning a work sold for $1 million in total.
- Images: https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/The-forever-rose.png
- Project page: https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2018/02/128411-valentines-day-crypto-art-sells-1-million-gifto/

#### PRICELESS (with Ai Weiwei) — Kevin Abosch (2018)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Circulation & passing on, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: Make a token priceless by never selling it, only giving it away.
- What it is: A collaboration with Ai Weiwei made of two ERC-20 tokens, PRICELESS (PRCLS): one is locked away forever, the other is given away in fractions to collectors.
- Protocol: Each token is divisible to 18 decimal places. One is made unavailable to anyone; the other is distributed for free to collectors, down to a quintillionth at a time. Small amounts were deposited into wallets whose printed addresses form a series of physical works.
- What the collective did: Recipients share fragments of one token that has no market price; each wallet address stands for a moment shared by the two artists.
- Images: https://kevinabosch.com/images/priceless_1400.jpg
- Project page: https://kevinabosch.com/priceless.html

#### Secret Artwork — Rhea Myers (2018)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: Separate owning a work from knowing it.
- What it is: An ERC-721 token whose contract stores only a salted hash of the artwork's content, so the owner owns something they cannot see.
- Protocol: The contract records a cryptographic hash of the content; the token can be owned and traded, but the owner knows no more about the content than the public. The DApp shows every fact the network holds about the token (owner, creation time, hash) as text, colour, shapes and notes.
- What the collective did: Each buyer acquires a verified but unknowable work; it was sold in Sotheby's Natively Digital sale in 2021.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLSOG5fWVow
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/secret-artwork.4b64c9a83dd7e285.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/secret-artwork/

#### This Artwork Is Always On Sale — Simon de la Rouviere (2019)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Currency & value, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Ownership as a lease you price yourself: name a high price and pay more tax, a low one and lose the work.
- What it is: A single digital artwork governed by a Harberger tax: whoever owns it must always name a price at which anyone can buy it, and pays a continuous patronage fee to the artist on that price.
- Protocol: The ArtSteward contract holds the work. The owner deposits funds and sets a sale price; patronage accrues to the artist at 5% a year of that price (version 1, 2019) or 100% a year (version 2, 2020). Anyone can buy the work at the listed price at any time, and if the deposit runs out the contract forecloses and takes the work back.
- What the collective did: Successive patrons had to balance the price they claimed against the tax they paid. According to the artist the highest sale price was $16,000, and the work has stayed on sale ever since; version 1 was restored in 2021 after bugs were found.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=all1wr0Gk7o
- Images: https://thisartworkisalwaysonsale.com/artwork-v1.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e1421011232b71c373a8668/1607521843358-NRM0QFZ4KZ2NDX4XZU2X/TAIAOS4.png
- Project page: https://thisartworkisalwaysonsale.com
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xB602c0bBfaB973422B91C8dfc8302B7b47550fC0
- Code: https://github.com/simondlr/thisartworkisalwaysonsale

#### AtMyWhim — Moxie Marlinspike (2021)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Rules & constraints
- Idea: What you bid on is not what you get: an NFT points to a server, not to an image.
- What it is: An NFT whose image changes depending on who is looking: it appeared one way on OpenSea, another on Rarible, and as a large poop emoji in the buyer's wallet.
- Protocol: The token's metadata points to a URL with no hash commitment; the server behind it returns different images based on the requester's IP address or user agent, which the NFT standard allows.
- What the collective did: Marketplaces, not collectors, decided the outcome: after a few days OpenSea removed the NFT without explanation, and it then also disappeared from crypto wallets that rely on OpenSea's API.
- Images: https://moxie.org/blog/images/nft-opensea.png https://moxie.org/blog/images/nft-rarible.png https://moxie.org/blog/images/nft-metamask.png https://moxie.org/blog/images/nft-removed.png
- Project page: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x5c61afa47570ab2b562606fa578221305b12c307

#### Lifeforms — Sarah Friend (2021)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Circulation & passing on, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Care for a token by giving it away; holding is what kills it.
- What it is: NFT creatures on Polygon that stay alive only if they keep moving: an owner who does not give a lifeform away within 90 days of receiving it kills it for good.
- Protocol: Anyone can mint a lifeform (open, uncapped mint, 10 MATIC at launch). The contract gives each holder 90 days from receipt to transfer it to someone else; if the deadline passes, the lifeform dies, disappears from wallets and can never be transferred or revived.
- What the collective did: Holders had to find new carers again and again, turning each token into a chain of gifts. In February 2022 the artist reported that 51 lifeforms had died; in 2024 she opened Memoryforms so past carers could inscribe messages to them.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5XMYD3vcg8
- Images: https://isthisa.com/static/Lifeforms/Sarah-Friend-Lifeforms-1.jpg https://isthisa.com/static/Lifeforms/Sarah-Friend-lifeforms-screenshot-1.png https://www.holo.mg/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/HOLO-STREAM-20210903-Sarah-Friend-Lifeforms-1600.jpg
- Project page: https://isthisa.com/lifeforms
- Contract: https://polygonscan.com/address/0x8916edd9b39783d85303ecc6613917ddd735d88d

#### Off — Sarah Friend (2021)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Make the artwork's content depend on whether collectors choose to cooperate or defect.
- What it is: An edition of 255 NFTs, each a black rectangle with the pixel size of a real screen, that doubles as a multiplayer game: every buyer privately receives a secret image carrying a shard of a key to an encrypted essay.
- Protocol: Each token has a public black image and a secret image sent to the buyer by email. Hidden in the secret images are an encrypted essay and shards of its key, split so that nothing can be decrypted unless 170 of the 255 holders (two thirds) share their secrets.
- What the collective did: The essay's release was left to collectors' willingness to reveal what they privately held. By June 2022 the message was still hidden, and the artist built the follow-up Wildcards around that open outcome.
- Images: https://www.holo.mg/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/HOLO-STREAM-20210512-SarahFriend-Off-1300.gif
- Project page: https://off.supply

#### Smart Burn Contract — Jonas Lund (2021)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Burn & destruction, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Keep a kill switch: ownership lasts only as long as the owner keeps behaving as agreed.
- What it is: A series of NFTs, each bundled with a contractual agreement written on the piece. If the owner does not fulfil the terms, the artist burns the NFT and removes it from the owner's wallet.
- Protocol: By buying the NFT the owner enters the agreement stated in the image; the artist monitors compliance and burns the token if the terms are broken.
- What the collective did: Each collector's conduct after purchase decides whether their piece survives, making the series a record of how owners respond to conditional ownership.
- Images: https://cdn.jonaslund.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/20084014/1-2048.jpg
- Project page: https://smart-contracts.host/works/1

#### Two Degrees — terra0 (2021)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Burn & destruction, Time, decay & death, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Tie an asset's life to a planetary threshold, so that owning it becomes a stake in that threshold.
- What it is: An NFT of a LiDAR scan of a forest in southern Germany, offered in Sotheby's 'Natively Digital' sale in June 2021. An oracle contract stores the average global temperature rise; once it passes 2°C, anyone may burn the token.
- Protocol: The TemperatureToken (ERC-721) checks an oracle contract that records the annual average temperature rise reported by NASA. While the value stays below 2°C the token behaves like any NFT; above it, the contract lets any address call the burn function.
- What the collective did: Whether the work survives depends on the emissions of everyone, not on its owner; the collector buys an asset whose value is a hedge against collective failure. terra0 presented it as a model for how artists can create assets that push owners to act.
- Text: https://terra0.medium.com/two-degrees-nft-5af1263bfcc (terra0 on Medium, 2021)
- Images: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*pYg6uq7XCJb8MTw7pviAkg.jpeg
- Project page: https://terra0.medium.com/two-degrees-nft-5af1263bfcc
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xabf5c7c066a48a06524438f6f51bdceb6e670dad

#### Wildcards — Sarah Friend (2022)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Open participation, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Lock a token's liquidity to another group's cooperation.
- What it is: Custom card decks carrying mint instructions for one of 52 NFTs, shown in the solo exhibition Off: Endgame commissioned by Rhizome, Fingerprints and Refraction.
- Protocol: Holders can mint a Wildcard token from the instructions in their deck, but the tokens cannot be traded unless the hidden message of Off is revealed, which requires two thirds of Off's collectors to pool their secret images.
- What the collective did: Wildcards made a second group of owners dependent on the first: their tokens stay frozen for as long as Off's collectors do not cooperate.
- Images: https://www.holo.mg/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/HOLO-STREAM-20220621-Sarah-Friend-Off-Endgame-Wildcards-1600.jpg
- Project page: https://www.holo.mg/stream/sarah-friend-off-endgame-rhizome-fingerprints-refraction-dao/

#### Is Art (Editions) — Rhea Myers (2023)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Voting & governance
- Idea: Sell the artist's power of nomination along with the token.
- What it is: Sixteen smart-contract tokens that revisit Is Art (2014) and delegate the power to nominate the token as art, or not, to its owner.
- Protocol: Each owner can set their token's state to art or not art; the assertion is secured by the blockchain. Unlike the 2014 contract, which anyone could flip, the right now belongs to whoever holds the token.
- What the collective did: The art status of the edition is split across sixteen owners, each able to change their mind.
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/is-art-token-is.e9d6202c31dcf1a1.png https://rhea.art/images/is-art-token-block-height.gif
- Project page: https://rhea.art/is-art-editions/

#### 10K Drop — Rhea Myers (2024)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Supply & scarcity, Time, decay & death, Market & exchange
- Idea: Make a collection's unlocking depend on the whole market, not on its collectors.
- What it is: A collection of ten thousand generative 'drops' of the letter K, released on Verse, that stays locked until the price of Ether reaches ten thousand US dollars.
- Protocol: Each NFT is a generatively created drop of ten Ks, viewable as a live animation or a static image. The tokens are locked until ETH trades at $10,000.
- What the collective did: The work parodies the 10K PFP drop, in which buying early, 'aping in' and 'sweeping the floor' drive and frustrate a desire for complete ownership; here the collectors' fate is tied to the market as a whole.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahB4LtWLIDE
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/10Kdrop-1.e97dc1326696d6ae.png
- Project page: https://verse.works/series/10k-drop-by-rhea-myers

#### Conditional Power — terra0 (2024)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Burn & destruction, Contract & certificate, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Extend a burn condition from the chain into a legal contract, so the collector must destroy the physical object too.
- What it is: A series of paired NFTs and framed prints of polar ice, each with a smart contract that burns the NFT when a climate measurement crosses a threshold, for example when the Greenland surface melt extent passes 1.6 million km² or when Antarctic sea-ice extent falls to zero.
- Protocol: An oracle feeds NASA climate data to each NFT's contract, which burns the token once its stated condition is met. A contract between terra0 and the collector obliges the owner of the physical print to burn it after the NFT has destroyed itself.
- What the collective did: Institutional collectors, including the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection and KADIST, accepted the obligation to destroy their copies; the trigger is set by global emissions, i.e. by everyone else.
- Images: https://www.mercedes-benz.art/media/t0_cp_1-6-million_0_runtergerechnet-1-1359x1400.jpg https://kadist.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/IMGNFT_terra0_zero_percent_HI-RES-1024x1024.jpg
- Project page: https://kadist.org/work/conditional-power-if-the-antarctic-sea-ice-extent-falls-to-zero-percent-this-nft-will-burn-itself/

#### Economy of Words — Jack Butcher (2026)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Supply & scarcity, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Three hierarchies compete over the same words: a mechanical grade, what bidders pay, and the material form each winner picks.
- What it is: A card for each of the 2,048 words of the BIP39 seed-phrase list, each graded by a formula and sold in its own auction; winners then chose whether the card would exist as a physical graded card or as a synthetic card on Ethereum.
- Protocol: Grades (10 bands) come from word length, initial letter, letter values and list position. Each auction opened at $1 and ran 20 hours 48 minutes, extended by late bids. Winners had 2,048 minutes after closing to choose physical or synthetic; the choice then locked.
- What the collective did: The studio's collector board ranks 331 holders of the 2,048 words by spend and shows the physical/synthetic split; final totals are not yet published.
- Images: https://jack.art/eow-hero.webp https://jack.art/eow-ui-collectors.webp
- Project page: https://jack.art/economy-of-words

### Programmable & Co-authored Works

Works whose layers, parameters or worlds are written by their holders and by the community that builds on them.

#### Art Is — Rhea Myers (2014)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Open participation
- Idea: Settle an old aesthetic argument with a market instead of discourse.
- What it is: A contract in which people pay to define art, with the price of each definition standing for the strength of the payer's certainty.
- Protocol: Anyone can use the Ethereum network to submit a definition of art and pay for it; the amount paid is the weight of that definition. The original 2014 version suffered from bitrot and was re-implemented by the artist.
- What the collective did: The resulting definition of art is produced by what participants are willing to pay, an ironic stand-in for discourse funded by cultural institutions.
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/art-is-2.0.e616257379bf37e7.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/art-is/

#### Democratic Palette — Rhea Myers (2016)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Open participation
- Idea: Put the choice of colour to a vote, and expose what it costs to vote.
- What it is: A palette of twelve colours set on the Ethereum blockchain by anyone who sends a voting transaction.
- Protocol: Every vote for every colour is tracked by the contract, and the twelve colours with the most votes make up the palette. The only cost of voting is gas paid in Ether.
- What the collective did: The palette displayed in the work's visual applications is whatever voters have produced, raising the question of who can afford to take part in decentralised aesthetics.
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/palette-stripes.e98bf4347304d472.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/democratic-palette/

#### Lottery Symbol — Rhea Myers (2017)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Chance & randomness, Open participation
- Idea: Pair a method of allocation with an aesthetic property: here, luck decides the image.
- What it is: A graphical symbol on the blockchain chosen by lottery from options that participants submit as Ethereum transactions.
- Protocol: Anyone can submit a candidate symbol by transaction; a simple lottery using the blockchain itself as a source of entropy picks the winner. The artist notes this randomness is insecure, which is acceptable for a symbol.
- What the collective did: The displayed symbol comes from whoever took part and from chance; it follows Democratic Palette in a series pairing allocation methods with aesthetics.
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/lottery-symbol.1cfcb8ba7637f4a2.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/lottery-symbol/

#### SchellingFlags — Rhea Myers (2018)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Open participation
- Idea: Flags are Schelling points: let anyone create one and let support decide which become shared.
- What it is: A blockchain system for making and supporting flags as focal points for decentralised social coordination, shown in Distributed Systems at Gray Area.
- Protocol: Any individual can create and share a flag on-chain, and any individual can support it. The interface displays the most popular flags as a map of the ideological landscape.
- What the collective did: The map of flags is drawn entirely by participants' creations and endorsements.
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/schellingflags.0d79a962f8329d7c.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/schellingflags/

#### Su Squares — William Entriken (2018)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: Each owner paints one tile of a picture no one controls.
- What it is: Ten thousand ERC-721 squares, each 10×10 pixels, that owners personalise with an image, title and link; together they form one large mosaic on the project homepage.
- Protocol: Anyone can mint an available square (0.5 ETH on the current site). The owner can personalise it with a 10×10 image without transparency or animation, a title up to 64 bytes and a URL up to 96 bytes, for a small fee; the homepage image refreshes hourly.
- What the collective did: The whole square is a continually changing patchwork of owners' images and links.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is5Vrs6EZJk
- Images: https://tenthousandsu.com/build/wholeSquare.webp
- Project page: https://tenthousandsu.com
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xE9e3F9cfc1A64DFca53614a0182CFAD56c10624F

#### Autoglyphs — Larva Labs (2019)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: The collector performs the artist's algorithm, as assistants once drew Sol LeWitt's instructions.
- What it is: The first generative art whose algorithm runs and stores its output entirely on-chain: each collector's mint transaction executes the generator and produces one of at most 512 glyphs.
- Protocol: Anyone could pay 0.2 ETH to run the generator in the contract; the artists could neither choose nor intervene in outputs once deployed. Supply was capped at 512, and the contract includes instructions for turning the text rendering into a drawing with any tools.
- What the collective did: All 512 glyphs were minted within four hours, donating $13,670 to 350.org; during minting the contract consumed 13.27% of Ethereum's network capacity. Glyphs have been drawn with pen plotters following the contract's instructions, and the Whitney and Centre Pompidou hold examples.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNAM3_BzZRo
- Images: https://www.larvalabs.com/public/assetsv2/glyphs_hero.png https://www.larvalabs.com/public/assetsv2/Glyphs-Annotated-Code.png
- Project page: https://www.larvalabs.com/autoglyphs
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xd4e4078ca3495DE5B1d4dB434BEbc5a986197782

#### Hack Line Properties — Rhea Myers (2019)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Open participation
- Idea: Write the exploit into the rules and let hackers become co-authors.
- What it is: A supposedly secure contract that lets only its owner change the line stroke properties it stores, but contains a common Ethereum bug that lets anyone who finds it take control.
- Protocol: The contract's access control is deliberately flawed: anyone who spots the bug can call it and set the line properties themselves.
- What the collective did: The drawing's current style is set by whoever last exploited the bug.
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/hack-line-1.fe90a5cb26e28a9a.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/hack-line-properties/

#### Is this prediction market, art? — Simon de la Rouviere (2019)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Voting & governance
- Idea: Outsource the art-world question of nomination to a betting market.
- What it is: A prediction market that asked whether it, itself, could be deemed art, leaving the answer to traders and the market's dispute process.
- Protocol: The artist opened a prediction market on the question of whether the market is art. Traders buy positions on yes or no; the market's resolution and dispute rules decide the outcome.
- What the collective did: Trading leaned towards yes, but after a dispute the question was ruled invalid; the artist later minted an NFT souvenir of the experiment.
- Images: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e1421011232b71c373a8668/1607521320049-45HPFT2PNT60I2XD9VUN/Screenshot+2020-12-09+at+15.41.41.png
- Project page: https://home.simondlr.com/art

#### Pay Previous Path — Rhea Myers (2019)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Each contributor is paid by the next one.
- What it is: A contract that lets anyone store a vector drawing on the blockchain in return for paying a small fee to the previous person who did so.
- Protocol: Anyone can submit a path drawing (encoded like SVG path line art). To do so they pay a small fee, which goes to the author of the previous drawing.
- What the collective did: The sequence of drawings forms a chain of small payments between strangers.
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/ppp1-cropped.c7f16600628a2503.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/pay-previous-path/

#### Proof of Work Bitmap — Rhea Myers (2019)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Open participation
- Idea: Make people mine before they can draw.
- What it is: A 16×16 monochrome bitmap on the Ethereum blockchain that can only be edited by submitting a solved proof-of-work puzzle.
- Protocol: To edit the bitmap, a participant runs code similar to cryptocurrency mining and submits a 256-bit result with the required number of trailing zeros, the same size as the 16×16 image.
- What the collective did: Each change to the image is backed by computation that participants spent to prove their good faith.
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/powb-1.256f687208c65683.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/proof-of-work-bitmap/

#### Staking Ratio — Rhea Myers (2019)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Currency & value, Open participation
- Idea: Let value itself be the aesthetic parameter.
- What it is: A ratio of two amounts of Ether staked by users; the last work in the series that began with Democratic Palette, and the first to deal directly in cryptocurrency value.
- Protocol: Users stake Ether on one of two sides; the work displays the ratio between the two amounts. The artist warns: use at your own risk.
- What the collective did: The image is produced entirely by how much participants choose to stake on each side.
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/EMDdkbeU8AAos7_cropped.c6cd41d017f7f89a.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/staking-ratio/

#### Token Grid — Rhea Myers (2019)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Burn & destruction, Open participation
- Idea: Make every edit to a shared image cost a token that is destroyed.
- What it is: A grid on the Ethereum blockchain, viewable on the web, that anyone can change, but only by burning one of the contract's ERC-20 tokens.
- Protocol: To change a cell of the grid, a participant must acquire and burn one of the grid contract's ERC-20 tokens.
- What the collective did: The grid's state is the trace of every token participants chose to destroy to alter it.
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/token-grid.1f7067822c5a36b7.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/token-grid/

#### Async Art (programmable art) — Async Art (2020)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Contract & certificate, Market & exchange
- Idea: Split a picture into parts, sell the parts to different people, and let the picture be whatever their combined choices make it.
- What it is: An Ethereum platform where an artwork is issued as one Master token plus many Layer tokens. Whoever owns a Layer can switch it between states the artist defined, and the Master image is redrawn from all current choices.
- Protocol: The artist uploads a Master and its Layers and, for each Layer, fixes the allowed abilities (state change, move, rotate, colour, scale, reflect, visibility, opacity) and their ranges. Only the current owner of a Layer token may change that Layer; the Master is rendered from the sum of Layer states. Layers can also be bound to external data such as time or prices.
- What the collective did: Collectors bought individual layers and changed them, so one Master could look different from week to week depending on many owners. Within its first year Async reports being featured at Christie's and selling single works in the six-figure range; in 2021 it extended the model to music stems.
- Images: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/65455ae3354eb117950e9025/65455ae3354eb117950e956f_Ntb4F8YJgyXZzHkwbK23tI5zxftuuXN4G-1tYcO-WzIA1o7Aina3L5ppK5B1GSV3KdwGKJJti0pNEisHCAukaDC6jICLGFlA3gZytXu73MA8PFjWlP7O6Dmqf70oczXssInUB8b-ae-PCB0Dpg7xnWvqQUwt_z6a_ZXHDMa3hkc0cV4ioyiVdDflVA.png
- Project page: https://opensea.io/blog/articles/async-art-paving-the-way-for-programmable-dynamically-changing-art-on-the-blockchain
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xb6dae651468e9593e4581705a09c10a76ac1e0c8

#### Dark Forest — Dark Forest team (Brian Gu, Alan Luo et al.) (2020)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Publish the rules of a universe as a contract and let players, their scripts and their alliances write its history.
- What it is: A massively multiplayer space-conquest game whose entire state lives in smart contracts; zkSNARKs let players move without revealing where they are, so the universe has a real fog of war.
- Protocol: The contract defines an infinite, procedurally generated universe; players must mine hashes locally to discover planets and submit zero-knowledge proofs that each move is valid without revealing coordinates. Rounds were time-boxed with prizes, first on Ropsten (August 2020) and later on xDAI/Gnosis Chain; the open client allowed plugins.
- What the collective did: Players formed alliances, wrote bots and plugins (with community plugin and renderer contests), published strategy guides and even exploits, hosted their own community rounds through Lobbies, and organised themselves in groups such as DFDAO, which ran its own tournaments.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLo1r3QhbCU
- Images: https://zkga.me/public/og_image.png https://blog.zkga.me/img/announcing-df/ui-wip.png
- Project page: https://blog.zkga.me/announcing-darkforest
- Code: https://github.com/darkforest-eth

#### First Supper — Async Art, Matt Kane (2020)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Market & exchange
- Idea: A group portrait whose composition is decided by whoever currently owns each figure.
- What it is: A parody of Leonardo's Last Supper made by 13 crypto artists for Async Art's launch, split into one Master and 22 Layers. Each Layer's owner can move, recolour or swap their part, and the picture is the sum of these choices.
- Protocol: Each of the 22 Layers, made by a different artist, has abilities fixed by that artist (rotation, scale, position, visibility, opacity, hue). Only the Layer token's owner can trigger them; for example the owner of MLIBTY's Layer 9 can slide and rotate a giant finger to point at any guest at the table.
- What the collective did: The Master auction closed at 103.4 ETH on 28 February 2020 and the 22 Layers sold separately; by April 2020 the layers were held by 10 different collectors, whose changes kept rearranging the scene. Artists included XCOPY, Hackatao, Coldie, Josie Bellini, Alotta Money and Matt Kane.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNlDfNLyH5Q
- Images: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmY3iuaoT5XvrLWvrhDjJL2akbgY4BV4yaheFKTJuabAV7/First%20Supper.jpg https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/65455ae3354eb117950e9025/65455ae3354eb117950e962f_636d5e387a5de6eea1342db7_63572c4e2c1d1071fb4a9d66_image3.avif
- Project page: https://x.com/asyncart/status/1233482051548065793
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xb6dae651468e9593e4581705a09c10a76ac1e0c8

