PLANTOID – by PRIMAVERA DE FILIPPI, DAVID BOVILL, VINCENT ROUDAUT AND SARA RENAUD

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plantoid by primavera de filippi, david bovill, vincent roundaut, sara renaud

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INFOCRASH:    48h FRI 17:00 – SUN 17:00 // Workshop

Plantoid is a bionic blockchain-based installation. Plantoid, the plant equivalent of an android, is an autopoietic sculpture —a self-owned artist that owns and finances itself, and eventually reproduces itself. It is, in essence, a hybrid entity that exists both in the physical and virtual world, where it can interact with other entities on the blockchain.
In its physical form, it is a welded mechanical sculpture on display in a public space —an aesthetic ornaments that exhibits its mechanical beauty and begs to be appreciated by the public. Appreciation is done via interactions with the public who can ‘tip or feed’ the Plantoid by sending tokens into its Bitcoin wallet.
Legally speaking, Plantoids do not have any legal entity, since —as opposed to corporations— the law does not recognize legal personhood to commodities or things. Yet, as opposed to traditional art pieces, Plantoids are not bought or sold; nor can they be owned as objects.
Even if they are autonomous, Plantoids require the interaction of other species (humans) to subsist and reproduce themselves in a physical form. Reproduction of a Plantoid is enabled through human participation, coordinated via smart contracts and blockchain technology. Thanks to the fund she has secured beforehand, the Plantoid can pay humans to design a new blueprint, gather materials, and prepare, collate, weld, or assemble them, so as to ultimately deliver a new structure for every new instantiation of the Plantoid, with a new life on its own. Although (partially) defined by the contractual rules of the DAO, the actual phenotype of subsequent Plantoids remains open to artistic interpretation, depending on the artist hired to reproduce the sculpture.

BIO:
Primavera de Filippi is a legal researcher, an artist and coder, or more generally an explorer.
David Bovill is founder of Liquid Democracy, creator of Flower Bank crypto-art currency.
Vincent Roudaut is an artist, electro-coder and geek, keen on DIY and refurbishing materials.
Sara Renaud is metalworker who likes to create things which are way much larger than her.