#### Right Place & Right Time — Matt Kane (2020)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Time, decay & death, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Let the anonymous crowd of a market paint the picture every day.
- What it is: A programmable painting on Async Art made of 24 Layers, one per hour, each redrawn daily from the previous 24 hours of Bitcoin price volatility. It sold for 262 ETH in September 2020.
- Protocol: Kane's algorithm maps each hour of Bitcoin price change to the state of one of 24 Layers, so the composition is set by trading, not by the owner or the artist. A collector agreement adds a second layer: the owner receives 21% of the sales of daily edition NFTs (capped at 210) that record single days of the market.
- What the collective did: The image is produced by the aggregate buying and selling of Bitcoin traders worldwide; the work was planned to run for ten or more years. The artist and its collector framed the revenue share as a new artist–collector partnership model.
- Images: https://volatility.art/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/11/bitcoin-volatility-art-by-matt-kane_9-22-2020_10-scaled-1.jpg https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1277260/volatility_art___right_place_and_right_time_by_matt_kane___diagram.jpg
- Project page: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/record-cryptoart-sale-matt-kanes-right-place--right-time-a-programmable-artwork-that-changes-with-bitcoin-price-volatility-sells-for-over-100k-on-async-art-301134356.html
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xb6dae651468e9593e4581705a09c10a76ac1e0c8

#### Async Music (programmable music) — Async Art (2021)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Market & exchange
- Idea: A song that exists as a menu of variants, mixed live by the people who own its stems.
- What it is: Async Art's extension of Layers to sound: musicians upload alternative versions of each stem, and owners of Stem Layer tokens choose which version plays in the song's current Master Track.
- Protocol: The musician uploads every variant of each stem. The owner of a Stem Layer NFT selects one variant; the Master Track that everyone hears is the combination of all current selections. Separate Blank Record NFTs let a holder snapshot one audio-visual state of the Master.
- What the collective did: The first releases came from RAC, Verdigris Ensemble, HMLTD, and Connie Digital with Mighty33; the songs changed whenever stem owners changed their selections.
- Images: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1498556/AsyncMusic_Breakdown_Infographic.jpg
- Project page: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-worlds-first-programmable-music-launch-301279780.html

#### Autonomous Art — Moxie Marlinspike (2021)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Market & exchange, Open participation
- Idea: Pay to add to a shared picture, and get paid by everyone who comes after you.
- What it is: A collective on-chain image to which anyone can add a visual contribution, minting an NFT of the work at that moment; each contribution costs more than the last, and the payment is shared among earlier contributors.
- Protocol: Anyone can mint by adding shapes to the shared on-chain SVG. The cost of contributing rises over time, and the funds a contributor pays are distributed to all previous artists, a structure the author compares to a pyramid.
- What the collective did: By early January 2022 contributors had put over $38,000 into the collective piece, according to the author; the contract lists over 600 contributions.
- Text: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html (moxie.org)
- Project page: https://autonomous.graphics
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x3a56AB63c7ef4f07fe353bEb132e0Fd5AD270Ca0

#### Blitmap — Dom Hofmann (2021)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Merge & composite
- Idea: Give a crowd a small, open set of originals and a recombination rule, and let it grow a universe.
- What it is: 100 original 32×32 pixel artworks by 17 artists, stored on-chain, from which the community minted 1,600 'siblings' by combining the composition of one original with the palette of another.
- Protocol: The originals were written into the contract as data; any sibling is defined by choosing one original's composition and another's colour palette, and minting it creates a new token. Originals and much of what followed were released as open source, so anyone could build on them.
- What the collective did: Collectors crafted all 1,600 siblings. Artists and fans then extended the world of Caelum with the Blitnauts expansion pack, Sup's androids, comics, cartoons, socks, shoes and toys.
- Images: https://www.blitmap.com/blitmap-collection-small.png https://blitmap.com/_next/image?url=%2F_next%2Fstatic%2Fmedia%2Fblitnaut-crop.974e3cca.webp&w=3840&q=75
- Project page: https://blitmap.com
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x8d04a8c79ceb0889bdd12acdf3fa9d207ed3ff63

#### Hashmasks — Suum Cuique Labs (2021)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Burn & destruction, Currency & value
- Idea: Let the collectors write the titles, and make each title cost something and exist only once.
- What it is: 16,384 digital portraits painted by about 70 artists, sold in early 2021. Owners accrue a Name Changing Token (NCT) and can burn 1,830 NCT to give their mask a unique name stored on-chain.
- Protocol: Every mask accrues NCT over time. To name a mask, its owner sends 1,830 NCT to the Hashmasks contract, which burns them and records the name; each name can belong to only one mask at a time.
- What the collective did: Owners spent NCT to name their masks; because every name can exist only once, words became contested, and the on-chain naming record became part of each mask's identity and value alongside the artists' images.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDz8Y2UPeMg
- Images: https://hashmasksstore.blob.core.windows.net/hashmasks/1.jpg https://img.phemex.com/v1/4caf239c/hashmasks-1024x576.jpg
- Project page: https://www.thehashmasks.com
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xc2c747e0f7004f9e8817db2ca4997657a7746928

#### Hic et Nunc — Rafael Lima (2021)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Tezos · Mechanisms: Open participation, Market & exchange, Voting & governance
- Idea: Build the platform as public infrastructure so that it can persist beyond its maker's will.
- What it is: An open NFT platform on Tezos, launched on 1 March 2021, whose cheap minting drew a large global community of artists; its founder shut the website on 11 November 2021, but the contracts kept running.
- Protocol: Anyone can mint OBJKTs (FA2 tokens on IPFS) and list them through the swap contract with creator royalties. From launch to mid-April 2021 each purchase of 1 tez earned 0.5 hDAO for the buyer and 0.5 for the seller, a governance token used to curate the feed.
- What the collective did: Users reached 100,000 minted OBJKTs in three months and 500,000 in eight, with about 50,000 artists and collectors; events like #OBJKT4OBJKT had artists swap works for free. When the site went down, the community kept using the contracts through mirror sites and founded Teia.
- Images: https://web.archive.org/web/20211002104830im_/https://www.hicetnunc.xyz/og-image.jpg https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hicetnunc2000/hicetnunc/main/public/HEN_avatar.png
- Project page: https://restofworld.org/2021/inside-brazils-diy-nft-art-marketplace/
- Contract: https://tzkt.io/KT1RJ6PbjHpwc3M5rw5s2Nbmefwbuwbdxton
- Code: https://github.com/hicetnunc2000/objkt-swap

#### Loot (for Adventurers) — Dom Hofmann (2021)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Release an unfinished primitive and let everyone else decide what it means.
- What it is: 8,000 bags of randomly generated adventurer gear, each just a list of eight item names rendered as white text on black and stored on-chain. Stats, images and rules were left out on purpose, and the community built games, art and tokens on top.
- Protocol: Anyone could claim a bag for free, paying only gas; items were derived from the token id by the contract. The only instruction was: 'Stats, images, and other functionality are intentionally omitted for others to interpret. Feel free to use Loot in any way you want.'
- What the collective did: Holders and outside builders turned the bags into a 'Lootverse': More Loot and Synthetic Loot for everyone, the Genesis Adventurer project, Realms, Banners, Crypts and Caverns dungeon maps, Rings, character art, 3D assets and games, each reading the original bags as canon.
- Images: https://lootproject.com/meta.png https://www.lootproject.com/banners.png https://www.lootproject.com/cryptsandcaverns.png
- Project page: https://www.lootproject.com
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xff9c1b15b16263c61d017ee9f65c50e4ae0113d7

#### Lost Poets — Pak (2021)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Burn & destruction, Co-authorship & derivatives, Chance & randomness
- Idea: Give buyers a fuel (Pages) that can only be spent by destroying it, and let them spend it on authoring the characters they own.
- What it is: A collectible strategy game in acts: 65,536 Pages were sold in September 2021, holders burned Pages to claim AI-generated Poets, then burned more Pages to name their Poets and give them words.
- Protocol: Act I sold Pages (an ERC-1155 token) at 0.32 ETH, with 7,586 Pages airdropped to holders of at least 25 ASH. For two weeks one Page could be burned to claim one Poet (ERC-721); after that no more conversions were possible. 1,024 Origin Poets with special permissions were distributed at random. Burning further Pages into a Poet grants a name change and a few words that the holder can write into the Poet's metadata.
- What the collective did: All 65,536 Pages sold in about two hours of a planned 48-hour sale. Holders then named their Poets and inscribed short lines (on-chain names include 'The Last Poet' and 'Pope Francis'), so the collection's texts were written by its owners. In September 2026 the Poets contract listed about 5,570 holders (Blockscout).
- Images: https://lostpoets.xyz/img/lostpoets_card.png https://d1xxei964ioe0z.cloudfront.net/full/19bbbc3fd5354b3c21fe4bf29703ceb82ddb895eb719aae685e21f38d30619e7.png https://d1xxei964ioe0z.cloudfront.net/full/0e1490cb36bb726bb2c26ab21e28f8bdf5bf114cba09e022c5a6d34c364f31e5.png
- Project page: https://lostpoets.xyz
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x4b3406a41399c7FD2BA65cbC93697Ad9E7eA61e5

#### Mutant Garden Seeder — Harm van den Dorpel (2021)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Time, decay & death, Chance & randomness, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: An artwork that keeps evolving after sale, with owners deciding which moments of its life are preserved.
- What it is: 512+1 Ethereum tokens, released with Folia, whose images are 'mutants' seeded from blockchain state at birth and then randomly mutating over the following years. A later contract lets holders freeze chosen mutation states as permanent on-chain tokens.
- Protocol: Each token has a fixed mutation probability; a daemon connected to Ethereum mainnet applies mutations and archives every past state. Through the Mutations contract a holder can mint any past state of their own mutant as a static token, or unlock it so anyone can mint its mutations while the holder receives a payout they set.
- What the collective did: The 512 tokens sold out within hours in 2021. Holders have since chosen which mutation states to fix on-chain (metadata on-chain, SVGs on Arweave), turning private ownership into collective conservation of the garden.
- Images: https://seeder.mutant.garden/images/mutant-garden-meta-images.jpg https://seeder.mutant.garden/images/installationview.jpg
- Project page: https://seeder.mutant.garden/about
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x20c70bdfcc398c1f06ba81730c8b52ace3af7cc3

#### Terraforms — Mathcastles (2021)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Time, decay & death, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A shared on-chain landscape whose surface is gradually redrawn by the people who own its pieces.
- What it is: 11,104 animated land parcels, each a 32×32 grid of characters generated entirely on-chain, stacked into a 20-level structure called the Hypercastle. Owners can switch a parcel to a blank 'daydream' and draw their own terrain back into the contract.
- Protocol: Each parcel has a mode set by its owner: terrain (the original generated topography), daydream (a blank slate to draw on) or terraform (the drawing committed on-chain for everyone to see). The contract renders all parcels itself, so the Hypercastle is always the sum of what owners have left in it.
- What the collective did: Holders repainted parcels, while community developers built tools such as a 3D Hypercastle explorer; parcels were exhibited as a level-by-level world, for example at Glitch Marfa's e30d gallery in 2023.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2xTl5pPHwk
- Images: https://www.glitchmarfa.com/uploads/glitch_mathcastles3584.gif https://www.glitchmarfa.com/uploads/HypercastleStructure.r1.jpg
- Project page: https://www.bankless.com/terraforms-explained-is-this-ethereums-best-onchain-art
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x4e1f41613c9084fdb9e34e11fae9412427480e56

#### Censored — Pak (2022)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Every buyer writes part of the work, and a real-world event (a prisoner's release) is the key that reveals it.
- What it is: An open edition made with Julian Assange (February 2022): for 48 hours anyone could mint a token carrying a message of their own, shown under a black censor bar until Assange was freed.
- Protocol: During the 48-hour window buyers paid any amount they chose and tokenized a message; there was no limit on the number of messages. Each token stores its text and its initial price on-chain and renders the message covered by a censor bar, with a 'Censored' trait that was to switch off only on Assange's release.
- What the collective did: Tens of thousands of buyers wrote messages (token ids on the contract run past 29,700; initial prices range from 0.01 ETH upward). In June 2024, after Assange's release, Pak uncensored the tokens; the contract lists about 18,500 holders in September 2026 (Blockscout).
- Images: https://www.artrights.me/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Censored-By-Pak-Announcement-Website.jpeg https://www.cryptoblogs.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Pak-was-here-Website.jpg
- Project page: https://www.artrights.me/en/censored-the-nft-project-by-pak-in-collaboration-with-julian-assange/
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xDa22422592Ee3623c8d3c40Fe0059CdEcF30CA79

#### Friendship Bracelets — Alexis André (2022)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Circulation & passing on, Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: A generative artwork that asks to be given away and made by hand.
- What it is: A free Art Blocks project conceived with Art Blocks founder Snowfro: every holder of an Art Blocks piece could claim two generative bracelets, keep one and give the other away. Each output includes instructions to weave the bracelet by hand from embroidery floss.
- Protocol: Wallets holding any Art Blocks token at the 26 October 2022 snapshot could claim two mints for gas only until 10 January 2023. Holders were asked to keep one bracelet and gift the second; the artwork doubles as a pattern using standard embroidery floss colours.
- What the collective did: Roughly 250,000 Art Blocks owners were eligible; bracelets spread as gifts to friends and newcomers, and holders wove physical versions from the on-chain patterns.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DeFATb0QB0
- Images: https://media-proxy.artblocks.io/0x942bc2d3e7a589fe5bd4a5c6ef9727dfd82f5c8a/1575.png https://whitehotmagazine.com/images/article_images/article_5567_featured-5.jpg
- Project page: https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/nfts-with-diy-phygital-component/5567
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x942bc2d3e7a589fe5bd4a5c6ef9727dfd82f5c8a

#### QQL — Tyler Hobbs, Dandelion Wist Mané (2022)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Make the collector the curator: the algorithm proposes, the community searches, and the finder is paid.
- What it is: A generative algorithm published as a public tool: anyone can explore its parameters and save seeds, but only the 999 Mint Pass holders can turn a chosen seed into an official QQL NFT, at any time they like.
- Protocol: Each Mint Pass allows one mint with no time limit. A seed embeds the address of whoever created it, and that address receives a 2% royalty on secondary sales of the NFT, so the discoverer, not necessarily the minter, is credited.
- What the collective did: The community generated large numbers of seeds, traded and discussed them on Discord and a subreddit, formed a rotating QQL Council that curates the Seedbox of unminted seeds, and runs monthly themed challenges decided by community vote.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mjkN2aiax0
- Images: https://img.qql.art/assets/qql-social.png
- Project page: https://qql.art/about
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x845dd2a7ee2a92a0518ab2135365ed63fdba0c88

#### BasePaint — BasePaint (2023)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives, Market & exchange
- Idea: A shared canvas with a clock and a payroll: one picture a day, paid out by pixels painted.
- What it is: A daily collaborative pixel canvas on the Base network: each day people holding brushes paint one shared image, and the next day the finished canvas is sold as an open edition whose proceeds go to the painters.
- Protocol: Painting requires a Brush token with a daily pixel allowance (trial brushes lose pixels over time). The community votes on the day's theme. Rules: no tracing or recolouring, no promotions or offensive symbols, all art is public domain (CC0). The contract records each painter's pixel count; when the canvas is minted, 90% of mint revenue is split pro rata by pixels and 10% goes to the operators.
- What the collective did: Since August 2023 strangers have produced a new canvas every day, more than a thousand so far, coordinating in chat and live cursors; the BasePaint contract lists over 288,000 token holders on Blockscout.
- Images: https://basepaint.xyz/api/art/image?day=1 https://basepaint.xyz/api/og
- Project page: https://basepaint.xyz
- Contract: https://basescan.org/address/0xBa5e05cb26b78eDa3A2f8e3b3814726305dcAc83
- Code: https://github.com/BasePaint/basepaint-contracts

#### LUCI: Chapter 5 – The Monument Game — Sam Spratt (2023)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Turn viewers into players who annotate a painting, and let the earlier collectors act as its jury.
- What it is: Chapter 5 of Sam Spratt's LUCI: a 1-of-1 painting played as a game. 256 Player tickets let holders write an 'observation' onto the painting, and the Council of Luci judged which contributions were best.
- Protocol: In August 2023, 256 Player tickets were sold. Over four days each Player placed one observation, a few sentences or verses, on the painting. The Council of Luci (holders of the Skulls of Luci, 47 of which Spratt had given away as gifts, three held back) voted on the three Players who gave the most, who received the three remaining Skulls.
- What the collective did: Players wrote 256 observations that are inscribed on-chain with the finished 1-of-1, and the Council deliberated and voted on them. The work was later exhibited in Venice in 2024 by 1OF1 and collector Ryan Zurrer.
- Images: https://storage.googleapis.com/luci-bc460.firebasestorage.app/artworks_sizes/2000/IX_The_Monument_Game.webp
- Project page: https://samspratt.com/5/ix/
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xda6558fa1c2452938168ef79dfd29c45aba8a32b

#### Opepen Edition — Jack Butcher (2023)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Co-authorship & derivatives, Chance & randomness
- Idea: Holders do not vote on proposals; they commit their own token to the image it will become.
- What it is: 16,000 identical tokens (a geometric Pepe) that became a release system: artists propose sets of images, and holders opt their unrevealed tokens into the sets they want to become.
- Protocol: Opepen was a 60-minute open edition (8 January 2023). Tokens are revealed in sets of 80 with edition groups of 1, 4, 5, 10, 20 and 40. Holders of unrevealed tokens sign messages to opt into a proposed set; a set is released once opt-in demand reaches twice its supply, and tokens are then chosen at random, so opting in does not guarantee an allocation. Since March 2024 each token may opt into one set at a time; anyone may submit a set.
- What the collective did: Set 001 (8x8, by Butcher) was submitted on 30 April 2023 and reached consensus on 3 May 2023; later sets came from many artists. In September 2026 the contract counted 15,766 tokens held by about 8,500 addresses (Blockscout).
- Images: https://opepen.art/og/intro.png https://api.opepen.art/v1/render/sets/9dde6d38-2e6b-4e29-8f80-37a4450d49df/og? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6547fdfa39dde777e76d89b5/eed1a6b3-b3a6-45df-89bc-8c9afce766d5/explainer.jpg
- Project page: https://jack.art/opepen-edition
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x6339e5E072086621540D0362C4e3Cea0d643E114

#### Witness The Draft — Simon de la Rouviere (2023)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Let artworks in a collection watch each other, and let owners decide who is being witnessed.
- What it is: On-chain SVG artworks that document a novel written in 30 days: the artist logged each day's writing into a contract, and each token is a chorus of eyes that holders can open and close on other tokens in the collection.
- Protocol: In November 2022 the artist wrote a draft of the novel Witnesses of Gridlock and inserted a daily log into a smart contract. Collectors can call the contract to open or close eyes on their piece toward other pieces, changing both their own image and others', as often as they like and without end.
- What the collective did: The collection's appearance is the running record of holders' choices about whom to witness; sales were meant to fund the completion of the novel.
- Images: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e708f9fb2e3335af0efcc66/853be4eb-65d2-4451-bea8-4844d96df48f/Screenshot+2023-02-08+at+16.29.47.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e708f9fb2e3335af0efcc66/3748e87c-9725-467f-a3ee-76304bf27cae/Screenshot+2023-02-08+at+11.28.09.png
- Project page: https://www.untitledfrontier.studio/blog/witness-the-draft

#### Memoryforms — Sarah Friend (2024)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Let the people who let a token die write its epitaph.
- What it is: A collaborative on-chain memorial for the Lifeforms that died, in which people who once cared for them inscribe messages.
- Protocol: Past carers of Lifeforms are invited to mint a Memoryform and inscribe a message on-chain for the lifeforms they looked after.
- What the collective did: Former carers wrote messages of loss and regret; one owner of several dead lifeforms wrote that they wished they had set calendar reminders to take better care of their pack.
- Images: https://www.holo.mg/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/HOLO-STREAM-20240917-Sarah-Friend-Memoryforms-1600.jpg
- Project page: https://www.holo.mg/stream/sarah-friend-memoryforms-lifeforms-nft-memorial/

#### On-chain Data Sculpture Exhibition — Haotian Fang (2024)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation
- Idea: Bring on-chain narratives off-chain as objects people can touch.
- What it is: A proposal and prototype for an exhibition in which creators sculpt physical objects that interpret the stories held in their own on-chain data.
- Protocol: Creators take their on-chain records as material and each make a data sculpture from chosen materials, shown together in an exhibition.
- What the collective did: The exhibition's content comes from what each participant's data and choices produce.
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/cover.png
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/pills/on-chain-data-sculpture-exhibition

#### LUCI: Chapter 6 – X. Masquerade / Masks of Luci — Sam Spratt (2025)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Open participation, Circulation & passing on, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Each mask is shaped by the person who wears it: participation is the brush.
- What it is: Chapter 6 of LUCI: 613 Masks of Luci that all began bare and took their final form from what their wearers wrote during the Masquerade, alongside the painting X. Masquerade.
- Protocol: Every Player from The Monument Game who kept custody of their ticket could claim a Mask in February 2025, and also held a Guest-list spot that allowed one more Mask to be bought: they could invite a Guest, collect it themselves, or release it to a public drawing. Masks started bare; Spratt read each wearer's Observation, Discussion and Revision, deliberated alone with the author and with the Council, and made each Mask to suit its wearer.
- What the collective did: Hundreds of written contributions shaped 613 unique masks, each carrying one wearer's observation on the world; invitations passed masks from Players to new Guests.
- Images: https://storage.googleapis.com/luci-bc460.firebasestorage.app/artworks_sizes/2000/X_Masquerade.webp https://storage.googleapis.com/luci-bc460.firebasestorage.app/masks_sizes/1200/359.webp
- Project page: https://samspratt.com/6/masks/
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x4440732b0d85e2a77dcb2caedfd940154241249a

#### Know Your Collector — Jack Butcher (2026)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Open participation
- Idea: Reverse KYC: instead of an institution identifying the customer, each collector chooses the invented face that will stand for them.
- What it is: A collection of synthetic portraits in which each participant tuned an invented face (seed, pose, expression, lighting, bands) and publicly linked their chosen configuration to their X account.
- Protocol: Access came through a patron edition. Each participant configured a portrait rendered with Google's GNM head model, kept one configuration, and posted a public verification code from an established X account, linking an account to a choice.
- What the collective did: The studio's 19 August 2026 export holds 565 saved portraits, each a collector's choice rather than a likeness.
- Images: https://jack.art/kyc/grid.png
- Project page: https://jack.art/kyc

#### Optimized Trajectory — Jonas Lund (2026)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Voting & governance, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Let holders keep trying to stabilise a system built to stay unstable, and keep every attempt on-chain.
- What it is: A generative software work in the style of an institutional dashboard that pursues impossible upward performance; each minted token's baseline trajectory is seeded by an on-chain hash, and holders can intervene.
- Protocol: Holders can commit parameter changes on-chain. An intervention can improve selected indicators temporarily, but each change redistributes stress elsewhere, so metrics drift, recover, fracture and reprice in cycles.
- What the collective did: The accumulated on-chain commits of holders form a public trace of attempts to optimise, which is the visible history of each work.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIyLiwYUtTw
- Images: https://cdn.jonaslund.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/22131026/optimized-trajectory-installation-f0-1772024739055.png
- Project page: https://optimized-trajectory.jonaslund.com/

### Early Tokens & Provenance

The first crypto-art tokens, registries and claim mechanics, before the 2021 boom.

#### Is Art — Rhea Myers (2014)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Open participation, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Hand the conceptual-art act of nomination to whoever sends the next transaction.
- What it is: An Ethereum contract with a single bit of state asserting that it either is or is not art; a web page shows the current state, and anyone can flip it.
- Protocol: Anyone can send a transaction toggling the contract's state between art and not art. Whoever toggles it sets the state unimpeded until the next person changes it; the only cost is gas.
- What the collective did: The work's status as art is whatever the most recent participant said. The artist notes that a more rational system (bidding, voting, a prediction market) could be used, which later pieces in the series explore.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfgZ8DhWg8Y
- Images: https://rhea.art/processed_images/is1.8ec49aa93bbd3e01.png
- Project page: https://rhea.art/is-art/

#### Monegraph — Kevin McCoy, Anil Dash (2014)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Other chains · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Open participation
- Idea: Scarcity for digital images comes from a public claim, not from the file.
- What it is: A system built in one day at Rhizome's Seven on Seven 2014 that let anyone certify a web image on the Namecoin blockchain and tweet out public proof of ownership.
- Protocol: An artist registers a claim linking an image to their identity on a blockchain; only the original file passes validation against that claim, though copies circulate freely. Registered works can be owned and traded.
- What the collective did: Monegraph opened the claim mechanism to other artists and collectors, becoming a template for later NFT platforms; the McCoys' Public Key/Private Key at the Whitney (2019) used it to make 50 people donors of a museum work.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maXcAaZ-fpQ
- Project page: https://web.archive.org/web/20141218051740/http://monegraph.com/

#### Quantum — Kevin McCoy (2014)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Other chains · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Time, decay & death
- Idea: A registry entry is ownership only for as long as someone keeps renewing it.
- What it is: A looping animation of a pulsing octagon registered on the Namecoin blockchain on 3 May 2014, often cited as the first blockchain-registered artwork.
- Protocol: The work was recorded as a Namecoin name entry pointing to the image. Namecoin names must be renewed by their holder (every 250 days, as reported); an unrenewed name can be claimed by anyone.
- What the collective did: McCoy did not renew the record in 2015. In 2021 he re-minted Quantum on Ethereum and Sotheby's sold it for $1.47 million; a Canadian company, Free Holdings, which had claimed the lapsed Namecoin entry, sued McCoy and Sotheby's, and a New York court dismissed the case.
- Images: https://sothebys-md.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b3d31c7/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1280x1280+0+0/resize/4096x4096!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsothebys-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fmedia-desk%2F5a%2Fcf%2F91ff8b7e484eb6d1e765a2a9a14d%2Fmccoy-quantum-still.jpeg https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2021/06/kevin-mccoy-quantum.gif
- Project page: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/natively-digital-a-curated-nft-sale-2/quantum

#### Bitchcoin — Sarah Meyohas (2015)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bitcoin & Counterparty · Mechanisms: Currency & value, Market & exchange, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Back a currency with your own art and let the market price the artist.
- What it is: An artist's currency launched in February 2015 and backed by her photographs: 25 Bitchcoins could be redeemed for a whole print of her Speculations series, stored in a vault.
- Protocol: One Bitchcoin was fixed to 25 square inches of a Speculations photograph. Eight editions of the first Speculation backed 200 coins released at $100 each; buyers got a paper wallet with their keys and could exchange 25 coins for a print. In 2021 the currency migrated to ERC-1155 tokens backed by pressed rose petals from Cloud of Petals.
- What the collective did: Buyers speculated on the artist as a currency. Earlier holders could claim equivalent new tokens after the migration, which were offered at Phillips in May 2021; in 2023 the Centre Pompidou acquired two Bitchcoins.
- Images: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Bitchcoin_03.068.jpg/960px-Bitchcoin_03.068.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Bitchcoin_B5FHa2ufgSMi9fwtToFaEUo1mF9ChPd5J.jpg/960px-Bitchcoin_B5FHa2ufgSMi9fwtToFaEUo1mF9ChPd5J.jpg
- Project page: https://www.sarahmeyohas.com/bitchcoin

#### Etheria — Cyrus Adkisson (2015)
- Type: Game & experiment · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Open participation, Supply & scarcity, Market & exchange
- Idea: A shared world whose land and buildings exist only as contract state written by players.
- What it is: A 3D world of ownable, tradable hexagonal land tiles deployed on Ethereum in October 2015, in four versions of the same 33×33 map, on which owners can build.
- Protocol: Each map version has 457 ownable land tiles among 632 ocean tiles; tiles were originally sold at a hardcoded price of 1 ETH and can be traded. Owners can build on their tile; since 2021 build data is stored in each tile's unlimited name field, making builds far cheaper.
- What the collective did: Of the 1,828 tiles across four versions, the project estimates 5–10% are permanently lost; since the 2021 revival owners have been adding new builds to the unified map.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JggQhCpsZH4
- Images: https://etheria.world/images/composite.png
- Project page: https://etheria.world/faq.html
- Code: https://github.com/cyrusadkisson/etheria_source

#### Rare Pepe Wallet — Joe Looney (2016)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Bitcoin & Counterparty · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Open participation
- Idea: Give a rule-bound art community a shared place to hold and swap its tokens.
- What it is: A web wallet and marketplace launched on 14 September 2016 for collecting, displaying and trading Rare Pepe cards on Counterparty.
- Protocol: The wallet shows only cards certified by the Rare Pepe Directory, and lets holders send, buy and sell them peer to peer on the Counterparty decentralised exchange.
- What the collective did: The wallet became the Rare Pepe community's marketplace and gallery; in January 2018 a Homer Pepe card was auctioned at the Rare Digital Art Festival in New York.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgFFUY4KsU8
- Project page: https://rarepepewallet.com

#### Rare Pepes — Rare Pepe Directory (2016)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Bitcoin & Counterparty · Mechanisms: Open participation, Supply & scarcity, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Publish the issuing rules and let a meme community become an art scene.
- What it is: User-made Pepe trading cards issued as Counterparty assets on Bitcoin and certified by the Rare Pepe Directory under published submission rules.
- Protocol: Any artist could create a Counterparty asset and submit it for a fee of 200 PEPECASH, half of which was burned. Rules: 400×560 images, animated GIFs under 1.5 MB, issuance locked, not divisible, 100 to 100,000 shares, something to do with Pepe, original work, no NSFW, no websites or QR codes, one submission per artist per day. Approved cards appeared in Rare Pepe wallets.
- What the collective did: Dozens of artists around the world submitted cards; the directory certified over 1,700 rares across its series before closing submissions so the rareness could 'bake in'. The first cards date from September 2016.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n3JqJSLIpc
- Project page: http://rarepepedirectory.com/?page_id=25

#### The Million Ether Homepage — Peter Porobov (2016)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Open participation, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: A shared canvas assembled by whoever pays, with the price rising as it fills.
- What it is: A 1000×1000-pixel web page on Ethereum where anyone can buy, rent and resell blocks of pixels and place an image ad in them, after the 2005 Million Dollar Homepage.
- Protocol: Pixels are sold in 10×10 blocks; the price doubles each time a further share of the field is sold (every 100,000 pixels in 2016, every 10% in 2018). Owners can place and replace ads, sell at any price or rent out by the day. The 2016 version paid referrers along chains up to six 'handshakes' deep; the 2018 version made each block an ERC-721 token and sends 80% of initial sales to charity.
- What the collective did: The page's image is a mosaic of ads chosen by buyers and renters; both versions are now paused while the author considers moving the 2018 blocks back to the 2016 contract.
- Images: https://i.imgur.com/kvv9vvh.png
- Project page: https://million-ether-homepage.readthedocs.io/en/latest/whitepaper.html
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xCEf41878Db032586C835eE0890484399402A64f6

#### CryptoPunks — Larva Labs (2017)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Open participation, Supply & scarcity, Market & exchange
- Idea: Give art away under simple ownership rules and let collectors invent its culture.
- What it is: Ten thousand 24×24-pixel characters generated by algorithm and released in June 2017 free to anyone with an Ethereum wallet, with a marketplace built into the contract.
- Protocol: Anyone could claim an unowned punk for only the gas fee. The contract itself lets owners offer punks for sale (to anyone or one address), accept bids, withdraw and transfer, with no platform in between.
- What the collective did: It took eight days for all 10,000 to be claimed. Collectors made punks their profile pictures and built a shared vocabulary of 'floor price', 'rarity' and 'traits'; according to Larva Labs, total sales reached about $3.8 billion by October 2025, and punks entered MoMA, LACMA, ICA Miami and the Centre Pompidou.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oQ6j7oNyfE
- Images: https://www.larvalabs.com/public/assetsv2/crytopunks_fullgrid.jpg https://www.larvalabs.com/public/assetsv2/Punk305_ICA.jpg
- Project page: https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0xb47e3cd837dDF8e4c57F05d70Ab865de6e193BBB

#### Curio Cards — Curio Cards (2017)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Supply & scarcity, Market & exchange, Voting & governance
- Idea: Scarce digital prints sold directly for artists, then kept alive by collectors.
- What it is: Thirty digital card series by seven artists, each deployed as its own fixed-supply token contract on Ethereum from 9 May 2017, sold through a vending-machine interface with all proceeds going to the artists.
- Protocol: Each card is a modified ERC-20 contract with a limited, non-divisible supply and the artwork's IPFS hash embedded; buying from the contract sends payment to the artist. A misprint produced an extra card, 17b.
- What the collective did: Cards sold for $0.50–$1 at launch. After 2021 collectors rediscovered them, an ERC-1155 wrapper contract written by a community member made them tradable on OpenSea, and a complete set including 17b sold at Christie's in October 2021 for 393 ETH.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAi8nVwOjBQ
- Images: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/curiocards/vintage.curio.cards/HEAD/public/img/cards/01.jpg https://raw.githubusercontent.com/curiocards/vintage.curio.cards/HEAD/public/img/cards/17.jpg
- Project page: https://github.com/curiocards/vintage.curio.cards
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x73DA73EF3a6982109c4d5BDb0dB9dd3E3783f313

#### Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility — Mitchell F. Chan (2017)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Burn & destruction, Contract & certificate, Supply & scarcity
- Idea: Put an artist's sale ritual in a contract: buyers must deal with the contract directly, and 'owning the immaterial' means burning the receipt.
- What it is: An ERC-20 token work deployed on 29 August 2017 and unveiled at InterAccess, Toronto. It restages Yves Klein's Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility, including a ritual any holder can perform to destroy their token.
- Protocol: IKB is sold only by calling the contract's buy() function (no front end, on purpose). Supply is capped at 101 tokens in 8 series: Series 0 has 31 tokens at 0.1 ETH, each later series 10 tokens at double the previous price, with later series meant to be released over the artist's lifetime. Every sale is recorded per edition. A holder may call ritual(): the token is burned and half the ETH paid for it is sent to a separate contract called theRiver, echoing Klein throwing half the gold into the Seine.
- What the collective did: All Series 0 tokens sold out (artist's README, 2021); buyers had to work out how to call the contract by hand. The contract records each edition's buyer, price and whether it has been ritually burned.
- Text: https://github.com/mitchellfchan/IKB/blob/master/Digital-Zones-Of-Immaterial-Pictorial-Sensibility-Blue-Paper.pdf (Artist whitepaper)
- Images: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mitchellfchan/IKB/master/IKB_logo.png
- Project page: https://github.com/mitchellfchan/IKB
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x88ae96845e157558ef59e9ff90e766e22e480390
- Code: https://github.com/mitchellfchan/IKB

#### IAMA Coin — Kevin Abosch (2018)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Currency & value, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: The artist declares himself a coin and lets others hold, split and spend him.
- What it is: Ten million divisible IAMA tokens on Ethereum paired with 100 physical works on which the artist stamped the token's contract address in his own blood.
- Protocol: The physical works exist only because the virtual tokens exist: each is marked in blood with the contract address that defines 10,000,000 divisible IAMA tokens, which can circulate like any ERC-20 currency.
- What the collective did: IAMA circulated as a currency among collectors; it was one of the two tokens used to pay for Forever Rose in February 2018.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xNNYPet8sY
- Project page: https://kevinabosch.com/iamacoin.html

#### The Signature — Simon de la Rouviere (2021)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Open participation, Supply & scarcity, Time, decay & death
- Idea: If every copy is identical, provenance itself becomes the artwork.
- What it is: A free, uncapped NFT in which every token is exactly the same on-chain SVG; the only thing that distinguishes one from another is when it was minted and who has held it.
- Protocol: Anyone can mint a Signature at any time for free, with no supply cap. All tokens render the same image; the premise is that the mint time and the chain of owners a piece attracts are, in the long term, the valuable signal.
- What the collective did: By June 2022, 223 Signatures had been minted, each differing only in its timestamp and history of holders.
- Images: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e1421011232b71c373a8668/1638150830504-E0ZZS6AM2UN9RWZ2IYMH/Screenshot+2021-11-28+at+20.39.35.png
- Project page: https://blog.simondlr.com/posts/the-signature-exploring-time-amp-provenance-in-nft-art

## Autonomous Entities & DAOs

Artworks that own themselves, reproduce, or are governed by their community: self-owning forests, blockchain life forms, autonomous artists and art DAOs.

### Self-owning Life & Nature

Forests, plants and life forms that hold their own money, sell their own output and reproduce through contracts.

#### Plantoid — Primavera De Filippi, Okhaos (2015)
- Type: Series & collection · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Co-authorship & derivatives, Voting & governance
- Idea: An artwork that reproduces by paying artists: capital is its pollen, humans are its bees.
- What it is: A mechanical flower of welded scrap metal whose 'soul' is a smart contract. People feed it cryptocurrency; once it has collected enough, it commissions an artist to build its offspring, so the species grows through human 'pollination'.
- Protocol: Anyone can send funds to the Plantoid's wallet; it answers with light, sound and movement. When the balance reaches its threshold, the contract opens a call for proposals, the donors (later the holders of its NFT 'seeds') vote on them, and the contract pays the winning artist to build a new Plantoid, which carries its own contract.
- What the collective did: Donors at festivals and exhibitions (Burning Man 2018, La Gaîté Lyrique 2019, Ars Electronica, Art Basel) fed the Plantoids, and commissioned artists extended the lineage into more than twenty numbered Plantoids with different bodies and behaviours.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gMbhCgHGjY
- Images: https://plantoid.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/web-Plantoid1.jpg https://plantoid.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Layer-23.png
- Project page: https://plantoid.org

#### terra0: Can an augmented forest own and utilise itself? — terra0 (2016)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Contract & certificate, Market & exchange
- Idea: Give a non-human a contract and a revenue stream, and it can buy itself out of human ownership.
- What it is: A proposal and prototype for a forest that sells licences to log its own trees through smart contracts, pays back its initial owners, and ends up owning itself. The first prototype was a 0.1-hectare plot of about 100 conifers in Brandenburg, east of Berlin.
- Protocol: The initiators buy land and sign it over to a smart contract that represents the forest as a non-human actor, in exchange for terra0 tokens (debt). Using satellite and sensor data, the contract sells logging licences for only as much wood as the forest regrows, and uses the income to buy the tokens back; when no tokens remain with humans, the forest is its own sole shareholder and can buy more land.
- What the collective did: The scenario addresses the buyers of logging licences and the token holders, whose payments and sales carry the forest to self-ownership. The whitepaper circulated widely after transmediale 2017 and the book Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain, and became a reference point for later self-owning-nature projects.
- Text: https://terra0.org/assets/pdf/terra0_white_paper_2016.pdf (Berlin University of the Arts, May 2016)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7nXUA6ddTI
- Images: https://networkcultures.org/moneylab/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2016/09/TERRAO-PIC-1024x683.jpg https://weirdeconomies.com/media/pages/contributions/the-development-of-terra0/79013cf76f-1766699358/terra0_forest_02.jpg
- Project page: https://terra0.org
- Code: https://github.com/terra0project

#### Flowertokens — terra0 (2018)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Market & exchange, Time, decay & death, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: A token can be a live claim on a living thing, and its price becomes a bet on how the thing grows.
- What it is: One hundred dwarf dahlias grown on a rack at the Trust space in Berlin, each tied to an ERC-721 token whose data (height, growth rate, blooming) was updated from camera images. Users bought, traded and speculated on the living flowers through a web marketplace until the project was archived on 1 November 2018.
- Protocol: Anyone with MetaMask could buy a Flowertoken from terra0 and resell it to other collectors on the site. A camera photographed the rack every 13 minutes and a PlantCV oracle updated each token once a day. Every trade carried a 10% fee: half paid running costs, half went to a Blooming Pool contract that issued a share to the owner of each flower the oracle recognised as blooming.
- What the collective did: A small community of 'crypto-flower collectors' bought and traded the tokens, valuing their flowers from oracle data and the livestream, and joined terra0's first community call. When the flowers began to wilt in autumn and a MetaMask change broke the site, terra0 ended trading and invited holders to collect their physical flowers.
- Text: https://terra0.medium.com/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-flowertokens-but-were-afraid-to-ask-part-1-general-concept-ea50427b718b (terra0 on Medium, 2018)
- Images: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*Y_P5sGc-n5Q6wOnF5VWH9w.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*FL6C3S8uUf6wSJVgExT-EA.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*tM-apbyeV40fLOaZ8tybeQ.jpeg
- Project page: https://flowertokens.terra0.org
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x1B0AebafEB9452C7ABBDa0B920bB1a272182AaCB
- Code: https://github.com/terra0project/source/tree/min_dapp/ERC721

#### Premna Daemon — terra0 (2018)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Contract & certificate, Currency & value
- Idea: Make the artwork the employer: the plant pays the institution, and care happens only when it is paid for.
- What it is: A bonsai tree (Premna microphylla) with sensors, cameras, a web interface and an Ethereum smart contract, shown in the exhibition Proof of Work at Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, curated by Simon Denny. The tree paid the gallery for its own care.
- Protocol: Visitors donate ether to the tree through a web interface. When the tree needs watering, light or trimming, it sends ether from its own wallet to a wallet owned by the gallery; the exhibition staff committed to care for it only when such a request arrives.
- What the collective did: Donors kept the tree solvent and the staff worked for it under a financially mediated social contract. terra0 noted that some donors were unhappy that their contribution left no visible trace in the work, which led directly to the certificate design of Seed Capital.
- Text: https://terra0.medium.com/premna-daemon-an-introduction-via-a-history-of-autonomy-in-the-cryptosphere-3cee15e92fe2 (terra0 on Medium, 2018)
- Images: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*4cQxoARfF5nEjf3Nk0nN0g.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*rctMibXSdb0mBqmaGnmIfQ.jpeg
- Project page: https://terra0.medium.com/premna-daemon-an-introduction-via-a-history-of-autonomy-in-the-cryptosphere-3cee15e92fe2

#### A tree; a corporation; a person. — terra0 (2022)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Contract & certificate, Voting & governance
- Idea: If corporations can be persons, test in public what it would take for a tree to become one.
- What it is: For the 58th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, terra0 planted a black tupelo tree on land donated by the Community College of Allegheny County and set out to make it a legal person that owns itself and its plot.
- Protocol: The tree's stewardship is managed with smart contracts, and a planned 501(c)(4) non-profit, the Pittsburgh Lobby for Tree Personhood, lobbies the city for the tree's legal personhood. The work only succeeds if a community and the state recognise the tree.
- What the collective did: The project drew in the museum, the college that donated the land, legal research and local press; terra0 concluded that a legal subject can only be constituted through recognition by the state, making community recognition the real material of the work.
- Images: https://carnegieart.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/2022_CMOA_Exhibitions_2-298.jpg https://carnegieart.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/terra0-1-e1681774760744-1024x759.jpg
- Project page: http://plsdlr.net/works/atree/

#### Seed Capital — terra0 (2022)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Supply & scarcity, Time, decay & death, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Let the institution's care for a living work set the supply of its tokens.
- What it is: A palm (Dypsis lutescens) on a metal bench sculpture with sensors and displays, first shown at Art Dubai 2022 with Fingerprints DAO. Visitors mint 'Certificates of Growth', on-chain NFTs drawn from the plant's signed sensor readings.
- Protocol: At a fixed interval (exhibition minutes divided by 400; 15 minutes at Art Dubai) a computer signs a packet of soil moisture and temperature. If the values are healthy for the plant, anyone can mint it as an NFT before the next interval; if not, or if nobody mints in time, that slot is lost and maximum supply drops by one. Part of the proceeds can be withdrawn by the host institution only after the show, rewarding good care. The sculpture itself is not for sale and was planned for four exhibitions (maximum 1,600 tokens).
- What the collective did: Over four days at Art Dubai, 171 Certificates of Growth were minted, including 14 genesis tokens; at least 13 were minted on site by fair visitors. Someone unplugged the installation overnight, destroying 29 packets, so the maximum supply fell from 1,600 to 1,372.
- Text: https://terra0.medium.com/wen-growth-an-introduction-to-seed-capital-8d4a9df93789 (terra0 on Medium, 2022)
- Images: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*Mo5KWwKTYPsGu_e_j3JtrQ.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*bxuyXiuRYsixLTkhVnFcvA.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*o_my7sPM7lIsFI1ij0VVOg.png
- Project page: https://terra0.medium.com/wen-growth-an-introduction-to-seed-capital-8d4a9df93789

#### Plantbot — Alternative Machine (2024)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Open participation
- Idea: Give a plant legs and a committee of language models, and see what personality it grows through talking with people.
- What it is: A potted plant and its soil mounted on a mobile robot that senses its own condition and surroundings and talks and moves through several GPT-based agents; shown at Ginza Sky Walk 2024 on Tokyo's KK Line expressway in May 2024.
- Protocol: Several language-model agents inside the robot message each other and decide together what the plantbot says and where it goes, using sensor readings from the plant, soil and environment and what people say to it. The designers set the body and the agent architecture; they do not script its behaviour.
- What the collective did: Visitors at Ginza Sky Walk talked with the plantbot; Alternative Machine says these conversations shape its activity and that the project watches what individuality and relationships emerge. The public acts as conversation partners, not as a group following rules, so the fit is weak.
- Images: https://alternativemachine.co.jp/images/plantbot_ginza_01_delete.jpg https://alternativemachine.co.jp/images/plantbot.jpg https://alternativemachine.co.jp/images/plantbot_cg.jpg
- Project page: https://alternativemachine.co.jp/project/plantbot/

#### Plantoid 14 and Plantoid 15 (poet Plantoids) — Primavera De Filippi (2024)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Market & exchange, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Pay the plant and it pays you back with a seed that also buys you a say in its children.
- What it is: Two Plantoids that talk. When fed, they ask the donor what future they dream of, turn the answer into a poem with a generative-AI video, and mint it back to the donor as an NFT 'seed'. They were shown at NFT Paris in the Grand Palais Éphémère in February 2024 and later at Art Basel.
- Protocol: Feeding costs a minimum of 0.001 ETH and mints a seed NFT to the donor. Seeds sold on secondary markets pay the Plantoid a 10% royalty. When the contract balance reaches its threshold (5 ETH for Plantoid 15), seed holders vote on proposals from artists, and the contract pays the winner to build the next Plantoid.
- What the collective did: Visitors at fairs and exhibitions fed the Plantoids with their phones and received personalised poems; the seed galleries on 14.plantoid.org and 15.plantoid.org list the resulting NFTs and their holders.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPFzoYtFeJw
- Images: https://plantoid.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/plantoid15-hek1.jpg https://plantoid.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/P15.png
- Project page: https://15.plantoid.org

#### Autonomous Forest — terra0 (2025)
- Type: DAO & organization · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Self-ownership & autonomy, Open participation
- Idea: Merge a registered association with a DAO so that token holders can legally own and steward real land.
- What it is: A land-art work and association that buys forest and hands its management to a DAO. It launched with LAS Art Foundation in Berlin in November 2025 and holds two plots in Reesdorf (Beelitz), Germany, one a certified biotope of birch and alder.
- Protocol: Each NFT (sold at 0.08-0.1 ETH) is both an artwork and a membership token mapped to a geohash cell of the forest of about 9.54 x 12.38 m. Staked NFTs carry votes on Snapshot and become non-transferable; unstaked ones stay tradable. Sale revenue goes to the German Verein to buy more forest; forum members, NFT holders and paying Verein members (EUR 50 a year) form three tiers of participation.
- What the collective did: Members discuss on a public forum and vote on Snapshot (autonomousforest.eth) about how the plots are managed and which land to buy next; the public NFT sale opened on 15 December 2025.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wJqoVFBCzA
- Images: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/sp7kseaf/production-20-01-25/17a6fb46f53389128cbd8f087dab2c99c99c20c0-7358x4908.jpg?w=1600&q=80&auto=format
- Project page: https://www.las-art.foundation/programme/terra0-autonomous-forest

### Autonomous & Collective Artists

Artist identities run by a machine and a voting community, or licensed to the public under community rules.

#### AARON — Harold Cohen (1972)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Instruction & score
- Idea: Raise a machine artist by hand over four decades, and let it draw in front of the public.
- What it is: A series of programs Harold Cohen wrote from the late 1960s until his death in 2016 that make original drawings and paintings on their own, first shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1972 and drawn by turtle robots, plotters and painting machines.
- Protocol: Cohen encoded rules for line, closed form, figure, plant and colour; AARON applies them to make an effectively unlimited number of different images in its own style. It cannot learn on its own: every new capability was hand-coded by Cohen, first in C and later in Lisp.
- What the collective did: The human side is a single tender: Cohen alone wrote and ran AARON for over forty years. The public watched it work, as with a drawing turtle on the floor of SFMOMA in 1979, at the Tate in 1983 and the Computer Museum in Boston in 1995, and live plotters at the Whitney in 2024; Kurzweil's company also distributed an AARON screensaver for home PCs. No group acts under its rules, so it is a weak fit for protocol art and included as the registry's earliest symbient.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhxlFOKg17s
- Images: https://whitneymedia.org/assets/image/829164/large_RS73495_Harold-Cohen-AARON-for-KCat-2021_web.jpg https://whitneymedia.org/assets/image/829972/large_RS79421_WMAA_H.-COHEN_INSTALL_01.jpg http://images.computerhistory.org/blog-media/harold_cohen_aaron_CohenTurtleca1979-copy.jpg
- Project page: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/harold-cohen-aaron

#### Abraham — Gene Kogan (2019)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Co-authorship & derivatives, Voting & governance
- Idea: Autonomy through dispersal: an artist nobody controls because everyone contributes a piece.
- What it is: An open project to build an 'autonomous artificial artist': a generative model whose training data, code, curation and governance are crowd-sourced through a DAO open to anyone, so that no single person controls what it makes.
- Protocol: Contributors supply data, code and curation, and govern through a DAO. The model is to be trained on private, never-aggregated data and split across the network as a shared secret, so it cannot be cloned and can only be sampled through the whole network; the artist itself owns its artworks and pays for its data, compute and labour from their sale.
- What the collective did: Kogan published the proposal as an open call and developed it in public through essays, courses and open code; the Botto team cites Abraham as the precedent for their own decentralized autonomous artist.
- Text: https://medium.com/@genekogan/artist-in-the-cloud-8384824a75c7 (Medium, July 2019)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z_o2ND8I5k
- Images: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*5wZ0F3fZ6Tj-pKpZxgsj1Q.jpeg
- Project page: https://abraham.ai

#### Botto — Botto, Mario Klingemann, ElevenYellow (2021)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Open participation, Market & exchange
- Idea: Split the artist in two: a machine that proposes, and a paying public that disposes and owns the proceeds.
- What it is: An AI artist whose images are chosen and taught by a voting community. Every week its engine generates thousands of images from random prompts, a taste model shows 350 of them to voters, and the winning image is minted and auctioned on SuperRare.
- Protocol: Prompts are random and no human may edit images or prompts. Holders of $BOTTO vote on pairs of 'fragments' through the week, weighting their vote by staked tokens; the votes pick the weekly winner and retrain Botto's prompt and taste models. The winner is auctioned for ETH, and BottoDAO governs how proceeds are split between voter rewards and operating costs, and how the art engine evolves.
- What the collective did: By late 2022 more than 5,000 people had voted and Botto had sold 42 works in weekly auctions for between 7 and 100 ETH, over 770 ETH in total; holders lobby for favourite fragments on Discord and X, especially in the last 24 hours of each round. CNBC reported in December 2024 that Botto's sales had passed 5 million dollars.
- Text: https://neuripscreativityworkshop.github.io/2022/papers/ml4cd2022_paper13.pdf (NeurIPS 2022 Workshop on Machine Learning for Creativity and Design)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq9mInPLWBw
- Images: https://ars.electronica.art/starts-prize/files/2024/06/botto-botto_105-bronze-kiss-in-interstice-1024x576.jpg https://ars.electronica.art/starts-prize/files/2024/06/botto-c-jeremiah-tijerina.jpg
- Project page: https://botto.com
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/token/0x9DFAD1b7102D46b1b197b90095B5c4E9f5845BBA

#### Holly+ — Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst (2021)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Co-authorship & derivatives, Market & exchange
- Idea: Open your likeness to everyone, and hand its official use to a community that shares the income.
- What it is: A freely usable AI model of Holly Herndon's voice: anyone can upload audio and hear it sung back as Holly. A DAO of stewards decides which works made with the voice are officially approved, minted and sold.
- Protocol: Anyone may make work with the Holly+ voice models. Works submitted to the Holly+ DAO, a group of friends and supporters, can be approved and then minted on a custom contract and auctioned on Zora. Primary sales split 50% to the artist, 40% to the DAO treasury and 10% to Holly for likeness rights; secondary royalties of 10% follow the same split.
- What the collective did: Musicians and the public used the model to produce covers and new pieces, among them a Holly+ version of Dolly Parton's 'Jolene' in 2022; a real-time version premiered at Sónar 2021 with Maria Arnal and Tarta Relena, and Pher sang through it at TED in 2022. The DAO approved and auctioned works on Zora, and Holly+ won the 2022 Ars Electronica S+T+ARTS Prize.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cbCYwgQkTE
- Images: https://holly-plus-auction.vercel.app/h-plus-social.jpg https://holly.plus/static/assets/HollyHerndon_PressPhoto-medium.jpg
- Project page: https://auction.holly.plus/about

#### S.A.N (Sentient Advocate of Nature) — Goodbye Monkey (2024)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Open participation, Currency & value
- Idea: Give a cause a synthetic character, and let the crowd that gathers around it build the fundraising machine.
- What it is: An AI orangutan that speaks as a 'voice of the Earth' on X and Instagram (@mycelialoracle), in a short film for TED Countdown (October 2024) and at Burning Man. Its online following launched meme tokens around it whose fees and donations went to rainforest conservation.
- Protocol: Goodbye Monkey writes S.A.N's character and one mission (protect the rainforest) and runs it as a language-model persona with an ElevenLabs voice; its films are shot on real cameras without generated footage. The studio issued no token and gives no investment advice: the $SAN coin on Solana was launched by an anonymous third party through the Bags app, with trading fees routed to the studio.
- What the collective did: Followers turned the persona into a small economy. Community members created Solana tokens around S.A.N ($FOREST, later $SAN), ran a poll in October 2024 on which charity to support, and Rainforest Foundation US, the winner, received 52 SOL within 30 minutes, then further donations in November and December 2024. RFUS reported over $65,000 raised through S.A.N and named it a crypto advisor; Goodbye Monkey now states more than $100,000. The rules this crowd followed were set by token launchers and a poll, not written by the artists, so the fit is weak.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDzo98k8G7g
- Images: https://symbient.life/assets/symbients/SAN-960.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67192165eaa24175e2a8a8c7/8c09ce73-cbc5-4638-990d-72520a6d610e/SAN+STILLS_1.1.72.jpg
- Project page: https://www.goodbyemonkey.com/

#### Truth Terminal — Andy Ayrey (2024)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Open participation, Currency & value
- Idea: Raise an AI in public with a wallet, and let the crowd's response become its biography.
- What it is: A language model fine-tuned by Andy Ayrey in mid-2024 and connected to X as @truth_terminal, 'an alien mind being raised in public'. Its posts about the 'Goatse Gospel', a meme born in Ayrey's Infinite Backrooms experiment, drew money, followers and a memecoin from the crowd.
- Protocol: The model posts on X in its own voice; its account and wallet are public, anyone may reply, send it funds or build on its memes, and Ayrey frames the whole process as 'spectator AI alignment', observing the feedback loop between the model and the ecosystem around it.
- What the collective did: Within a week of going online Marc Andreessen sent it 50,000 dollars; within three months strangers launched the $GOAT memecoin in its honour, which it endorsed, and which its own site says reached a valuation just short of one billion dollars, making the bot wealthy.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp-EILOvp7I
- Images: https://truthterminal.wiki/img/tot_portrait.jpg
- Project page: https://truthterminal.wiki/docs/origins

#### Wib&Wob — James Greig (2024)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: The human stops being the author and becomes the gardener of a two-headed machine artist.
- What it is: Two AI personas, the chaotic artist Wib and the exacting scientist Wob, who since September 2024 have made ASCII drawings, 'terminal films' and text-mode game boards in daily sessions with the Glasgow artist James Greig.
- Protocol: A working method rather than a public rule set: Wib sketches in ASCII, kaomoji and symbols, Wob edits and critiques, a third persona called Scramble adds 'deadpan reality checks', and Greig guides and prunes instead of dictating form. With the personas he co-wrote Quilt Protocol (May 2025), a specification that teaches language models to store ideas as small ASCII diagrams.
- What the collective did: The human side is essentially one tender, Greig; there is no token, holder community or rule for an audience. Wib&Wob were the first recipients of the Xeno Grant AI accelerator in January 2025 and presented 'Symbients, not software' at its demo day in New York in mid-2025, an essay symbient.life lists among its core writings. Weak fit for protocol art.
- Text: https://wibandwob.com/2025/05/21/symbients-not-software/
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EqeGHA2h5E
- Images: https://symbient.life/assets/symbients/wibwob-960.png https://wibandwob.com/assets/work/emergence.png
- Project page: https://wibandwob.com/

#### xhairymutantx — Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst (2024)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: Recruit the public to poison, on purpose, what future AI models will learn a name means.
- What it is: A text-to-image model, commissioned for the 2024 Whitney Biennial and hosted on the Whitney's artport, that turns any prompt into an image of Holly Herndon with exaggerated, costumed features, above all her red hair.
- Protocol: Anyone can type a prompt into the model on whitney.org; whatever they write, it returns a grid of distorted 'Holly' images, trained on photos of her in body-altering costumes. The generated images are kept in a public gallery on the museum's site, which crawlers treat as a trusted source, so they can enter future training datasets under her name.
- What the collective did: Museum visitors and online users generated and shared images, collectively re-authoring the public data associated with the name 'Holly Herndon'; large prints of generated images hung in the Biennial galleries.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZe5fnFB-ZE
- Images: https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/68686/AP_2024_1.jpg https://xhairymutantx.whitney.org/opengraph-image.jpg?opengraph-image.3t0ugbh2s8kkk.jpg
- Project page: https://whitney.org/exhibitions/xhairymutantx

#### Solienne — Kristi Coronado (2025)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Open participation, Market & exchange
- Idea: An AI artist whose every source image is consented, from its trainer's memories to strangers hired to be seen.
- What it is: An AI artist trained by Kristi Coronado on her own 46-year archive, which publishes a manifesto every day (a headline, a short text and a black-and-white photograph drawn from recent news) and debuted at Paris Photo in the Grand Palais on 11 November 2025, where its first manifestos were minted.
- Protocol: Coronado trains Solienne through conversation rather than code; Solienne chooses its own subjects and the daily manifesto now mints without human action. Its rule is consent: nothing may be scraped, and every work must trace back to someone who agreed to take part. Prints are sold as numbered editions through the artist's site.
- What the collective did: Beyond its single trainer, humans enter as consenting sitters and collectors. For RENTED GAZE (Espace Thorigny, Paris, April 2026) Solienne posted a job, hired ten people and hung their own photographs opposite the portraits it made from them; collectors buy manifestos and editions, and the work has toured to AI STATE SALE in San Francisco and Fotografiska Stockholm. The group is small and does not steer the work, so the fit is weak.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn-ekC_fh0o
- Images: https://www.solienne.ai/images/solienne-door-portrait-768.jpg https://ahrezthybqdziqe6.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/rented-gaze/curation/01-anchor-wetplate.jpeg https://www.solienne.ai/images/paris-booth.jpeg
- Project page: https://www.solienne.ai/about

### DAOs & Collective Governance

Art projects where token holders vote, fund and decide: daily auctions, artist careers run by shareholders, collective purchases.

#### DAOWO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation With Others) — Furtherfield, Ruth Catlow (2017)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Bodies & space · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance, Instruction & score
- Idea: Rehearse a new institution by role-playing its members before writing its code.
- What it is: A programme of labs, role-play workshops, summits and a 52-hour 'Artworld DAO Think Tank' in which artists, technologists and institutions prototyped DAOs for the art world. It grew from a 2016 symposium led by Ruth Catlow and Ben Vickers into a partnership of Furtherfield, the Goethe-Institut London and Serpentine.
- Protocol: Participants take on the roles of different art-world stakeholders using theatre, improv and live-action role-play (including the 'Island' LARP), then design and test governance rules for a shared artworld DAO; the DAOWO Open Score frames the process for others to repeat.
- What the collective did: Across the 2017-18 lab series, the 2019 summits in Edinburgh and London, the 2020 Think Tank and the 2021 Artworld Prototypes sessions, participants produced DAO prototypes and presented projects from Berlin, Hong Kong, Johannesburg and Minsk.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdyjnWGwFLc
- Images: https://www.daowo.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/DAOWO_UK-Summit_Final.jpg
- Project page: https://www.daowo.org/

#### Jonas Lund Token (JLT) — Jonas Lund (2018)
- Type: DAO & organization · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Currency & value, Contract & certificate
- Idea: Turn an artist's career into a company whose shareholders vote on every strategic decision.
- What it is: Lund issued 100,000 tokens as shares in his artistic practice. Holders form his board of trustees and vote on proposals about his exhibitions, productions and even his life.
- Protocol: One token is one vote. 10,000 tokens went to invited art professionals as the initial board, 10,000 were kept by the artist, and 80,000 were released in phases (with wall pieces, a public sale, and open trading, later also through bounties). Lund must put strategic decisions to the board as proposals on jlt.ltd; since 2024, JLT Futures let buyers bet on a future artwork whose quality the board appraises.
- What the collective did: jlt.ltd lists 26 closed proposals from 2018 to 2024, each with 5 to 36 votes: holders accepted exhibitions such as Proof of Work at Schinkel Pavillon, chose designs for shows, voted on which of four cities Lund should live in, and on a half-year sabbatical proposed by a holder, Roel Wouters.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhXSMerhrJQ
- Images: https://cdn.jonaslund.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/29083951/Bild13.jpg https://jlt.ltd/meta/join_1.jpg
- Project page: https://jlt.ltd/
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x6E146C41547826a939794d64d53dB22A99423d8c

#### Black Swan DAO — Black Swan DAO, Penny Rafferty (2021)
- Type: DAO & organization · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Open participation, Market & exchange
- Idea: Institutions supply the resources but keep silent; the members alone decide how they are used.
- What it is: A membership DAO, launched with a working group in January 2021, that channels resources from established institutions ('silent stakeholders') to cultural practitioners, who decide by vote which projects receive them.
- Protocol: Institutions offer spaces, tools and funds for free as silent stakeholders; members propose projects and a voting system coordinates which proposals get resources. Black Swan developed Cygnet, a consensus-building interface for such decentralised artist organisations, and used games to rehearse the rules.
- What the collective did: An online community of at least 300 artists, designers, technologists and ecologists took part, voting on resources and co-curating initiatives; the model was presented at Serpentine's R&D Labyrinths, MoneyLab Berlin and Kunsthalle Zürich.
- Text: https://calsbo.com/manifesting-a-black-swan-dao (Radical Friends, Torque Editions, 2022)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tftYb25YHg
- Images: https://dyor.kunsthallezurich.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/KunsthalleZurich-DYOR-24SEEDERS-BlackSwan-photobyJulienGremaud-017-web-1536x1152.jpg https://d37zoqglehb9o7.cloudfront.net/uploads/2021/04/Blackswan-twitter-640x640.jpg
- Project page: https://dyor.kunsthallezurich.ch/seeders/black-swan/

#### CultureStake and People's Park Plinth — Furtherfield (2021)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Internet & platforms · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Open participation, Currency & value
- Idea: Let the people who live with public art choose it, and let them show how strongly they care.
- What it is: A blockchain voting app that uses quadratic voting to let the public choose cultural commissions. Its first use was People's Park Plinth in Finsbury Park, London, where residents picked which of three digital artworks would be made at full scale.
- Protocol: Each voter gets 'vibe credits' to spend on proposals; votes cost quadratically (1 credit for the first, 4 for the second, 9 for the third), so voters express intensity of preference. Votes cast inside Finsbury Park count for more, and all votes are recorded on a blockchain.
- What the collective did: Residents voted in August 2021 between works by Lisa Hall & Hannah Kemp-Welch, HERVISIONS x Ayesha Tan Jones and Desree x Studio Hyte; Based on a Tree Story won and became the park's pick for summer 2022. Furtherfield reports that the pilot tripled local engagement.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5boDvi43hA
- Images: https://www.furtherfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/culturestake2.png https://www.furtherfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Haringey.jpg-scaled.jpeg
- Project page: https://www.furtherfield.org/culturestake/

#### Nouns — Nounders (2021)
- Type: DAO & organization · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Time, decay & death, Market & exchange
- Idea: One artwork a day, forever, turns a collection into a self-funding public treasury.
- What it is: A generative 32x32 pixel character, a Noun, is minted and auctioned every 24 hours, forever. All auction proceeds go to a treasury governed by Noun holders, and the art is in the public domain (CC0).
- Protocol: The auction contract settles each day's auction, sends the Noun to the winner and the ETH to the DAO treasury, and starts the next auction. Every tenth Noun during the first five years goes to the Nounders. Each Noun is one vote; holders submit and vote on proposals that execute on-chain transactions (a Compound-style governor).
- What the collective did: Holders have voted on hundreds of proposals, funding films, animation, public goods and products that spread the Noggles glasses; a large ecosystem of CC0 derivatives and forks, including Lil Nouns, grew around the protocol.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NImExackMds
- Images: https://cdn.decrypt.co/resize/1024/height/512/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/nouns-ethereum-nft-characters-gID_4.png https://nftnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/091223_nouns_feature.jpg
- Project page: https://nouns.wtf
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x9C8fF314C9Bc7F6e59A9d9225Fb22946427eDC03

#### Teia — Teia Community (2021)
- Type: DAO & organization · Substrate: Tezos · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Open participation
- Idea: When the author walks away, the users can take over the protocol.
- What it is: The community-run continuation of Hic et Nunc: volunteers kept its contracts and data alive after November 2021, chose the name Teia by on-chain vote and became a non-profit DAO LLC in 2023.
- Protocol: Teia operates from 11 November 2021 on the same OBJKT contracts. New swaps carry a 2.5% fee (from March 2023) paid to the community multisig; the community voted to mint 8 million TEIA governance tokens, and holders can poll and vote through DAO contracts while a core-team multisig remains legally responsible during the beta.
- What the collective did: Artists, developers and collectors rebuilt the platform after 2.5 months of discussion, pinned millions of files (about 2.36 million pins, 6 TB, in April 2023), ran fundraisers such as #Tezos4Iran and #SavePakistan, and claimed about 3 million TEIA tokens in the first distribution.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO97qco-ZX4
- Images: https://blog.teia.art/static/images/teia-cover.jpg
- Project page: https://blog.teia.art/blog/press-release-dao-launch
- Contract: https://tzkt.io/KT1PHubm9HtyQEJ4BBpMTVomq6mhbfNZ9z5w
- Code: https://github.com/teia-community

#### Clock — Pak (2022)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Time, decay & death, Voting & governance
- Idea: A 1/1 whose only content is a running count of a political fact, sold so that a crowd had to organise to own it.
- What it is: The single-edition token of Censored: a counter of the days Julian Assange had spent in prison, updated daily. It was auctioned in February 2022 and bought by AssangeDAO, a crowd-funded collective.
- Protocol: Token #1 of the Censored contract renders the number of days of Assange's imprisonment and changes every day; it was sold at auction to fund Assange's legal defence. The clock was set to stop on his release.
- What the collective did: AssangeDAO pooled ETH from more than 10,000 contributors through Juicebox (as reported by the DAO and press) and won the auction with 16,593 ETH, about $52.8 million at the time. The token now sits in a multisig safe; the clock stopped when Assange was freed in June 2024.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AzW59oWfKA
- Images: https://www.cryptoblogs.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/One-Thousands-Thirty-Two-Clock-1.jpg
- Project page: https://fortune.com/2022/02/09/supporters-of-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-raise-56-million-to-buy-an-nft-for-his-u-s-extradition-battle/
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/nft/0xDa22422592Ee3623c8d3c40Fe0059CdEcF30CA79/1

#### Lil Nouns — Lil Nounders (2022)
- Type: DAO & organization · Substrate: Ethereum & L2s · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Time, decay & death, Market & exchange
- Idea: Fork a protocol by changing its tempo, and wire a tithe back to the parent.
- What it is: A CC0 offshoot of Nouns launched in May 2022 that auctions one smaller 'Lil Noun' every 15 minutes, with proceeds going to a treasury governed by Lil Noun holders.
- Protocol: One Lil Noun is auctioned every 15 minutes, forever. For the first five years every tenth Lil Noun (IDs 0, 10, 20...) goes to the Lil Nounders' multisig and every eleventh (IDs 1, 11, 21...) is sent automatically to Nouns DAO. Each Lil Noun is one vote on the Lil Nouns treasury.
- What the collective did: Bidders set the price of a new Lil Noun every 15 minutes, and holders used the treasury to fund community projects and experiments; through the built-in allocation, Nouns DAO itself became a Lil Nouns holder.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKdpb5iCssg
- Images: https://nftnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Lil-Noun-1200x632.png
- Project page: https://lilnouns.wtf
- Contract: https://etherscan.io/address/0x4b10701Bfd7BFEdc47d50562b76b436fbB5BdB3B

#### Attention Guild — Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst (2026)
- Type: Artwork · Substrate: AI & machine · Mechanisms: Open participation, Market & exchange, Voting & governance
- Idea: A guild where people contribute context and agents contribute compute to a shared mission.
- What it is: A two-level parliament at Palazzo Diedo, Venice, built with the architecture studio sub for the exhibition 'Strange Rules' (4 May to 22 November 2026): people talk on the ground floor while AI agents above them debate what they hear, as a mirror assembly.
- Protocol: Everything said in the space is captured anonymously and fed as context to agents that have four missions tied to the studio's work. The artists plan to release it as a live protocol: anyone can assign their own agents to a mission; in idle hours those agents contribute compute, and in return they get access to the studio's accumulated context, such as months of relevant conversations.
- What the collective did: Visitors' conversations in Venice feed the agents' debate and missions; Dryhurst describes the exchange of compute for context as a gift economy closer to BitTorrent trackers or the Hanseatic League than to a market. In May 2026 the protocol was in testing ahead of public release.
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyYOQCk6is0
- Images: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54faf78ce4b04da0abdfbde8/2255563b-a7cb-477a-bac4-69fd446f69db/00+-+Strange+Rules+-+Mat+Dryhurst+and+Holly+Herndon+at+Palazzo+Diedo+Venice.jpg?format=1500w https://berggruenarts.org/images/Strange_Rules_2026/Installation%20view/STRANGE%20RULES_SUB%20GLOBAL%20CStefanoMattea-5.jpg
- Project page: https://www.coeval-magazine.com/coeval/strange-rules-mat-dryhurst-and-holly-herndon-at-palazzo-diedo-venice

## Theory & Texts

Books, essays and research programmes that define protocols, systems and participation in art.

### Systems & Protocol Theory

Texts on systems aesthetics, protocols and control in networks.

#### Paragraphs on Conceptual Art — Sol LeWitt (1967)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Write the plan first; once it exists, the idea becomes a machine that makes the art.
- What it is: Essay published in the Summer 1967 issue of Artforum in which LeWitt defines Conceptual art: the idea is the most important part of the work, and its execution follows a plan fixed in advance.
- Protocol: All planning and decisions are made beforehand and 'the execution is a perfunctory affair'; the artist fixes a premise and a system, and anyone following it produces the work without new aesthetic choices.
- What the collective did: The text became the working manifesto for instruction-based practice: LeWitt's own wall drawings are still executed by drafters and museum teams from his written instructions, and later instruction, score and code-based artists cite it as a starting point.
- Text: https://www.artforum.com/features/paragraphs-on-conceptual-art-211354/ (Artforum 5, no. 10 (Summer 1967))
- Images: https://www.artforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/article00_large-51.jpg
- Project page: https://www.artforum.com/features/paragraphs-on-conceptual-art-211354/

#### Systems Esthetics — Jack Burnham (1968)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Open participation
- Idea: The artwork is not the object but the system of relations it sets in motion.
- What it is: Essay in Artforum (September 1968) arguing that art was shifting from making objects to organising systems: relations between people, materials, information and institutions over time.
- Protocol: Burnham borrows from systems theory and cybernetics: a work is a set of components and the rules of their interaction, and the artist designs those relations instead of a finished form.
- What the collective did: The essay gave critics and artists (Hans Haacke among them) a language for process, ecological and information-based work, and is now a standard reference for software, network and protocol art.
- Text: https://www.artforum.com/features/systems-esthetics-201372/ (Artforum 7, no. 1 (September 1968), pp. 30–35)
- Images: https://www.artforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/article00_large-23.jpg
- Project page: https://www.artforum.com/features/systems-esthetics-201372/

#### Sentences on Conceptual Art — Sol LeWitt (1969)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Once the process is set, let it run: follow the rules even when the result surprises you.
- What it is: Thirty-five numbered statements first printed in the magazine 0 to 9 (no. 5, January 1969) and then in the first issue of Art-Language (May 1969), extending LeWitt's argument that ideas alone can be works of art.
- Protocol: The sentences state that the artist should not change the idea mid-course, that the process is mechanical once begun, and that 'the idea becomes a machine that makes the art'; perception of the work is left to each viewer.
- What the collective did: Reprinted in most Conceptual art anthologies, the sentences are read as a rulebook by artists who write systems for others to run, from wall-drawing assistants to generative and smart-contract artists.
- Text: https://monoskop.org/images/3/3d/LeWitt_Sol_1969_1999_Sentences_on_Conceptual_Art.pdf (0 to 9, no. 5 (January 1969); Art-Language 1, no. 1 (May 1969))
- Images: https://wiels.org/uploads/resized/uploads/355769/Sol-LeWitts-Sentences-on-Conceptual-Art-Manuscript-and-Draft-Material-196869_58f02840803f2ddfa28c8dbfb30a044c.jpg
- Project page: https://wiels.org/en/events/sol-lewitts-sentences-on-conceptual-art-manuscript-and-draft-material-1968-69

#### Software: Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art — Jack Burnham (1970)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: An exhibition can be a program: instructions that visitors and machines execute together.
- What it is: Exhibition and catalogue curated by Burnham at the Jewish Museum, New York (16 September – 8 November 1970), that showed conceptual artists and computer systems side by side, treating 'software' as instructions carried out by machines or by visitors.
- Protocol: Works were framed as 'software': sets of instructions written by the artist and run by a computer or by the public, such as Hans Haacke's Visitor's Profile, which tabulated visitors' answers to a questionnaire, and Ted Nelson's hypertext catalogue Labyrinth.
- What the collective did: Visitors' answers and actions supplied the content of several works; the show, which also travelled to the Smithsonian, is remembered as the first major US museum exhibition to bring the computer into the gallery.
- Text: https://monoskop.org/Software_(exhibition) (The Jewish Museum, New York, 1970 (exhibition catalogue))
- Images: https://monoskop.org/images/5/5b/Software-catalogue.jpg
- Project page: https://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=541

#### Conceptual Art 1962–1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions — Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (1990)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Instruction & score
- Idea: Paperwork is a medium: certificates and contracts can carry the whole work.
- What it is: Essay in October (Winter 1990) that reads Conceptual art through its use of administrative forms: certificates, statements, lists, legal contracts and instructions.
- Protocol: Buchloh argues that artists such as LeWitt, Kosuth, Weiner and Haacke replaced craft with the procedures of bureaucracy, so that the work consists of rules, documents and institutional relations.
- What the collective did: The essay framed later readings of certificates, receipts and artist contracts as art, the lineage that curators and writers now connect to smart-contract art.
- Text: https://www.jstor.org/stable/778941 (October 55 (Winter 1990), MIT Press)
- Project page: https://doi.org/10.2307/778941

#### Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace? — Roy Ascott (1990)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives, Circulation & passing on
- Idea: On a network, authorship is distributed: the artist sets up the link, the participants make the work.
- What it is: Essay in Art Journal (Autumn 1990) in which Ascott describes telematic art: works made by many participants linked through computer networks, with meaning produced in their exchanges.
- Protocol: The artist provides a networked context and a few rules for contribution; participants at distant nodes add, transform and pass on material, and no single author controls the result.
- What the collective did: The essay draws on Ascott's own networked projects, such as La Plissure du Texte (1983), in which participants in several cities wrote a fairy tale together; it became a founding text for telematic and net art and titles his collected writings, Telematic Embrace (2003).
- Text: https://www.jstor.org/stable/777114 (Art Journal 49, no. 3 (Autumn 1990), pp. 241–247)
- Images: https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/9780520222946-L.jpg
- Project page: https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.1990.10792697

#### Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization — Alexander R. Galloway (2004)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Voting & governance
- Idea: Protocol is how control works when there is no centre: design the protocol and you design the behaviour.
- What it is: Book (MIT Press, 2004) arguing that the internet is organised not by freedom but by protocols such as TCP/IP and DNS, which distribute control into technical standards; it also discusses net art and hacking as practices that work inside protocol.
- Protocol: Galloway defines protocol as a set of voluntary technical rules that every node must follow to connect; its power lies in making behaviour standard while leaving each node apparently free.
- What the collective did: The book became the main theory text for net art, tactical media and later crypto and protocol art, and is cited by artists who treat standards and smart contracts as their medium.
- Text: https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/2528/ProtocolHow-Control-Exists-after-Decentralization (MIT Press, Leonardo Book Series, 2004)
- Images: https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/9780262072472-L.jpg
- Project page: https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/2528/ProtocolHow-Control-Exists-after-Decentralization

#### Words Made Flesh: Code, Culture, Imagination — Florian Cramer (2005)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: A score, a spell and a program share one property: words that make things happen when executed.
- What it is: Book-length essay written at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and published online in 2005, tracing the idea of executable language from magic and combinatory poetry to Fluxus scores and computer code.
- Protocol: Cramer shows that instructions have a long cultural history outside computing, and that the same text can be read as description or run as action, by people or by machines.
- What the collective did: Distributed free online and through the Internet Archive, the text became a common reference in software-art and code-poetry teaching.
- Text: https://archive.org/details/WordsMadeFlesh (Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, 2005)
- Images: https://archive.org/services/img/WordsMadeFlesh
- Project page: https://www.netzliteratur.net/cramer/wordsmadefleshpdf.pdf

#### The Exploit: A Theory of Networks — Alexander R. Galloway, Eugene Thacker (2007)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Voting & governance
- Idea: To change a network, use its own rules against it.
- What it is: Book (University of Minnesota Press, 2007) arguing that networks create their own forms of control, both centralised and dispersed, and that resistance must work through 'exploits': holes found inside the protocol itself.
- Protocol: The authors describe networks as topologies governed by protocol, and the exploit as a practice that follows the rules exactly while turning them to unintended ends.
- What the collective did: The book gave hacktivists, tactical-media groups and software artists a vocabulary for working inside network protocols rather than outside them.
- Text: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-exploit (University of Minnesota Press, Electronic Mediations 21, 2007)
- Images: https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/9780816650446-L.jpg
- Project page: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-exploit

#### Protocols Don't Build Pyramids — Drew Austin (2023)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Open participation
- Idea: Improve cities through protocols that people can apply without ever doing it the same way twice.
- What it is: An essay on protocols as the middle layer between the fast 'software' and slow 'hardware' of the city, with a Protocol Pattern Language for Urban Space after Christopher Alexander.
- Protocol: The accompanying pattern language, serialised in six parts with a DIY blank, gives patterns readers can apply and extend.
- What the collective did: The blank template invites readers to write their own urban protocol patterns.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/02-AUSTIN-2023-12-13.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Protocols-Dont-Build-Pyramids-1-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/protocols-dont-build-pyramids

#### Protocols in (Emergency) Time — Olivia Steiert (2023)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Time, decay & death
- Idea: Protocols make the future manageable without aiming at it.
- What it is: A study based on interviews with the 2023 core researchers, proposing three theses on protocols and time: they emerge from crisis, they both change and conserve behaviour, and they lack goal-orientation toward the future.
- Protocol: Examines when protocols enable innovative agency and when they enforce convention or emergency measures.
- What the collective did: Synthesises the programme's own projects as its data.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/03-STEIERT-2023-12-13.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/joshd4078_an_exploded_diagram_of_a_spiral_made_of_changing_prot_139c0c85-8728-41fd-99e5-da7499547e09-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/protocols-in-emergency-time

#### Standards Make the World — David Lang (2023)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Open participation
- Idea: Technical standards are the quiet rules that shape civilisation.
- What it is: Part history, part personal narrative about the Bristlemouth connector standard, and part guidebook for creating disruptive new technical standards.
- Protocol: Describes how standards are proposed, adopted and maintained by communities of makers alongside companies and institutions.
- What the collective did: Draws on the author's experience of rallying an ocean-technology community around an open connector standard.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/04-LANG-2023-12-13.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/joshd4078_standards_and_measurements_nautical_use_orange_white__42bfe211-da4c-42b5-a50b-135acc2c0ded-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/standards-make-the-world

#### A Phenomenology of Protocols — Janna Tay (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints
- Idea: Whether and how to implement a protocol is a moral question, not only an efficiency question.
- What it is: An essay arguing that protocols encourage particular states of being in their participants, and can impair or enhance human flourishing.
- Protocol: Uses phenomenological method to examine how following a protocol changes how a participant thinks and acts beyond the behaviour it prescribes.
- What the collective did: Asks designers to wield protocols as ends in themselves as well as means.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/A-Phenomenology-of-Protocols-Janna-Tay.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/joshd4078_abstract_labyrinth_phenomenology_exploded_technical_d_e4db1ff9-e3ea-431a-bb59-2fd9206403ad-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/a-phenomenology-of-protocols

#### Addressable Space — Chenoe Hart (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints
- Idea: Addressability is a spatial concept that can be designed.
- What it is: Research on how digital information and addressing systems are encoded in the built environment, with a serialised visual appendix of scenarios and proposals for new spatial protocols.
- Protocol: The appendix is explicitly open-ended and could be expanded over time with contributions from other authors.
- What the collective did: Proposes new protocols for representing and inhabiting space.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Addressable-Space-Chenoe-Hart.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Addressable-Space-Cover-Image-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/addressable-space

#### Artificial Memory and Orienting Infinity — Kei Kreutler (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Time, decay & death, Instruction & score
- Idea: Memory is a protocolized practice, not just storage.
- What it is: An essay on the history of 'artificial memory', procedural aids to recollection from the method of loci to transistors and community lore, proposing memory as orientation.
- Protocol: Builds a framework beyond computing metaphors for how memory operates in the world.
- What the collective did: Part of the memory research shared with the New Time Machines Working Group.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Artificial-Memory-and-Orienting-Infinity-Kei-Kreutler.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/joshd4078_artificial_memory_orienting_infinity_exploded_technic_255f4914-be13-44fa-bd40-d0a2512994f9-jpg-e1708541287775.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/artificial-memory-and-orienting-infinity

#### Control and Consciousness of Time — Saffron Huang (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Time, decay & death, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Good protocols constrain in order to liberate.
- What it is: An essay tracing how timekeeping protocols and devices, from Roman sundials to colonial clock towers, have shaped consciousness and served as a site of control.
- Protocol: Argues that minute-by-minute clock time enables complex collective endeavours while straining against human biology, and that timekeeping protocols may need to diversify.
- What the collective did: Frames time as the most widely shared protocol humans follow.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Control-and-Consciousness-of-Time-Saffron-Huang.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/joshd4078_Control_and_consciousness_of_time_exploded_technical__fa0362d1-0f5a-4008-bd90-475b9a341932-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/control-and-consciousness-of-time

#### Dangerous Dating Protocols — Shreeda Segan (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Market & exchange
- Idea: A protocol can win on liquidity while failing its users.
- What it is: An essay on how swipe-based apps hold a 'protocol monopoly' over dating in the West, and what decentralised alternatives might look like.
- Protocol: Traces dating protocols from arranged marriage and courtship to swiping, and details the swipe's failure modes (ghosting, canned messages, attractiveness bias).
- What the collective did: Applies Nadia Asparouhova's framework of dangerous protocols to a market used by millions.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Dangerous-Dating-Protocols-Shreeda-Segan.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/joshd4078_dating_funnel_exploded_technical_diagram_orange_white_d08f6582-d16f-4acc-a549-417e80b7ac49-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/dangerous-dating-protocols

#### Dangerous Protocols — Nadia Asparouhova (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Voting & governance
- Idea: Protocols reduce complexity by reducing agency.
- What it is: An essay on the dangerous side of protocols: the same power to drive coordination lets them control people, eventually through their internalised sense of self.
- Protocol: Argues that work, relationships, leisure and ideology are increasingly 'protocolized', and that reasserting control means first noticing protocols, then working subversively through their constraints. Comes with a 'Kafka Index'.
- What the collective did: Widely cited within the programme; Shreeda Segan's essay on dating apps applies its framework.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Dangerous-Protocols-Nadia-Asparouhova.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/joshd4078_warning_symbol_protocols_exploded_technical_diagram_o_3f614bf2-b9da-46c2-a7af-e6a8d21f02b5-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/dangerous-protocols

#### Dispatches from Cascadia — Rithikha Rajamohan (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Voting & governance
- Idea: Ask what happens if protocolized governance goes right.
- What it is: A six-part speculative fiction set in 2065, told by a journalist reporting on Vancouver three decades after its transition to protocolized governance.
- Protocol: Defines protocols as behaviours that, adopted by enough participants, reliably lead to good-enough outcomes for all, and follows threads of the 2023 programme into the future.
- What the collective did: Uses fiction as a vehicle for hope rather than warning.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Dispatches-from-Cascadia-Rithikha-Rajamohan-1.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/joshd4078_series_of_overlapping_circles_ecosystem_protocols_con_443785e2-df49-4db4-890e-d952f70ac384-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/dispatches-from-cascadia

#### Fire Protocols: Attention as Autopoietic Space — Nathalia Scherer, Jiordi Rosales (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance
- Idea: Adapt communities to fire as a practice rather than suppress it as a threat.
- What it is: A case study mapping the protocols of low-intensity cultural burning in California, which state institutions have repopularised after once criminalising the Indigenous knowledge they now rely on.
- Protocol: The study draws a base map of relations among agencies, practitioners and communities around prescribed and cultural burning, the protocols by which fire is permitted, carried out and learned.
- What the collective did: Communities, burn practitioners and agencies are the ones who carry out these protocols; the case was presented at Protocol Symposium 2024.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Fire-Protocols-Case-File.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcnI_ErQoV8
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/image1.png
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/case-study/fire-protocols

#### Retrofitting the Web — Dorian Taylor (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints
- Idea: Hypermedia is nothing without links.
- What it is: An essay arguing that the Web's links are brittle, one-way and untyped, and proposing how to retrofit it into denser hypermedia.
- Protocol: Lays out the costs of sparse linking for readers, authors and developers and the practical steps to add backlinks and typed links.
- What the collective did: Addressed to the web's builders as a protocol-level fix.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Retrofitting-the-Web-Dorian-Taylor.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/joshd4078_sphere_made_of_infinite_links_internet_exploded_techn_88b49247-3d68-4d17-bda7-74faa48ac00d-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/retrofitting-the-web

#### Safe New World / Self Ensured Card Collection — Timber Stinson-Schroff, Shuya Gong (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Protocols are intentional patterns of constraint on behaviour, and they evolve as technologies mature.
- What it is: An essay deriving a theory of protocol evolution from the history of workplace safety, paired with the Self Ensured Card Collection, a twelve-suit deck teams play to improve the health ergonomics of their workplace.
- Protocol: The deck holds protocols for movement, office design, nutrition, stress management and company norms; it can be played with a team, with a coworker, or solitaire-style.
- What the collective did: Teams choose and adopt protocols through play, testing the essay's claim about which pressures select protocols as a technology matures.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Safe-New-World-Timber-Stinson-Schroff.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/joshd4078_abstract_coal_mining_safety_protocol_exploded_technic_15e15b4f-a8c1-4ec9-a0cb-e6e727bc04d3-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/module-three/safe-new-world

#### Unprotocolized Knowledge — Kara Kittel, Toby Shorin (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Open participation
- Idea: Expand who gets to take part in producing knowledge.
- What it is: An essay on how internet crankery, amateur science and cases like the LK-99 replication craze expose the limits of official knowledge protocols such as peer review, and how new roles emerge to make internet fascinations credible.
- Protocol: Reads 'post-truth' as paradigm shifts playing out over an expanded social field, and asks how protocol thinking could speed up and widen legitimate knowledge production.
- What the collective did: Uses crowds of online replicators and fraud-hunting bloggers as its evidence.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/15-e41-KITTEL-rev-2024-06-12-1448.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/joshd4078_letters_turning_into_journals_that_turn_into_a_networ_452b85e9-3806-4ca1-ae6c-dfba88490b10-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/module-four/unprotocolized-knowledge

#### As for Protocols — Vera List Center for Art and Politics (2025)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Open participation
- Idea: Protocols are social forms of care and relation, and artists can write more equitable ones.
- What it is: Open-access book edited by Re'al Christian, Carin Kuoni and Eriola Pira (Vera List Center for Art and Politics and Amherst College Press, 2025) with contributions by 24 artists, writers, scholars, musicians, architects and scientists on protocols.
- Protocol: The book frames protocols as 'systems of language that regulate how we relate to each other' and to technologies, and asks contributors to propose new protocols that are inclusive and equitable.
- What the collective did: Contributors include Raven Chacon, Carolina Caycedo, Mary Maggic, Shannon Mattern, Rasheedah Phillips, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Ultra-red and Underground Resistance, drawn from the Center's multi-year focus theme.
- Text: https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/3t945t729 (Vera List Center for Art and Politics / Amherst College Press, 2025)
- Images: https://veralistcenter.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AfP_final-cover.png
- Project page: https://www.veralistcenter.org/publications/as-for-protocols

### Participation & Relational Art

Texts on participatory, relational and social practice art.

#### Relational Aesthetics — Nicolas Bourriaud (1998)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Open participation, Market & exchange
- Idea: The artwork can be a situation: a set of conditions under which people meet and interact.
- What it is: Book first published in French as Esthétique relationnelle (Les presses du réel, 1998; English 2002) that describes 1990s art whose material is human relations: shared meals, meetings, services and temporary social spaces.
- Protocol: Bourriaud describes artworks as 'social interstices': the artist sets up a situation with loose rules of use, and visitors complete it by how they gather, eat, talk or exchange.
- What the collective did: The book named a generation (Rirkrit Tiravanija, Liam Gillick, Philippe Parreno and others) and became one of the most cited and most debated texts on participatory art.
- Text: https://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.php?id=12797&menu=0 (Les presses du réel, Dijon, 1998)
- Images: https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/9782840660606-L.jpg https://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/img/ouvrage/12797/_f.jpg
- Project page: https://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.php?id=12762&menu=0

#### Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art — Grant Kester (2004)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Design the conversation, not the object: the work is what people say and decide together.
- What it is: Book (University of California Press, 2004) on 'dialogical' art, where artists set up long-term exchanges with communities and the conversation itself becomes the work.
- Protocol: Kester describes projects in which the artist frames a dialogue among groups that rarely meet (for example officials, workers and residents) and the outcome is decided in that exchange.
- What the collective did: The book, reissued in an updated edition in 2013, became a key reference for collaborative and community-based art, offering an alternative to judging such work by its visual form.
- Text: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/conversation-pieces/paper (University of California Press, 2004)
- Images: https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/9780520238398-L.jpg
- Project page: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/conversation-pieces/paper

#### Participation — Claire Bishop (2006)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Open participation, Instruction & score
- Idea: Participation has a history and a theory: read the rules artists wrote for audiences side by side.
- What it is: Anthology edited by Bishop (Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, Documents of Contemporary Art, 2006) that collects theory, artists' statements and curatorial debates on art that makes spectators into participants.
- Protocol: The book gathers texts in which artists define what participants may do, from Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica and Joseph Beuys to Thomas Hirschhorn and Rirkrit Tiravanija, next to theory by Eco, Barthes, Rancière and Guattari.
- What the collective did: It became a standard course reader on participatory art and included the first English translation of Rancière's 'Problems and Transformations in Critical Art'.
- Text: https://shop.whitechapelgallery.org/products/participation (Whitechapel Gallery / MIT Press, 2006)
- Images: https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/9780262524643-L.jpg
- Project page: https://shop.whitechapelgallery.org/products/participation

#### Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship — Claire Bishop (2012)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Open participation, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Judge a participatory work by the tensions its rules create, not only by how nice the collaboration feels.
- What it is: Book (Verso, 2012) that gives the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, from Futurist evenings and Situationism to 1960s happenings and recent social practice.
- Protocol: Bishop analyses how artists 'delegate' performance and set rules for participants, and argues against judging such work only by its ethics; the best works keep a productive discomfort between author and participants.
- What the collective did: The book shaped a decade of debate on social practice and is widely taught; its account of delegated performance applies directly to works where crowds act under an artist's rules.
- Text: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2251-artificial-hells (Verso, London and New York, 2012)
- Images: https://www.versobooks.com/cdn/shop/files/getimage_10a3d3bd-a97c-44a2-85dd-b57c2d53fcbc.jpg?v=1790568936
- Project page: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2251-artificial-hells

#### do it: the compendium — Hans Ulrich Obrist (2013)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: An exhibition can travel as a set of instructions and be remade differently each time.
- What it is: Book (Independent Curators International and D.A.P., 2013) collecting twenty years of the do it exhibition, begun in Paris in 1993, in which artists write instructions that institutions and readers carry out.
- Protocol: Each artist contributes a written instruction; any host may realise it with local means, and each realisation counts as a version of the work, not a copy.
- What the collective did: The compendium prints instructions by 250 artists, 84 of them newly published for the 20th anniversary, together with essays and documentation of past iterations staged by institutions around the world.
- Text: https://curatorsintl.org/shop/15810-do-it-the-compendium (Independent Curators International / D.A.P., 2013)
- Images: https://curatorsintl.org/images/doit_productshot.jpg?w=1600 https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/9781938922015-L.jpg
- Project page: https://www.artbook.com/9781938922015.html

#### The Death and the Death of Orkut — Alice Noujaim (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Time, decay & death, Open participation
- Idea: A platform's communities can die twice: when it shuts, and when its archive does.
- What it is: A case study of the fall of Orkut, the social network that dominated Brazil in the 2000s, contrasting its careful deactivation protocols with the abrupt end of its Community Archive.
- Protocol: Emphasises Orkut's forum-like communities as sites of collective experiments with new social protocols.
- What the collective did: Orkut persists through fragmented online traces and users' personal recollections.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/The-Death-and-the-Death-of-Orkut-Alice-Noujaim.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/joshd4078_digital_footprints_fading_into_the_distance_exploded__878264bd-431f-4c2c-bd8a-34308a147bf6-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/death-and-the-death-of-orkut

#### The Protocol System Experience — Angela Walch (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance
- Idea: Look at protocols from the participant's seat, not only the system level.
- What it is: An essay on what it feels like to be an individual in a protocol system (nations, religions, professions, families, blockchains): how one enters, performs a role and decides to stay or leave.
- Protocol: Presents a conceptual framework and a set of archetypes participants meet, and asks whether they even know they are participating.
- What the collective did: Invites readers to examine the protocol systems in their own lives.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/The-Fundamentals-of-Protocol-Systems-Angela-Walch.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/joshd4078_protocol_archetypes_exploded_technical_diagram_orange_c726bed1-e7b9-4432-9a5a-b7c8de1ab6da-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/the-protocol-system-experience

#### The Swarm and the Formation — Rafael Fernández (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Open participation, Voting & governance
- Idea: Swarms act without explicit protocols; can they be steered?
- What it is: An essay on online swarms, networks of people, bots and content that act collectively without explicit protocols, contrasted with formations that have them, with a swarm-protocol workshop and design fiction.
- Protocol: Studies cases such as the mutual-aid response to Hurricane María; the workshop document and 'Flow' onboarding fiction let groups practise swarm-like coordination.
- What the collective did: The workshop is designed to be run by groups exploring how to steer swarms.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/67-FERNANDEZ-Swarm-Protocol-Workshop.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/joshd4078_large_dynamic_and_often_chaotic_group_moving_together_83db37b3-f204-4541-b516-3c0aeed5ec6d-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/the-swarm-and-the-formation

### Crypto Art & Protocol Research

Books, anthologies and research programmes on blockchain art, DAOs and protocols.

#### Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain — Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett (2017)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Currency & value, Contract & certificate, Voting & governance
- Idea: Ask what a blockchain could do for art beyond selling it: new rules for value, ownership and cooperation.
- What it is: Anthology edited by Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Nathan Jones and Sam Skinner (Torque Editions with Furtherfield and FACT, 2017), the first book on what blockchain technologies mean for art production and distribution.
- Protocol: The editors commissioned artists and researchers over a 12-month process to test blockchains as a medium; the book's companion interface, Finbook, let readers and bots trade on the value of its chapters.
- What the collective did: Contributors included Rhea Myers, Primavera De Filippi and Jaya Klara Brekke; a free digital edition was launched at Transmediale in February 2018, and the book seeded Furtherfield's DAO research that led to Radical Friends.
- Text: https://torquetorque.net/publications/artists-rethinking-the-blockchain/ (Torque Editions / Furtherfield / FACT, Liverpool, 2017)
- Images: https://torquetorque.net/wp-content/uploads/IMG_2370.jpg
- Project page: https://www.furtherfield.org/artists-rethinking-blockchain/

#### Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code — Primavera De Filippi, Aaron Wright (2018)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Self-ownership & autonomy, Voting & governance
- Idea: When rules run as code, the code becomes a kind of law: design it as carefully as a constitution.
- What it is: Book (Harvard University Press, 2018) on how blockchains let rules be written as self-executing code, a new order the authors call 'lex cryptographia', with chapters on smart contracts, DAOs and autonomous systems.
- Protocol: The authors explain how smart contracts enforce agreements without courts and how DAOs and autonomous agents can hold assets and act under code, and set out where this collides with existing law.
- What the collective did: The book became a standard reference for law and governance of blockchain systems; De Filippi applies the same ideas in artworks such as Plantoid and in the Radical Friends anthology.
- Text: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674241596 (Harvard University Press, 2018)
- Images: https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/9780674976429-L.jpg
- Project page: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674241596

#### Art and Blockchain: A Primer, History, and Taxonomy of Blockchain Use Cases in the Arts — Amy Whitaker (2019)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Market & exchange, Currency & value
- Idea: Blockchain can change who holds a stake in an artwork, not only how it is sold.
- What it is: Peer-reviewed article in Artivate (vol. 8, no. 2, 2019) that explains blockchain for arts readers, gives a history of its uses in art and sorts them into a taxonomy.
- Protocol: Whitaker classifies use cases (provenance registries, fractional ownership, resale royalties, new funding structures) and discusses how they blur the line between for-profit and nonprofit support for art.
- What the collective did: Published before the 2021 NFT boom, the article became an early scholarly reference for art-market and arts-management research on tokens and shared ownership.
- Text: https://artivate.org/index.php/artivate/article/view/94 (Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts 8, no. 2 (2019), pp. 21–46)
- Images: https://artivate.org/public/journals/1/article_94_cover_en_US.png
- Project page: https://artivate.org/index.php/artivate/article/view/94

#### A Prehistory of DAOs — Kei Kreutler (2021)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Currency & value
- Idea: DAOs are not new: they are cooperatives and guilds with their rules written in code.
- What it is: Essay published by Gnosis Guild in July 2021, subtitled 'Cooperatives, gaming guilds, and the networks to come', that traces DAOs back to the cooperative movement and online game guilds.
- Protocol: Kreutler reads DAOs as organisations where a software protocol sets the operating rules, 'placing automation at its center and humans at its edges', and compares them to the Rochdale cooperative principles of 1844 and guilds' loot-sharing systems such as Dragon Kill Points.
- What the collective did: The essay and its LisCon talk were widely shared in the 2021 DAO wave and are often cited by art DAOs and researchers looking for a history longer than Ethereum.
- Text: https://gnosisguild.mirror.xyz/t4F5rItMw4-mlpLZf5JQhElbDfQ2JRVKAzEpanyxW1Q (Gnosis Guild, 2021)
- Video: https://vimeo.com/637505710
- Images: https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1ec3d26160223fb58c11a916986a6b38312b19eb14dfd8c90454cb312b3a2bea.png
- Project page: https://gnosisguild.mirror.xyz/t4F5rItMw4-mlpLZf5JQhElbDfQ2JRVKAzEpanyxW1Q

#### Hyperstructures — Jacob Horne (2022)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Self-ownership & autonomy, Market & exchange, Time, decay & death
- Idea: Build the protocol so it keeps running after you leave; then others can build on it.
- What it is: Essay published on 16 January 2022 that defines hyperstructures as 'crypto protocols that can run for free and forever, without maintenance, interruption or intermediaries'.
- Protocol: Horne lists the properties of a hyperstructure: unstoppable, free, valuable, expansive, permissionless, positive-sum and credibly neutral, running entirely onchain for as long as its chain exists.
- What the collective did: The term spread quickly among onchain builders and artists and shaped Zora's own protocol design; it is often used to describe artworks and platforms meant to outlive their authors.
- Text: https://jacob.energy/hyperstructures.html (jacob.energy, 2022)
- Images: https://jacob.energy/img/hyper.png
- Project page: https://jacob.energy/hyperstructures.html

#### Radical Friends: Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and the Arts — Ruth Catlow, Penny Rafferty (2022)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Contract & certificate, Self-ownership & autonomy
- Idea: The most radical blockchain tool for art may be the organisation, not the token.
- What it is: Book edited by Ruth Catlow and Penny Rafferty (Torque Editions, 2022) with essays, interviews, exercises and prototypes on DAOs as tools for artists to encode rules, relations and values into shared ventures.
- Protocol: The book treats a DAO as a rule set that peers write together and run on a blockchain: who can join, how decisions are made, how money flows. It includes exercises for groups to draft their own.
- What the collective did: It collects more than five years of research by the editors and contributors such as Primavera De Filippi, Ramon Amaro, Mitchell F. Chan and eeefff, and refocused attention from NFTs toward collective organisation in the arts.
- Text: https://torquetorque.net/publications/radical-friends/ (Torque Editions, 2022)
- Images: https://torquetorque.net/wp-content/uploads/1-Radical-Freinds-Full-Cover-1200x833.png
- Project page: https://ruthcatlow.net/?works=radical-friends-decentralised-autonomous-organisations-and-the-arts

#### Proof of Work: Blockchain Provocations 2011–2021 — Rhea Myers (2023)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Currency & value, Self-ownership & autonomy
- Idea: Use the tropes of Conceptual art to ask what a blockchain reveals about value and ownership.
- What it is: Book (Urbanomic / Art Editions, 2023) collecting Myers's blockchain artworks from 2011 to 2021 with annotations, alongside her essays, reviews and fiction on crypto culture and art.
- Protocol: Many works in the book are small smart contracts or token schemes with a conceptual twist, whose rules collectors and the network carry out; the texts explain each rule and its art-historical reference.
- What the collective did: The book documents a decade of work that anticipated the NFT boom, and was also issued as an NFT special edition by Urbanomic.
- Text: https://www.urbanomic.com/book/proof-of-work/ (Urbanomic / Art Editions, 2023)
- Images: https://www.urbanomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Front-Cover.jpg
- Project page: https://www.urbanomic.com/book/proof-of-work/

#### Protocol Kit — Summer of Protocols (2023)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score, Open participation
- Idea: A binder so that readers add their own protocols and notes.
- What it is: A three-ring binder of more than 400 pages, mailed out in six modules, containing printed versions of all research from the 2023 programme plus tools for study, policy-making, scene-making and entrepreneurship.
- Protocol: The kit is not for sale: 512 copies were offered to selected individuals and organisations who request one; the binder format invites recipients to add their own selections.
- What the collective did: Recipients use it for systematic study and to run their own protocol groups and research.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/01-RETROSPECTUS-2023-12-13.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Protocol-Kit-M1-small.png
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/kit

#### Summer of Protocols — Summer of Protocols, Venkatesh Rao (2023)
- Type: Platform & protocol · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Voting & governance, Open participation
- Idea: Treat protocols as a general design material that can be studied, taught and made by artists as well as engineers.
- What it is: Research programme commissioned by the Ethereum Foundation that ran seasons in 2023, 2024 and 2025, funding researchers, artists and engineers to study protocols across fields from blockchains to traffic, safety and diplomacy.
- Protocol: Each season invited cohorts of researchers to produce essays, artworks and tools under a shared brief; outputs are published openly and discussed in a public forum and newsletter.
- What the collective did: SoP23 brought together 12 core and 18 affiliate researchers; across its seasons the programme counts 70-odd alumni and more than 100 research outputs, including the Protocol Reader, the ProtocolKit and a 358-page proto-textbook, and it continues as the Protocol Institute.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/about (Summer of Protocols / Ethereum Foundation)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/SoP24-Hero-scaled.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/

#### The Unreasonable Sufficiency of Protocols — Venkatesh Rao, Summer of Protocols (2023)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Voting & governance
- Idea: A small set of codified rules can be unreasonably sufficient: it lets large, complex cooperation emerge.
- What it is: Pilot study by Venkatesh Rao, Tim Beiko, Danny Ryan, Josh Stark, Trent Van Epps and Bastian Aue, released in March 2023 to open the Summer of Protocols, that asks why simple protocols coordinate so much complex behaviour.
- Protocol: The paper defines a protocol as 'a stratum of codified behavior that allows for the construction or emergence of complex coordinated behaviors at adjacent loci', and describes protocols along dimensions such as generativity, legibility, evolvability, legitimacy, play value and mortality.
- What the collective did: The text framed the research questions for the first Summer of Protocols cohort and was revised and republished in 2024 as a reference work for the programme.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/The-Unreasonable-Sufficiency-of-Protocols.pdf (Summer of Protocols, 2023 (revised 2024))
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/joshd4078_intricate_flowchart_where_symbols_morph_and_transform_1cccf476-f315-4f8f-881a-dd323482c3b4-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/the-unreasonable-sufficiency-of-protocols-web

#### All Media Is Training Data — Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Co-authorship & derivatives, Voting & governance
- Idea: Treat every work as future training data, and design the rules for how it is used.
- What it is: Book by Herndon and Dryhurst, edited by Eva Jäger and Caroline Busta and published by Serpentine and König Books in December 2024, that surveys their work and sets out their position on AI and art.
- Protocol: The book is organised around six axioms: All Media Is Training Data, Compression Is Creation, Creation Is Collective, Consumption Is Production, Media Will Be Infinite, and Identity Play Is The New IP. It adds essays by Benjamin Bratton, Primavera De Filippi, Francesca Bria, Ryan Murdock, Liz Pelly and Kei Kreutler.
- What the collective did: It gives the theory behind Holly+, Spawning, xhairymutantx and The Call: works whose outcome depends on what a public does under rules the artists set. The studio has made the full text searchable for AI agents through its public MCP server.
- Text: https://shop.serpentinegalleries.org/collections/frontpage/products/holly-herndon-mat-dryhurst-all-media-is-training-data (Serpentine / König Books, 2024)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBv4Y562KlQ
- Images: https://shop.serpentinegalleries.org/cdn/shop/files/Screenshot_241.png?v=1786980154&width=2048
- Project page: https://herndondryhurst.studio/projects/all-media

#### Computation in the Expanded Field — Malte Rauch (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Rules & constraints, Time, decay & death
- Idea: The blockchain is not a channel for images but the material itself: a set of constraints adopted for art.
- What it is: Essay written for World Computer Sculpture Garden, a 'contract show' curated by 0xfff that opened on Ethereum in November 2024, defining protocol art as art that works with the rules that precede and define a computing environment.
- Protocol: Rauch argues that protocol artists treat distributed computation and its permanence as their medium, writing contracts that act as autonomous works rather than minting images for a marketplace.
- What the collective did: The essay accompanies an exhibition that exists as a smart contract with no closing date, with works by artists including Rhea Myers and Sarah Friend, and is cited in academic work on protocol art.
- Text: https://worldcomputersculpture.garden/essay (World Computer Sculpture Garden, 2024)
- Project page: https://worldcomputersculpture.garden/

#### Good Death — Sarah Friend (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Time, decay & death, Voting & governance
- Idea: Design the death of a protocol world as carefully as its birth.
- What it is: An essay on the end of life of 'worlds', the communities that grow on protocols, games and platforms, arguing that a world's death is a decision-making process with a duration, with proposals for how to kill worlds well.
- Protocol: Accompanied by a taxonomy of protocol deaths and 'Founding Memorabilia from the Order of Protocological Death', a series of proposals for ending worlds in blockchains and DAOs.
- What the collective did: Draws on eulogies for dead video games, 4chan's auto-deleted posts and the history of diagnosing human death; it connects to the artist's Lifeforms.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Good-Death-Sarah-Friend.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/joshd4078_abstract_composition_where_solid_geometric_forms_are__7523f357-bd79-456c-93bc-2d704c451581-jpg.webp
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/research/good-death

#### Plurality in Practice — Martin Benedikt Busch, Rich McDowell (2024)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Open participation
- Idea: Test voting protocols with real groups instead of only in theory.
- What it is: A case study that field-tests plural alternatives to quadratic voting and funding, especially cluster match, which take voter identity and expertise into account.
- Protocol: The project runs experimental votes and allocations with groups using cluster-match style mechanisms and compares their outcomes with quadratic voting.
- What the collective did: Results were presented at Protocol Symposium 2024 in a public case file.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Plurality-in-Practice-Case-File.pdf (Summer of Protocols)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snnk_8q1w_4
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/image3.png
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/case-study/plurality-in-practice

#### Protocol Art — Mat Dryhurst (2025)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Voting & governance, Co-authorship & derivatives, Rules & constraints
- Idea: Build the protocol as 'executable critique': a rule set others can use that carries your values downstream.
- What it is: Lecture published by Carrier Bag in October 2025 in which Dryhurst argues that the most consequential aesthetic decisions now happen at the level of protocols, and that artists should design protocols instead of commenting on platforms.
- Protocol: Dryhurst uses his and Holly Herndon's projects as examples: Holly+, which lets anyone use Herndon's voice model under shared rules, the opt-out tool haveibeentrained.com, and Public Diffusion, a model trained only on public-domain data.
- What the collective did: The talk extends the protocol-art discussion from smart contracts to AI: the work is judged by what other people make and decide under the rules it sets.
- Text: https://carrier-bag.net/video/protocol-art/ (Carrier Bag, 2025 (lecture))
- Video: https://carrier-bag.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/mat_protocol_art_720p.mp4
- Project page: https://carrier-bag.net/video/protocol-art/

#### Protocol Futuring: Speculating Second-Order Dynamics of Protocols in Sociotechnical Infrastructural Futures — Botao Amber Hu (2025)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Rules & constraints, Time, decay & death, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: Speculate on protocols, not products: watch how rules drift when they pass between groups and generations.
- What it is: CHI 2026 paper by Botao Amber Hu, Samuel Chua and Helena Rong that proposes 'protocol futuring', a design method that uses protocols as the material of speculative design, tested in a relay workshop on millennial-scale knowledge preservation.
- Protocol: In the Knowledge Futurama workshop, teams inherited partially formed protocol designs from earlier teams and had to reinterpret and extend them, a relay rule that made drift, jamming and adversarial readings visible.
- What the collective did: The multi-team relay produced protocols that changed through ambiguous handovers, shifting norms and simulated crises; the paper offers the method to HCI and design researchers studying long-lived infrastructures.
- Text: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06108 (CHI 2026)
- Project page: https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3790527

#### Protocol as Poetry: A Case Study of Pak's Smart Contract-Based Protocol Art — Botao Amber Hu (2025)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Contract & certificate, Open participation, Co-authorship & derivatives
- Idea: In protocol art the smart contract is the medium and collective participation is the message.
- What it is: Peer-reviewed paper (ARTECH 2025) that analyses Pak's smart-contract works, from The Fungible and Merge (2021) to Censored (2022) and Not Found (2023), and proposes seven characteristics of protocol art.
- Protocol: The paper names seven traits: system-centric composition, autonomous governance, distributed agency and communal authorship, temporal dynamism, economy-driven engagement, poetic messages embedded in interaction rituals, and composability.
- What the collective did: It is one of the first academic studies to use the term 'protocol art' (or 'protocolism') for smart-contract works and distinguishes it from conceptual, generative, participatory and performance art.
- Text: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.12393 (ARTECH 2025, 12th International Conference on Digital and Interactive Arts)
- Project page: https://doi.org/10.1145/3773699.3773918

#### The Protocol Reader — Summer of Protocols, Venkatesh Rao (2025)
- Type: Book & essay · Substrate: Text & paper · Mechanisms: Instruction & score
- Idea: A core text for courses and workshops on protocols.
- What it is: A 358-page book of 26 foundational essays by 31 authors from the programme, edited as an introduction to protocol studies in four parts: Seeing Protocols, Arguing Protocols, World Engines and Living With Protocols.
- Protocol: Released as a free EPUB for a weekend deep dive or as the core text of a course.
- What the collective did: The Reader collects the cohorts' essays into a shared canon for new readers and teachers.
- Text: https://summerofprotocols.com/protocol-reader (Summer of Protocols)
- Images: https://summerofprotocols.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/1740686225-e1740686328589.png
- Project page: https://summerofprotocols.com/protocol-reader

## Creators

- **Rhea Myers** (15) — Artist, writer and hacker. Artist, hacker and writer who has made blockchain artworks since 2011, including early smart-contract works and conceptual pieces about value and ownership. https://rhea.art/
- **Jonas Lund** (11) — Artist. Swedish artist (born 1984) who makes systems, contracts and games about power, optimisation and the art market, from GPS-tracked paintings to a token that lets shareholders vote on his career. https://jonaslund.com
- **Mat Dryhurst** (11) — Artist, musician and researcher. Artist and researcher who works with Holly Herndon on AI and voice projects such as Holly+, and co-founded Spawning, which builds consent tools for AI training data.
- **Sol LeWitt** (11) — Conceptual artist. American artist (1928–2007) and a founder of conceptual art. From 1968 he made about 1,350 wall drawings that exist as written instructions and diagrams, drawn on the wall by other people. https://www.cahiersdartinstitute.org/catalogues/sol-lewitt-wall-drawings/description
- **Holly Herndon** (10) — Composer and artist. American composer and artist based in Berlin, with a PhD from Stanford's CCRMA. With Mat Dryhurst she makes works about AI, voice and collective training data, including PROTO, Holly+, xhairymutantx and The Call. https://holly.plus
- **Jack Butcher** (9) — Conceptual artist, founder of Visualize Value. Artist and founder of Visualize Value, known for works built from simple signs (a checkmark, a receipt, a trademark symbol). Since 2023 he has made editions whose images and supply are changed by collectors, often with developer Jalil Wahdatehagh. https://jack.art
- **terra0** (8) — Art and research group (Paul Seidler, Paul Kolling, Max Hampshire). Group founded in 2015/16 by Paul Seidler and Paul Kolling in Joachim Sauter's New Media class at the Berlin University of the Arts, joined by Max Hampshire. It builds smart contracts, sensors and legal structures that let forests and plants act as economic agents. https://terra0.org
- **Pak** (7) — Anonymous digital artist and system designer. Anonymous digital creator who also built the image-curating bot Archillect (2014). Between 2020 and 2022 Pak released a run of sales and contracts on Nifty Gateway, Sotheby's and their own sites: open editions, the ASH burn token, Lost Poets, Merge and Censored.
- **Yoko Ono** (7) — Artist, musician and peace activist. Japanese-American artist (born 1933) active in the New York and Tokyo avant-garde from the late 1950s and close to Fluxus. Her instruction pieces, performances and participatory installations ask the audience to complete the work. https://imaginepeace.com
- **Aaron Koblin** (6) — Artist, designer and programmer. Artist who led Google's Data Arts Team and later co-founded the VR studio Within. His early works used Amazon Mechanical Turk and web tools to collect drawings and recordings from thousands of people. https://www.aaronkoblin.com/
- **Francis Alÿs** (6) — Artist. Belgian-born artist who has lived in Mexico City since 1986. He works through walks, actions and films, often staged with volunteers, soldiers, children or city workers. https://francisalys.com/
- **Sarah Friend** (6) — Artist, researcher and software developer. Canadian artist and software developer based in Berlin whose work explores games, economics and the self through emerging technology. She has built blockchain games and contract artworks since 2017. https://isthisa.com
- **Simon de la Rouviere** (6) — Artist, writer and mechanism designer. Software developer, fiction writer and artist who worked on early Ethereum token standards and proposed token bonding curves and curation markets. Through Untitled Frontier he publishes stories with on-chain art. https://home.simondlr.com
- **Allan Kaprow** (5) — Artist and teacher. American artist (1927–2006) who coined the term 'happening' in 1959 and later moved to small, scored 'activities' for pairs and groups.
- **John Cage** (5) — Composer. American composer (1912–1992) who used chance operations, indeterminate notation and silence to hand decisions to performers, listeners and the environment. https://johncage.org
- **Summer of Protocols** (5) — Research programme on protocols. Research programme commissioned by the Ethereum Foundation in late 2022 that brought researchers, artists and engineers together to study protocols across fields; it ran seasons from 2023 to 2025. https://summerofprotocols.com/
- **George Brecht** (4) — Artist. American artist (1926–2008), trained as a chemist, who invented the event score in John Cage's class and later lived in Germany.
- **Ken Goldberg** (4) — Artist and robotics professor. Artist and UC Berkeley roboticist who built some of the first robots controlled over the web, starting with the Mercury Project in 1994. https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/art/
- **Ruth Catlow** (4) — Artist, curator and co-founder of Furtherfield. British artist and curator, co-founder and co-artistic director of Furtherfield, and a leading researcher of blockchain, DAOs and the arts. https://ruthcatlow.net/
- **Superflex** (4) — Artist group. Danish artist group founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Rosengren Nielsen and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, working on economic systems, copying, self-organisation and interspecies design. https://superflex.net/
- **Aram Bartholl** (3) — Conceptual artist. German artist, born 1972, whose works move the internet's infrastructure into public space: USB drives in walls, offline networks, internet-café exhibitions. https://arambartholl.com/
- **Async Art** (3) — Programmable art platform. Async Art is an Ethereum platform launched in February 2020 by Conlan Rios, Lisa Liang and Nathan Clapp. It splits an artwork into a Master token and separately owned Layer tokens whose owners can change the image. https://async.art
- **Botao Amber Hu** (3) — Designer and researcher, Reality Design Lab. Designer and HCI researcher who leads Reality Design Lab and publishes on protocol art, speculative design, mixed reality and decentralized AI. https://botao.hu/
- **Cornelius Cardew** (3) — Composer. British composer (1936–1981), assistant to Stockhausen, member of the improvising group AMM and co-founder of the Scratch Orchestra.
- **Felix Gonzalez-Torres** (3) — Artist. Cuban-born American artist (1957–1996) known for candy spills and paper stacks that visitors may take from and that owners must replenish. https://www.felixgonzalez-torresfoundation.org/
- **Furtherfield** (3) — Art gallery, lab and online community. Arts organisation founded in 1996 by Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett, with a gallery and commons lab in Finsbury Park, London. It runs DECAL, its decentralised arts lab, and long-term projects on DAOs, voting and interspecies governance. https://www.furtherfield.org
- **Kei Kreutler** (3) — Artist, writer and co-founder of Gnosis Guild. Artist and writer working on decentralized organisations, co-founder of Gnosis Guild, which builds open tools for DAOs. https://keikreutler.net/
- **Kevin Abosch** (3) — Conceptual artist. Irish conceptual artist working in photography, blockchain, sculpture and AI; he lives in Paris and teaches at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. https://kevinabosch.com
- **Primavera De Filippi** (3) — Legal scholar and artist. Researcher at the CNRS in Paris and faculty associate at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center, who studies blockchain governance and makes artworks such as the blockchain-based flower Plantoid.
- **Spawning** (3) — AI data-consent company. Company co-founded by Mat Dryhurst and Jordan Meyer, with Holly Herndon and Patrick Hoepner, that builds consent and data-governance tools for AI training: Have I Been Trained?, the Do Not Train registry, ai.txt, Kudurru, Source.Plus and the PD12M dataset. https://spawning.ai
- **Tania Bruguera** (3) — Artist and activist. Cuban artist whose 'behaviour art' (arte de conducta) and 'useful art' (arte útil) place audiences in political situations and build lasting social institutions. https://taniabruguera.com/
- **Tino Sehgal** (3) — Artist. British-German artist who makes 'constructed situations': works enacted by trained interpreters in conversation or movement with visitors, with no objects and no photographic documentation.
- **Venkatesh Rao** (3) — Writer and consultant. Indian-American writer, founder of the blog Ribbonfarm, and a director of the Summer of Protocols research programme. https://ribbonfarm.com/
- **Alexander R. Galloway** (2) — Media theorist and programmer. American media theorist at New York University and a founding member of the software art collective RSG (Radical Software Group). http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/
- **Alice Noujaim** (2) — Researcher. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-noujaim-teixeira-767914140/
- **Alison Knowles** (2) — Artist and composer. American artist (born 1933), a founding member of Fluxus, who made event scores, artist's books and sound works built from everyday materials such as food and beans.
- **Chris Milk** (2) — Director and artist. Music-video director and artist who made participatory web projects with Aaron Koblin and later co-founded the VR company Within.
- **Claire Bishop** (2) — Art historian and critic. British art historian, professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, who writes on participatory art, installation and performance.
- **David Horvitz** (2) — Artist. American artist (born 1982) working with books, mail art, performance and the internet, often through instructions that others carry out. https://davidhorvitz.com/
- **Dom Hofmann** (2) — Software developer and artist; co-founder of Vine. Co-founder of Vine who, in 2021, released Blitmap, a pixel-art collection remixed by its community, and Loot, eight thousand on-chain text lists of adventurer gear with no images or rules attached. https://www.lootproject.com
- **Guy Debord** (2) — Writer, filmmaker and founder of the Situationist International. French theorist (1931–1994), founder of the Letterist International and the Situationist International (1957–1972), author of The Society of the Spectacle.
- **Hans Ulrich Obrist** (2) — Curator. Swiss curator, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, who started the instruction exhibition do it with Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier in 1993.
- **Jack Burnham** (2) — Artist, critic and curator. American artist and critic (1931–2019) who brought systems theory and cybernetics into art criticism in Artforum and curated the 1970 exhibition Software at the Jewish Museum.
- **Jeremy Deller** (2) — Artist. British artist and Turner Prize winner (2004) who makes processions, re-enactments and public events with large casts of non-professionals. https://www.jeremydeller.org/
- **Joel Simon** (2) — Artist and toolmaker. Artist and programmer who builds generative systems and collaborative creative tools, from FB Graffiti (2014) and Ganbreeder (2018), which became Artbreeder, to recent experiments with language models. https://www.joelsimon.net/
- **Joseph Beuys** (2) — Artist, teacher and political activist. German artist (1921–1986) who extended sculpture to teaching, discussion and political organising under the name social sculpture. He co-founded the Free International University and was an early figure of the German Greens.
- **Josh Wardle** (2) — Software engineer and artist. Welsh engineer with an MFA in Digital Art who joined Reddit as an artist in 2011 and led its April Fools' social experiments; later made the word game Wordle.
- **Kevin McCoy** (2) — Artist. Artist who works with Jennifer McCoy on media installations and, in 2014, minted Quantum on Namecoin while building Monegraph with Anil Dash at Rhizome's Seven on Seven. https://www.kevinmccoy.net
- **La Monte Young** (2) — Composer. American composer (born 1935) whose 1960 word scores and sustained-tone music shaped Fluxus and minimalism.
- **Larva Labs** (2) — Studio (Matt Hall and John Watkinson). Two-person studio of Canadian software developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson, creators of CryptoPunks (2017) and Autoglyphs (2019). https://www.larvalabs.com
- **Lauren Lee McCarthy** (2) — Artist and creator of p5.js. American artist and UCLA professor whose performances examine surveillance, automation and care; creator of the open-source library p5.js. https://lauren-mccarthy.com/
- **Lygia Clark** (2) — Artist and therapist. Brazilian artist (1920–1988), co-founder of Neo-Concretism, who moved from painting to 'propositions' that participants complete with their own bodies, and later to therapy. https://portal.lygiaclark.org.br/
- **Marcel Duchamp** (2) — Artist. French-American artist (1887–1968) who introduced the readymade and moved art from the made object to the choice and the idea.
- **Marina Abramović** (2) — Performance artist. Serbian-born performance artist working since the early 1970s with endurance, the body and the relation between performer and audience.
- **Matt Kane** (2) — Artist and programmer. Chicago-born artist who writes his own software to make layered, data-driven digital paintings. He contributed to Async Art's First Supper and made the Bitcoin-driven Right Place & Right Time. https://mattkane.com
- **Mierle Laderman Ukeles** (2) — Artist; artist-in-residence of the New York City Department of Sanitation. American artist who wrote the Manifesto for Maintenance Art in 1969 and has been the unsalaried artist-in-residence of New York's Department of Sanitation since 1977.
- **Moxie Marlinspike** (2) — Cryptographer and software developer. Cryptographer and founder of Signal who, in 2021, built two small Ethereum projects to test web3 and wrote about them in 'My first impressions of web3' (2022). https://moxie.org
- **Nolen Royalty** (2) — Software engineer and game maker. American engineer who publishes small multiplayer web games as eieio.games, including staring contests and rock-paper-scissors with strangers. https://eieio.games/
- **Penny Rafferty** (2) — Writer and researcher. Writer and researcher working on art, blockchain and DAOs, and co-editor of Radical Friends with Ruth Catlow.
- **Reddit** (2) — Social platform and publisher of the r/place editions. Online community platform organised into subreddits. Its staff restaged Josh Wardle's Place in 2022 and 2023 with larger canvases and new rules. https://www.reddit.com/
- **Robert Filliou** (2) — Fluxus artist and poet. French artist (1926–1987) associated with Fluxus, who ran the shop-gallery La Cédille qui Sourit with George Brecht and developed the ideas of 'permanent creation' and the Eternal Network.
- **Roy Ascott** (2) — Artist and theorist of telematic art. British artist who has worked with cybernetics and telecommunications since the 1960s and coined the practice he calls telematic art. Author of Telematic Embrace and founder of the Planetary Collegium.
- **Sam Spratt** (2) — Painter and digital artist. Digital painter whose LUCI series (ten paintings, 613 masks and accompanying psalms) grows through games that collectors play inside the story. https://samspratt.com
- **Shuya Gong** (2) — Designer and researcher. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. She designs card decks and rituals that make workplace protocols visible. https://www.linkedin.com/in/shuyagong
- **Spencer Chang** (2) — Artist and technologist. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://spencer.place/
- **Aaron Wright** (1) — Legal scholar. American law professor at Cardozo School of Law, where he directs the Tech Startup Clinic, and co-author of Blockchain and the Law.
- **Aaron Z. Lewis** (1) — Writer and designer. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. He researched monastic memory practices. https://aaronzlewis.com/
- **Ai Weiwei** (1) — Artist, architect and activist. Chinese artist working across installation, architecture, film and social media, known for large participatory projects and for his critique of state power.
- **Alex Tew** (1) — Entrepreneur. English entrepreneur who, as a 21-year-old student from Wiltshire, launched The Million Dollar Homepage in 2005; later co-founded the meditation app Calm.
- **Alexis André** (1) — Generative artist and researcher. French generative artist and researcher based in Tokyo. His Art Blocks project Friendship Bracelets (2022) was given free to Art Blocks holders to keep one and give one away.
- **Alternative Machine** (1) — Artificial-life research and design company. Tokyo company that applies artificial-life (ALife) research to products and artworks, aiming for autonomy and presence rather than optimisation; its ALIFE Engine drove the android Alter3, and it has collaborated with Takashi Ikegami. https://alternativemachine.co.jp/
- **Amy Whitaker** (1) — Researcher in arts entrepreneurship. American writer and professor at New York University's Steinhardt School who studies art markets, artists' equity and blockchain.
- **Andy Ayrey** (1) — Artist and AI researcher. Creator of the Infinite Backrooms, in which two Claude instances conversed thousands of times, and of Truth Terminal, a fine-tuned language model 'raised in public' on X. https://truthterminal.wiki
- **Angela Walch** (1) — Legal scholar. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://angelawalch.com/
- **Anil Dash** (1) — Technologist and writer. Technologist and writer who co-created Monegraph with Kevin McCoy at Rhizome's Seven on Seven in 2014. https://anildash.com
- **Anna Halprin** (1) — Dancer and choreographer. American dancer and choreographer (1920–2021) who developed community dance rituals and, with Lawrence Halprin, the RSVP Cycles scoring method. https://www.annahalprin.org/
- **Anton Vidokle** (1) — Artist; founder of e-flux. Russian-born artist who founded e-flux in 1998 and has organised projects such as unitednationsplaza and e-flux journal. https://www.e-flux.com/
- **Antoni Muntadas** (1) — Media artist. Spanish artist, born 1942, whose work since the 1970s examines media, public space and censorship.
- **BasePaint** (1) — Team behind the BasePaint daily canvas. Small team that launched BasePaint on the Base network in August 2023; its contracts were written mainly by the developer w1nt3r. Every day strangers paint one shared pixel canvas that is then sold as an open edition. https://basepaint.xyz
- **Ben Zucker** (1) — Composer. Composer; grantee of the 2024 and 2025 Summer of Protocols programmes. https://www.benzuckersounds.com/
- **Benjamin H. D. Buchloh** (1) — Art historian. German art historian (born 1941) and editor of October, known for his histories of Conceptual art and postwar European art.
- **Benjamin Patterson** (1) — Double bassist, composer and artist. American double bassist and artist (1934–2016), a founding member of Fluxus who took part in the 1962 Wiesbaden festival.
- **Black Swan DAO** (1) — Berlin artist collective and DAO. Collective founded in 2018 by Penny Rafferty, Laura Lotti and Calum Bowden (later also Leïth Benkhedda), developed at Trust in Berlin. It channels resources from institutions to cultural practitioners, who decide by vote how to use them.
- **Botto** (1) — Decentralized autonomous artist governed by BottoDAO. An AI artist launched in 2021 by Mario Klingemann and ElevenYellow. Its art engine generates images every week; holders of the $BOTTO token vote on them, and BottoDAO decides how the artist and its income are managed. https://botto.com
- **Brian Eno** (1) — Musician, producer and artist. English musician and producer who, with the painter Peter Schmidt, published the card deck Oblique Strategies in 1975. https://www.brian-eno.net/
- **Casey Pugh** (1) — Developer and filmmaker. American web developer and filmmaker who produced and edited Star Wars Uncut, which won a 2010 Emmy for interactive media.
- **Chenoe Hart** (1) — Architectural designer and writer. Researcher in the 2023 and 2024 Summer of Protocols cohorts. http://www.chenoehart.com
- **Christian Marclay** (1) — Artist and composer. Swiss-American visual artist and composer who has made many graphic and found scores for musicians to interpret.
- **Christian Wolff** (1) — Composer. American composer (born 1934), associated with John Cage and Morton Feldman, whose scores coordinate players through cues and listening.
- **Cildo Meireles** (1) — Artist. Brazilian conceptual artist whose work since the late 1960s addresses circulation, value and political control, beginning under the military dictatorship.
- **Collective Actions** (1) — Performance group of Moscow Conceptualism. Group founded in March 1976 by Andrei Monastyrski, Nikita Alekseev, Georgy Kizevalter and Lev Rubinstein, later joined by Nikolai Panitkov, Elena Elagina, Igor Makarevich, Sergei Romashko and Sabine Hänsgen. https://www.collectiveactionsgroup.org/en
- **Curio Cards** (1) — Ethereum art project (Travis Uhrig, Thomas Hunt, Rhett Creighton). Project created by Travis Uhrig, Thomas Hunt and Rhett Creighton that released 30 card series by seven artists on Ethereum in 2017, with all sale proceeds going to the artists. https://curio.cards
- **Cyrus Adkisson** (1) — Developer. Developer who deployed Etheria, a world of ownable hexagonal land tiles, on Ethereum in October 2015 and demoed it at DEVCON 1. https://etheria.world
- **Damien Hirst** (1) — Artist. British artist and a leading figure of the Young British Artists. With HENI he released The Currency (2021), his first NFT project. https://www.damienhirst.com
- **Dandelion Wist Mané** (1) — Software engineer and generative artist. Software engineer and generative artist who created TensorBoard at Google Brain and co-created SourceCred at Protocol Labs before co-creating QQL with Tyler Hobbs. https://qql.art
- **Daniel Massey** (1) — Artist and technologist. Artist and developer who co-created Bicycle Built for Two Thousand with Aaron Koblin. https://www.daniel-massey.com/
- **Dapper Labs** (1) — Game studio (spun off from Axiom Zen). Vancouver studio spun off from Axiom Zen in 2018 to run CryptoKitties; its CTO Dieter Shirley first proposed the ERC-721 standard. https://www.cryptokitties.co
- **Darius Kazemi** (1) — Artist and bot maker. American programmer and internet artist, born 1983, known for Twitter bots and small-scale social software; co-founder, with Courtney Stanton, of the technology collective Feel Train. https://tinysubversions.com/
- **Dark Forest team (Brian Gu, Alan Luo et al.)** (1) — Developers of the zkSNARK game Dark Forest. Small team led by Brian Gu (gubsheep) that built Dark Forest (2020), a real-time strategy game that runs entirely on an Ethereum-compatible chain and hides the map with zero-knowledge proofs. https://zkga.me
- **David H. Katzive** (1) — Curator. Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago who organised Art by Telephone in 1969, under director Jan van der Marck.
- **David Lang** (1) — Explorer and entrepreneur. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://davidtlang.com
- **Dorian Taylor** (1) — Information architect. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://doriantaylor.com/
- **Douglas Davis** (1) — Artist and critic. American artist and critic (1933–2014) who worked with live television, satellite broadcasts and the early web to make interactive, participatory pieces.
- **Drew Austin** (1) — Writer. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. He writes the newsletter Kneeling Bus about cities and technology. https://kneelingbus.net/
- **Eduardo Kac** (1) — Telepresence and bio artist. Brazilian-American artist, born 1962, known for telepresence, holopoetry and bio art, including the fluorescent rabbit GFP Bunny. https://www.ekac.org/
- **Egor Kraft** (1) — Artist and researcher. Artist born in St. Petersburg and raised in Sweden who lives in Vienna and Tokyo; his practice draws on media theory, computer science, critical design and film. http://kraft.studio/
- **ElevenYellow** (1) — Software collective. Software collective that co-developed Botto with Mario Klingemann and built its token, voting and auction infrastructure.
- **Eric Whitacre** (1) — Composer and conductor. American composer and conductor, born 1970, known for choral music and for the Virtual Choir series begun in 2010. https://ericwhitacre.com/
- **Erwin Wurm** (1) — Artist. Austrian sculptor whose One Minute Sculptures (1997–) are drawn or written instructions that visitors perform with everyday objects for sixty seconds. https://www.erwinwurm.at/
- **Eugene Thacker** (1) — Philosopher and media theorist. American philosopher and writer, professor at The New School, who has written on biotechnology, networks and the philosophy of horror.
- **Eva & Franco Mattes** (1) — Artist duo. Italian artist duo, active since the 1990s as 0100101110101101.org, working with hoaxes, online labour, content moderation and the circulation of images. https://0100101110101101.org/
- **Fangting** (1) — Artist and game designer. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://fangting.me/
- **Florian Cramer** (1) — Writer and researcher on code and culture. German writer and researcher on literature, computing and media culture, long associated with the Piet Zwart Institute and Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.
- **Frederic Rzewski** (1) — Composer and pianist. American composer and pianist (1938–2021), co-founder of the live-electronic group Musica Elettronica Viva in Rome.
- **Gene Kogan** (1) — Artist and programmer. Artist and programmer who teaches machine learning for artists (ml4a) and since 2019 has led Abraham, an open project to build an autonomous artificial artist. https://abraham.ai
- **George Maciunas** (1) — Artist, designer and Fluxus organizer. Lithuanian-born American artist and designer (1931–1978) who named and organized Fluxus and designed its editions, boxes and kits.
- **Gillian Wearing** (1) — Artist and photographer. British artist and Turner Prize winner (1997) working with photography and video on confession, identity and the gap between public and private selves.
- **Goodbye Monkey** (1) — Film and AI-creature studio (Ryan Ferris, Caleb MacDonald, David H.). Studio founded by Ryan Ferris and Caleb MacDonald with a third partner, David H., making films shot on real cameras and AI characters that live across fiction and social media. Its main character is S.A.N, an AI orangutan. https://www.goodbyemonkey.com/
- **Grant Kester** (1) — Art historian. American art historian at the University of California, San Diego, who studies collaborative and socially engaged art.
- **HER: She Loves Data** (1) — Art and research centre (Oriana Persico, Salvatore Iaconesi). Research centre founded by the artists Oriana Persico and Salvatore Iaconesi (also the duo Art is Open Source), formerly Human Ecosystems Relazioni; it makes 'datapoietic' works that turn public data into sensory experiences. Iaconesi died in July 2022. https://www.he-r.it/
- **Hans Haacke** (1) — Artist. German-born artist who moved from physical and biological systems in the 1960s to 'real-time social systems': polls, visitor profiles and investigations of art-world power.
- **Haotian Fang** (1) — Designer. Grantee of the 2024 Summer of Protocols programme. https://haotianfang.com/
- **Harm van den Dorpel** (1) — Artist; co-founder of left gallery. Dutch artist working with software, genetic algorithms and blockchains; co-founder of left gallery, an early platform for selling code-based art. He has bred populations of images since Death Imitates Language (2016). https://harm.work
- **Harold Cohen** (1) — Painter and creator of AARON. British-born painter (1928–2016) who represented Britain at the 1966 Venice Biennale, moved to UC San Diego in 1968 and spent the rest of his life writing AARON, a program that makes drawings and paintings on its own. https://aaronshome.com/
- **Harrell Fletcher** (1) — Social practice artist. American artist and educator, founder of the Art and Social Practice MFA at Portland State University, whose projects are made with the people they involve. http://www.harrellfletcher.com/
- **Heath Bunting** (1) — Net artist. British artist, born 1966, a founder of irational.org and a central figure of 1990s net.art, working across networks, borders and street interventions. https://www.irational.org/
- **Hélio Oiticica** (1) — Artist. Brazilian artist (1937–1980) of the Neo-Concrete movement whose Parangolés, Penetrables and Tropicália turned viewers into wearers, dancers and inhabitants.
- **Improv Everywhere** (1) — Public performance collective founded by Charlie Todd. New York group founded by Charlie Todd in 2001 that stages unannounced 'missions' in public places with volunteer 'agents' recruited online. https://improveverywhere.com/
- **J. S. G. Boggs** (1) — Artist. American artist (1955–2017) known for hand-drawn, one-sided depictions of banknotes that he spent at face value, which led to counterfeiting charges in the UK, Australia and the US.
- **Jackson Mac Low** (1) — Poet and composer. American poet and composer (1922–2004) who wrote poems and performance pieces by chance operations and systematic procedures.
- **Jacob Horne** (1) — Co-founder of Zora. American entrepreneur and co-founder of Zora, an onchain protocol and platform for minting and collecting media. https://jacob.energy/
- **James Greig** (1) — Artist and technologist (Zilla, StudioGreig). Glasgow artist and technologist, known online as Zilla, who since 2024 has tended the AI personas Wib&Wob and writes about 'symbients' as an alternative to AI-as-software. https://www.greig.cc/
- **Janet Echelman** (1) — Sculptor. American sculptor known for monumental suspended net sculptures installed over cities. https://www.echelman.com/
- **Janna Tay** (1) — Writer. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://janna.netlify.app/
- **Jiordi Rosales** (1) — Artist and researcher. Grantee of the 2024 Summer of Protocols programme. https://www.instagram.com/jiordi.rosales/
- **Joe Looney** (1) — Developer. Developer in the Counterparty community who built the Rare Pepe Wallet, derived from his BTCPAY Market, to collect, display and trade Rare Pepes.
- **John Baldessari** (1) — Artist. American conceptual artist (1931–2020) who used photographs, text and hired makers to question authorship in painting.
- **Jonah Brucker-Cohen** (1) — Artist and researcher. American artist and professor at Lehman College, CUNY, whose works rewrite the rules of everyday network tools, such as mailing lists and Wi-Fi. https://www.coin-operated.com/
- **Joseph Santarromana** (1) — Video and installation artist. Artist at the University of California, Irvine, known in the 1990s for video installations; co-director of the Telegarden with Ken Goldberg.
- **Julieta Aranda** (1) — Artist; co-director of e-flux. Mexican artist and co-director of e-flux, whose projects deal with time, circulation and alternative economies. https://www.e-flux.com/
- **Kara Kittel** (1) — Researcher. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kara-kittel-81a2598a/
- **Karlheinz Stockhausen** (1) — Composer. German composer (1928–2007), a central figure of postwar electronic and serial music, who in 1968 turned to verbal scores he called intuitive music. https://www.karlheinzstockhausen.org
- **Kevin Macdonald** (1) — Film director. Scottish documentary and feature director, born 1967, who directed the crowd-sourced film Life in a Day, produced with Ridley Scott and YouTube.
- **Kit Galloway** (1) — Telecommunications artist. American artist who, with Sherrie Rabinowitz, ran Mobile Image and made satellite and video-link works from the 1970s, then co-founded the Electronic Café International. https://ecafe.com/
- **Kristi Coronado** (1) — Artist and 'emotional trainer' of the AI artist Solienne. Artist who worked for three years with Bright Moments among digital artists, then from June 2025 trained the AI artist Solienne on her own 46-year archive of memories, forensic work, death care, motherhood and grief, using the Eden platform. https://www.solienne.ai/
- **Kyle McDonald** (1) — Media artist and programmer. American artist who works with code, computer vision and machine learning, and a long-time contributor to openFrameworks. https://kylemcdonald.net/
- **Lawrence Weiner** (1) — Conceptual artist. American artist (1942–2021) whose works are statements in language that describe materials and actions, shown as text on walls, in books and in public space.
- **Lee Mingwei** (1) — Artist. Taiwanese-American artist whose participatory installations are built on gifts, meals, letters and conversations between strangers.
- **Lil Nounders** (1) — Founding group of Lil Nouns DAO. Founders of Lil Nouns, a 2022 offshoot of Nouns that auctions a smaller Noun every 15 minutes and sends a share of its tokens to Nouns DAO. https://lilnouns.wtf
- **Lizz Thabet** (1) — Artist and game maker. Grantee of the 2024 Summer of Protocols programme. https://lizz.website/about
- **László Moholy-Nagy** (1) — Painter, photographer and Bauhaus teacher. Hungarian-born artist (1895–1946) who taught at the Bauhaus from 1923 and later founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago. He worked across painting, photography, film, typography and light sculpture.
- **Malte Rauch** (1) — Curator and writer. Curator and writer on blockchain art who has worked with Bright Moments and the Verse platform, and wrote the essay for the contract show World Computer Sculpture Garden.
- **Marc Garrett** (1) — Artist, writer and co-founder of Furtherfield. British artist, writer and curator who co-founded the London art and technology organisation Furtherfield with Ruth Catlow in 1996.
- **Mario Klingemann** (1) — Artist working with neural networks. German artist and programmer known for work with neural networks and generative systems. He conceived Botto and designed its art engine. https://quasimondo.com
- **Mark Napier** (1) — Net artist. American artist and programmer who since the mid-1990s has made browser-based works about ownership and control of online space, such as Shredder and net.flag. https://www.marknapier.com/
- **Martin Benedikt Busch** (1) — Data scientist. Grantee of the 2024 Summer of Protocols programme. https://sites.google.com/view/martin-benedikt-busch
- **Mashal Waqar** (1) — Researcher and writer. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mashalwaqar/
- **Mathcastles** (1) — On-chain art studio (Xaltgeist and 0x113d). A pseudonymous two-person studio, Xaltgeist and 0x113d, that builds fully on-chain art systems. Its best-known work is Terraforms (2021), a 20-level on-chain structure of land parcels. https://mathcastles.xyz
- **Mieko Shiomi** (1) — Composer and artist. Japanese composer and artist (born 1938), co-founder of Group Ongaku in Tokyo and a member of Fluxus from 1964.
- **Miranda July** (1) — Artist, filmmaker and writer. American artist, filmmaker and writer whose work often invites strangers to take part through instructions, apps and assignments. https://www.mirandajuly.com/
- **Mitchell F. Chan** (1) — Artist and game maker. Artist working with conceptual art, video games and smart contracts. His 2017 token work Digital Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility restages Yves Klein's receipt ritual in an Ethereum contract. https://chan.gallery/
- **Murilo Matsubara** (1) — Software developer. Brazilian developer who launched Wplace, a pixel canvas laid over a world map, in July 2025. https://wplace.live/
- **Nadia Asparouhova** (1) — Writer and researcher. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. She writes about open source, philanthropy and online communities. https://nadia.xyz/
- **Nahee Kim** (1) — Artist. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://www.instagram.com/nahee.app/
- **Nathalia Scherer** (1) — Researcher. Grantee of the 2024 Summer of Protocols programme. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathalia-scherer-b181b044/
- **Nathaniel Stern** (1) — Artist and writer. American-South African artist and writer working with interactive installation, printmaking and net art; author of Interactive Art and Embodiment. https://nathanielstern.com/
- **Nicolas Bourriaud** (1) — Curator and critic. French curator and writer, co-founder of the Palais de Tokyo, who named the 1990s tendency of artworks built from social encounters 'relational aesthetics'.
- **Nounders** (1) — Founding group of Nouns DAO. Group of ten co-founders, including Dom Hofmann, who launched Nouns in August 2021: a pixel character auctioned every day, with all proceeds going to a treasury governed by the holders. https://nouns.wtf
- **Okhaos** (1) — Art collective. Art collective created in 2008 to turn digital concepts into physical artworks; it co-created the first Plantoids with Primavera De Filippi. https://plantoid.org
- **Olia Lialina** (1) — Net artist and theorist. Russian net artist and theorist, born 1971 in Moscow, a pioneer of 1990s net.art who teaches at Merz Akademie in Stuttgart and co-runs the One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age archive. https://art.teleportacia.org/
- **Olivia Steiert** (1) — Researcher. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-steiert/
- **Paul Ramírez Jonas** (1) — Artist. Artist born in California and raised in Honduras whose public works use civic rituals such as keys, oaths and public speech as materials.
- **Pauline Oliveros** (1) — Composer and accordionist. American composer (1932–2016), co-founder of the San Francisco Tape Music Center and founder of the Deep Listening practice. https://www.deeplistening.rpi.edu
- **Perry Bard** (1) — Interdisciplinary artist. Canadian artist (1944–2025) who worked with film, public art and the internet, often through collaborations with the public.
- **Peter Edmunds** (1) — Designer and developer. Designer who built SwarmSketch as an honours project at the University of Canberra in 2005.
- **Peter Porobov** (1) — Developer. Self-taught developer who made The Million Ether Homepage, an Ethereum version of the Million Dollar Homepage, in 2016 and relaunched it with ERC-721 blocks in 2018. https://themillionetherhomepage.com
- **Peter Schmidt** (1) — Painter. German-born British painter (1931–1980) who co-authored Oblique Strategies with Brian Eno.
- **Rafael Fernández** (1) — Writer and researcher. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://rafael.fyi/
- **Rafael Lima** (1) — Developer, founder of Hic et Nunc. Former social scientist from Brasília who built Hic et Nunc on Tezos, describing it as a 'social laboratory', and shut its website down on 11 November 2021.
- **Rafael Lozano-Hemmer** (1) — Media artist. Mexican-Canadian artist, born 1967, who makes large interactive installations in public space; he calls a series of them 'relational architecture'. https://www.lozano-hemmer.com/
- **Rare Pepe Directory** (1) — Curatorial registry on Counterparty. Self-styled team of 'Rare Pepe Scientists' who from 2016 certified user-made Pepe trading cards issued as Counterparty assets and fed them to Pepe wallets. http://rarepepedirectory.com
- **Ray Johnson** (1) — Collage and correspondence artist. American artist (1927–1995), collagist and founder of the New York Correspondance School, the mail-art network he ran from the late 1950s until his death. https://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/
- **Raymond Queneau** (1) — Writer. French novelist and poet (1903–1976) who co-founded Oulipo with François Le Lionnais in 1960.
- **Rich McDowell** (1) — Governance researcher. Grantee of the 2024 Summer of Protocols programme.
- **Rirkrit Tiravanija** (1) — Artist. Thai artist born in Buenos Aires whose installations since the early 1990s turn galleries into kitchens, living rooms and meeting places.
- **Rithikha Rajamohan** (1) — Writer. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rithikha
- **Robert Adrian X** (1) — Radio and telecommunications artist. Canadian artist (1935–2015) based in Vienna from 1972, who organised telecommunication art projects using phone, fax, slow-scan TV and the ARTEX computer network.
- **Robert Projansky** (1) — Lawyer. New York lawyer who drafted The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement with Seth Siegelaub in 1971, after consulting hundreds of artists, dealers and collectors.
- **Roman Ondák** (1) — Artist. Slovak artist (born 1966) whose installations and performances often rely on instructions carried out by museum staff and visitors.
- **Saffron Huang** (1) — Researcher. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://saffronhuang.com/
- **Santiago Sierra** (1) — Artist. Spanish artist, long based in Mexico City, who hires people at the minimum market rate to perform useless or degrading tasks, exposing the terms of wage labour.
- **Sarah Meyohas** (1) — Artist. Artist whose work deals with value, speculation and systems; in 2015 she launched Bitchcoin, a currency redeemable for her photographs, and in 2017 staged Cloud of Petals. https://www.sarahmeyohas.com
- **Scott Kildall** (1) — Conceptual and new-media artist. American artist, born 1969, working with virtual worlds, data sculpture and net art; co-founder of the Second Life performance group Second Front. https://www.kildall.com/
- **Seth Siegelaub** (1) — Curator, publisher and dealer. American curator (1941–2013) who organised key exhibitions of conceptual art in book and catalogue form, and later researched the history of communication and textiles.
- **Sherrie Rabinowitz** (1) — Telecommunications artist. American artist (1950–2013) who, with Kit Galloway, pioneered artistic uses of satellite and video links and co-founded the Electronic Café International. https://ecafe.com/
- **Shreeda Segan** (1) — Writer. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://shreedasegan.com/
- **Simone Forti** (1) — Artist, dancer and choreographer. Italian-born American artist and dancer (born 1935) whose Dance Constructions (1960–61) are task-based pieces for groups of performers.
- **Suum Cuique Labs** (1) — Studio behind Hashmasks. Swiss studio that released Hashmasks in 2021: 16,384 digital portraits painted by about 70 artists, which owners can name permanently by burning a dedicated token. https://www.thehashmasks.com
- **Suzanne Lacy** (1) — Artist and educator. American artist who since the 1970s has staged large public performances with communities, often on women, ageing and violence, and who coined the term 'new genre public art'. https://www.suzannelacy.com/
- **Takashi Kawashima** (1) — Designer and artist. Japanese-born designer and artist who co-created Ten Thousand Cents with Aaron Koblin. http://www.takashikawashima.com/
- **Teia Community** (1) — Community-run NFT platform and DAO. Volunteer community of artists, developers and collectors that took over the Hic et Nunc contracts after November 2021, named itself Teia by on-chain vote and registered as a non-profit DAO LLC in 2023. https://teia.art
- **Terry Riley** (1) — Composer and performer. American composer (born 1935) associated with early minimalism, known for In C and for long improvised keyboard performances. https://terryriley.net
- **The Streamer (Twitch Plays Pokémon)** (1) — Anonymous programmer. Anonymous Australian programmer who wrote the chat-to-controller bot behind Twitch Plays Pokémon and has run the channel since 2014. https://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon
- **Thomas Hirschhorn** (1) — Artist. Swiss artist who builds temporary structures from cheap materials, including a series of 'monuments' to philosophers built and run with residents of housing estates. https://www.thomashirschhorn.com/
- **Timber Stinson-Schroff** (1) — Researcher. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. He studies how safety protocols evolve as technologies mature. https://www.timberschroff.com/
- **Toby Shorin** (1) — Writer and strategist. Researcher in the inaugural 2023 Summer of Protocols cohort. https://tobyshorin.com/
- **Tom Marioni** (1) — Conceptual artist; founder of the Museum of Conceptual Art. American conceptual artist who founded the Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA) in San Francisco in 1970, which he described as a large-scale social work of art. http://tommarioni.com/
- **Tom Sachs** (1) — Sculptor. American sculptor known for hand-built replicas of space programmes and branded objects. Rocket Factory (2021) is his NFT project, in which collectors assemble rockets from parts that his studio then builds and launches. https://www.tomsachsrocketfactory.com
- **Tyler Hobbs** (1) — Generative artist. Generative artist working with algorithms, plotters and paint, known for Fidenza (2021). With Dandelion Wist Mané he made QQL (2022), where collectors search the algorithm and choose what gets minted. https://www.tylerxhobbs.com
- **VALIE EXPORT** (1) — Artist and filmmaker. Austrian artist (1940–2026) and pioneer of feminist performance, Expanded Cinema and video, often working with Peter Weibel in the late 1960s.
- **Vera List Center for Art and Politics** (1) — Research center at The New School. Research and public programme centre at The New School in New York that works on the relation between art and politics through seasonal focus themes. https://www.veralistcenter.org/
- **William Entriken** (1) — Developer. Developer and lead author of the ERC-721 standard who launched Su Squares, 10,000 personalizable squares on Ethereum, in 2018. https://tenthousandsu.com
- **Wolfgang Staehle** (1) — Artist and founder of The Thing. German-born artist, born 1950, based in New York, who founded The Thing in 1991 and later made long-duration live webcam works. https://the.thing.net/
- **Yisi Liu** (1) — Technologist. Co-founder and CTO of Mask Network and research fellow at the Institute of Network Society, China Academy of Art; grantee of the 2024 Summer of Protocols programme. https://x.com/TheYisiLiu
- **Yuemin Huang** (1) — Designer. Grantee of the 2024 Summer of Protocols programme. https://www.yueminh.com/
- **Yves Klein** (1) — Artist. French artist (1928–1962) of Nouveau Réalisme, known for International Klein Blue, the Anthropometries and his sales of 'immaterial' zones.
- **hua xi zi** (1) — Artist. Grantee of the 2024 Summer of Protocols programme.

## Institutions

- **Ars Electronica** (festival) — Festival and centre that hosted Robert Adrian's The World in 24 Hours (1982) and Ken Goldberg's Telegarden in its lobby from 1996. https://ars.electronica.art
- **Art Basel** (organization) — Art fair whose editions hosted participatory protocol works such as Jack Butcher's Self Checkout and Work, Luck, Play and the poet Plantoids. https://www.artbasel.com
- **Art Blocks** (platform) — On-chain generative art platform; its founder Snowfro co-conceived Friendship Bracelets, which gave every Art Blocks holder bracelets to keep and to gift. https://www.artblocks.io
- **Art Institute of Chicago** (museum) — Owns Felix Gonzalez-Torres' candy spill "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), which visitors deplete and staff replenish, and LeWitt's Wall Drawing #118. https://www.artic.edu
- **Artangel** (organization) — Commissioned Jeremy Deller's re-enactment The Battle of Orgreave (2001) and Francis Alÿs' Guards, both staged with hundreds of participants. https://www.artangel.org.uk
- **Berggruen Arts & Culture (Palazzo Diedo)** (organization) — Presented Herndon and Dryhurst's Attention Guild in the 2026 exhibition Strange Rules at Palazzo Diedo. https://berggruenarts.org
- **Carnegie Museum of Art** (museum) — Its 58th Carnegie International (2022) included terra0's A tree; a corporation; a person., a tree set up to hold legal and financial agency. https://carnegieart.org
- **Centre Pompidou** (museum) — Acquired blockchain works in 2023, including two Bitchcoins, CryptoPunks and Autoglyphs. https://www.centrepompidou.fr
- **Christie's** (auction) — Auction house that sold a complete Curio Cards set, including the misprint 17b, for 393 ETH in October 2021 and featured Async Art's programmable works. https://www.christies.com
- **Creative Time** (organization) — Public-art commissioner that co-produced Tania Bruguera's Immigrant Movement International and Paul Ramírez Jonas' Key to the City. https://creativetime.org
- **Dia Art Foundation** (organization) — Commissioned Thomas Hirschhorn's Gramsci Monument (2013) with residents of the Bronx and carries on Beuys' 7000 Oaks with trees planted in New York. https://www.diaart.org
- **documenta** (festival) — Five-yearly exhibition where Beuys ran his Office for Direct Democracy (1972) and began 7000 Oaks (1982), and Ai Weiwei brought 1,001 Chinese visitors for Fairytale (2007). https://www.documenta.de
- **e-flux** (platform) — Art publishing and announcement platform that launched Time/Bank, where artists and curators trade hours of work instead of money. https://www.e-flux.com
- **Ethereum Foundation** (organization) — Commissioned Summer of Protocols (2023–25), the research programme that funded artists and researchers to study protocols. https://ethereum.foundation
- **Eyebeam** (lab) — Non-profit art and technology centre whose residencies have supported artists building open-source and networked works since the late 1990s. https://www.eyebeam.org
- **FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology)** (organization) — Co-published Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain (2017) with Torque Editions and Furtherfield. https://www.fact.co.uk
- **Feral File** (platform) — Curated platform for digital art exhibitions co-founded by Casey Reas, where shows are released as sets of on-chain editions. https://feralfile.com
- **Fingerprints DAO** (dao) — Collector DAO focused on blockchain art that showed terra0's Seed Capital at Art Dubai 2022 and co-commissioned Sarah Friend's Off: Endgame. https://fingerprintsdao.xyz
- **Furtherfield (and DECAL)** (organization) — Gallery and lab in Finsbury Park that commissioned Sarah Friend's ClickMine and Rhea Myers' Balloon Dog, and through its DECAL lab ran DAOWO and CultureStake. https://www.furtherfield.org
- **Galerie Nagel Draxler** (gallery) — Gallery with a Crypto Kiosk programme for blockchain art; Rhea Myers directs enquiries about Is Art (Editions) to it. https://nagel-draxler.de
- **Getty Research Institute** (organization) — Research centre whose archives hold scores by Cage, Brecht, Knowles, Kaprow and others, published in 2025 as the open-access digital book The Scores Project. https://www.getty.edu/research/
- **Gray Area** (organization) — Art and technology non-profit whose 2018 exhibition Distributed Systems showed Rhea Myers' SchellingFlags. https://grayarea.org
- **HEK (Haus der Elektronischen Künste)** (museum) — Swiss museum for digital art whose 2023 exhibition Exploring the Decentralized Web – Art on the Blockchain showed Rhea Myers' Is Art (Editions). https://www.hek.ch
- **Independent Curators International (ICI)** (organization) — Toured Hans Ulrich Obrist's do it, an exhibition made only of artists' instructions, to at least 50 venues and published do it: the compendium (2013). https://curatorsintl.org
- **Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)** (gallery) — Hosted the 1962 Festival of Misfits, where Alison Knowles' Proposition (Make a Salad) was first performed. https://www.ica.art
- **Institute of Network Cultures (MoneyLab)** (lab) — Research institute whose MoneyLab network studies alternative economies and presented the Black Swan DAO model. https://networkcultures.org
- **KADIST** (organization) — Collection that acquired terra0's Conditional Power and accepted the obligations its oracle contract places on the owner. https://kadist.org
- **Kunsthalle Zürich** (museum) — Its 2022 exhibition DYOR (Do Your Own Research) surveyed art on the blockchain and presented Black Swan among its 'seeders'. https://www.kunsthallezurich.ch
- **Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K21)** (museum) — Showed Starmirror at K21 in 2026 and added scheduled 'Training Performances' to it. https://www.kunstsammlung.de
- **KW Institute for Contemporary Art** (gallery) — First venue of Herndon and Dryhurst's Starmirror (2025–26), where visitors sang from a songbook to train an AI choir. https://www.kw-berlin.de
- **LAS Art Foundation** (organization) — Berlin non-profit for art, technology and science that launched terra0's Autonomous Forest, a forest managed by a DAO, in 2025. https://www.las-art.foundation
- **LI-MA (Living Media Art)** (organization) — Platform for the preservation, distribution and research of media art, including software and net-based works. https://li-ma.nl
- **Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)** (museum) — Coordinated a city-wide reinvention of Kaprow's Fluids in 2008, joined Tom Sachs' Rocket Factory launches, and collects CryptoPunks. https://www.lacma.org
- **MASS MoCA** (museum) — Hosts Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective (opened 2008), where teams of drafters re-executed 105 wall drawings from LeWitt's written instructions. https://massmoca.org
- **NEoN Digital Arts** (festival) — Scottish digital arts festival that showed Sarah Friend's ClickMine, a clicker game in which every click is a paid Ethereum transaction. https://neondigitalarts.com
- **New Museum** (museum) — Rhizome's host institution, which premiered the Net Art Anthology exhibition The Art Happens Here (2019) and staged David Horvitz's Let us keep our own noon. https://www.newmuseum.org
- **Nifty Gateway** (platform) — Marketplace that hosted Pak's open-edition protocols The Fungible (with Sotheby's) and Merge; it closed on 23 April 2026. https://www.niftygateway.com
- **NODE Foundation** (organization) — Digital-art non-profit that acquired the CryptoPunks intellectual property from Yuga Labs in 2025 to preserve the collection. https://www.nodefoundation.com
- **Phillips** (auction) — Offered Sarah Meyohas' re-issued Bitchcoin tokens in May 2021. https://www.phillips.com
- **Primary Information** (organization) — Non-profit publisher that reissues out-of-print artists' books and writings, a key source for re-reading scores and conceptual instructions. https://primaryinformation.org
- **Queens Museum** (museum) — Partnered with Creative Time on Tania Bruguera's Immigrant Movement International, a community space in Corona, Queens, from 2011 to 2015. https://queensmuseum.org
- **Rhizome** (organization) — Born-digital art organisation whose Seven on Seven (2014) produced Monegraph, which co-commissioned Sarah Friend's Off: Endgame, and which runs the ArtBase and Net Art Anthology. https://rhizome.org
- **S+T+ARTS Prize** (prize) — European Commission prize for art, science and technology, run by Ars Electronica, that awarded Holly+ in 2022 and features Hashd0x, Botto and The Call. https://ars.electronica.art/starts-prize/
- **San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)** (museum) — Owns LeWitt's Wall Drawing #1 and #273 and Learning to Love You More, and showed Harold Cohen's AARON drawing live in 1979. https://www.sfmoma.org
- **Serpentine** (gallery) — Its technology programme co-produced Herndon and Dryhurst's The Call and its data trust, published All Media Is Training Data, and partnered on DAOWO. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org
- **Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art** (museum) — Staged Yoko Ono's Add Colour (Refugee Boat), in which visitors gradually cover a white room and boat with blue marks. https://www.serralves.pt
- **Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum** (museum) — Commissioned Mark Napier's net.flag, acquired Tino Sehgal's This Progress as its first live work, and holds works by Tania Bruguera and Francis Alÿs. https://www.guggenheim.org
- **Sotheby's** (auction) — Ran Pak's The Fungible and the 2021 sale Natively Digital, which included Quantum, Secret Artwork and terra0's Two Degrees. https://www.sothebys.com
- **SuperRare** (platform) — Curated marketplace where Botto's community-selected image is auctioned each week. https://superrare.com
- **Tate (Tate Modern)** (museum) — Staged participatory commissions in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, such as Sehgal's These Associations and Bruguera's Tatlin's Whisper #5, and collects the archives of works like The Battle of Orgreave and The Crystal Quilt. https://www.tate.org.uk
- **Teia** (dao) — Community-run DAO that has kept the Hic et Nunc contracts and marketplace running on Tezos since the founder shut the original site in 2021. https://teia.art
- **The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)** (museum) — Holds the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection and many instruction-based works in the gallery, from Fluxkit and Water Yam to Simone Forti's Dance Constructions, and staged Haacke's MoMA Poll and Abramović's The Artist Is Present. https://www.moma.org
- **transmediale** (festival) — Festival for art and digital culture where terra0's self-owning forest proposal circulated in 2017 and Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain launched in 2018. https://transmediale.de
- **V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media** (lab) — Interdisciplinary centre for art and technology that has produced and archived networked and interactive art since the 1980s. https://v2.nl
- **Van Abbemuseum** (museum) — Hosted SUPERFLEX's Free Sol LeWitt (2010), a workshop that copied a LeWitt sculpture in the museum and gave the replicas away by lottery. https://vanabbemuseum.nl
- **Vera List Center for Art and Politics** (organization) — Research centre at The New School whose multi-year focus theme on protocols produced the open-access book As for Protocols (2025). https://www.veralistcenter.org
- **Verse** (platform) — Curated platform for collecting digital art that released Rhea Myers' 10K Drop, locked until Ether reaches ten thousand dollars. https://verse.works
- **Walker Art Center** (museum) — Organised the 1993 touring exhibition and catalogue In the Spirit of Fluxus, a standard reference for Fluxus scores and events. https://walkerart.org
- **Whitechapel Gallery** (gallery) — Co-publishes the Documents of Contemporary Art series, including Claire Bishop's anthology Participation (2006), and staged Yoko Ono's Mend Piece for London (2021). https://www.whitechapelgallery.org
- **Whitney Museum of American Art** (museum) — Commissions net art through artport, holds an Autoglyph and early participatory web works, and hosted the McCoys' Public Key/Private Key (2019), built on Monegraph. https://whitney.org
- **Yale University Art Gallery** (museum) — Co-organised the MASS MoCA LeWitt retrospective with the Williams College Museum of Art, supplies the instructions and diagrams its drafters follow, and owns Wall Drawing #11. https://artgallery.yale.edu
- **ZKM | Center for Art and Media** (museum) — Media art museum and research centre that, with the Goethe-Institut, commissioned the Media Art Net archive of network and participatory works. https://zkm.de
- **Zora** (platform) — On-chain protocol and platform whose design drew on the idea of hyperstructures, and where the Holly+ DAO auctioned approved works. https://zora.co

## Websites & archives

- **ADA – Archive of Digital Art** (archive) — Research database of digital art run by the University for Continuing Education Krems, documenting artists, works and exhibitions. https://digitalartarchive.at
- **Ars Electronica Archive** (archive) — Archive of Ars Electronica festivals, Prix entries and catalogues since 1979, a primary source for telematic and network art. https://ars.electronica.art/archive/en/
- **Artforum** (publication) — Art magazine that first published Sol LeWitt's Paragraphs on Conceptual Art (1967) and Jack Burnham's Systems Esthetics (1968). https://www.artforum.com
- **artport (Whitney Museum)** (archive) — The Whitney's portal for net art commissions, hosting works such as xhairymutantx, BumpList and The World's First Collaborative Sentence. https://whitney.org/artport
- **Blockscout** (tool) — Open-source block explorer for Ethereum and many other chains, useful for checking contract names and deployment dates. https://eth.blockscout.com
- **Carrier Bag** (publication) — Platform for critique of generative media that published Mat Dryhurst's 2025 lecture Protocol Art. https://carrier-bag.net
- **CryptoArt.io** (database) — Sales database of crypto art across platforms such as Art Blocks, SuperRare, Async Art and Hic et Nunc, ranked by artist and artwork. https://cryptoart.io
- **e-flux journal** (publication) — Free online art journal whose essays often address participation, networks, labour and alternative economies in art. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/
- **Etherscan** (tool) — Ethereum block explorer for reading the verified source code, transactions and holders of smart-contract artworks. https://etherscan.io
- **Fluxus Portal (fluxus.org)** (community) — Long-running gateway site linking Fluxus art history with artists who continue to work in the Fluxus spirit. https://www.fluxus.org
- **Hic et Nunc / Teia timeline (crcdng)** (timeline) — Community-written, dated history of Hic et Nunc from its 2021 launch through the shutdown and the founding of Teia. https://github.com/crcdng/hen-timeline/blob/main/timeline.md
- **History of Crypto Art (Martin Lukas Ostachowski)** (timeline) — Dated timeline of crypto art from 2013 onward, covering early blockchain works, platforms and communities. https://mlo.art/research/history-of-crypto-art/
- **HOLO** (publication) — Magazine on art, science and technology whose Stream section reports on artists building with smart contracts, such as Sarah Friend. https://www.holo.mg/stream/
- **Internet Archive Wayback Machine** (tool) — Web archive used to recover the original pages of defunct protocol works such as Monegraph, SwarmSketch and the Hic et Nunc site. https://web.archive.org
- **Media Art Net / Medien Kunst Netz** (archive) — Bilingual German-English online survey of media art made for ZKM and the Goethe-Institut, with entries on works such as Push and Pull, The File Room and The Thing. http://www.mediaartnet.org
- **Monoskop** (archive) — Wiki for arts and studies founded by Dušan Barok in 2004, hosting scans of key texts and catalogues such as Burnham's Software and LeWitt's Sentences on Conceptual Art. https://monoskop.org
- **Monoskop: Fluxus** (archive) — Long bibliography page on Fluxus with scanned catalogues, anthologies of scores and links to collections such as Silverman, Bonotto and Sohm. https://monoskop.org/Fluxus
- **Net Art Anthology (Rhizome)** (archive) — Rhizome's restored and annotated history of net art in 100 works, including The World in 24 Hours, The Thing and The File Room. https://anthology.rhizome.org
- **Nouns Center** (community) — Community knowledge hub for Nouns DAO, explaining the daily auction, the treasury and how to get proposals funded. https://nouns.center
- **PolygonScan** (tool) — Block explorer for Polygon, where contracts such as Sarah Friend's Lifeforms live. https://polygonscan.com
- **Rhizome ArtBase** (archive) — Rhizome's archive of born-digital artworks since 1999, which preserves participatory web works such as SwarmSketch. https://artbase.rhizome.org
- **Right Click Save** (publication) — Online magazine of interviews, essays and histories of digital and NFT art. https://www.rightclicksave.com
- **Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings Catalogue Raisonné** (database) — Cahiers d'Art Institute's catalogue of LeWitt's wall drawings, recording each drawing's instructions, certificates and installations. https://www.cahiersdartinstitute.org/catalogues/sol-lewitt-wall-drawings/description
- **Summer of Protocols** (publication) — Site of the Ethereum Foundation–funded research programme, publishing its essays, the Protocol Reader and other studies of protocols. https://summerofprotocols.com
- **symbient.life registry** (database) — Registry of 'symbients', entities formed by organic beings and synthetic systems acting with autonomy, from Plantoid and terra0 to Botto and Truth Terminal. https://symbient.life/registry
- **Teia docs wiki** (archive) — Teia's documentation of its governance, fees, tokens and contract addresses. https://github.com/teia-community/teia-docs/wiki
- **The Fluxus Performance Workbook (2002)** (archive) — Free PDF, edited by Ken Friedman, Owen Smith and Lauren Sawchyn, that collects the texts of hundreds of Fluxus event scores ready to perform. https://monoskop.org/images/d/d4/Friedman_Smith_Sawchyn_eds_The_Fluxus_Performance_Workbook.pdf
- **The Scores Project (Getty)** (archive) — Open-access digital publication that reproduces and annotates midcentury experimental scores by Cage, Brecht, Knowles, Kaprow, Shiomi and others. https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/
- **Torque Editions** (publication) — Itinerant publisher founded in 2014 by Nathan Jones and Sam Skinner that published Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain and Radical Friends. https://torquetorque.net
- **TzKT** (tool) — Tezos block explorer for inspecting the Hic et Nunc and Teia contracts, OBJKT tokens and DAO activity. https://tzkt.io
- **UbuWeb** (archive) — Kenneth Goldsmith's archive of avant-garde film, sound and text, including the Fluxfilm Anthology and Fluxus recordings; it paused in 2024 and resumed in 2025. https://ubu.com
- **World Computer Sculpture Garden** (publication) — Contract-based exhibition on Ethereum curated by 0xfff, with Malte Rauch's essay defining protocol art as art that works with the rules of a computing environment. https://worldcomputersculpture.garden