x-fx.org is an online only work that collated together the audio recorded from several blockchain workshops during the exhibition:

A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance

curated by Ami Clarke, exhibited at Banner Repeater in 2016.

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Thinking through the block - workshops

Saturday 22nd Oct and 12th Nov 3-6pm

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Continuing our focus on publishing as process, where important precedents in publishing provide insights into present day protocols in network culture, we will be holding two open workshops experimenting with publishing through the blockchain, and how this might bring about new ways of working, and instituting. The very first block of data in Bitcoin; the Genesis block, contained a “secret” message inscribed within it of The Times (UK) headline commenting on the fallibility of the current banking system: 'The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks'. A recent news headline reports on the UK Government trials of blockchain technology in the Welfare Payments system, partnering with Barclays Bank. The workshops aim to discuss the several, and possibly contradictory claims made regarding the blockchain, whilst developing a digital puzzle of our findings, that will be inscribed, ascribed, and described through the block.

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The workshops are open to everyone, with invited contributors: Tom Clark, Paul Purgas, Alessandro Ludovico, Karen Di Franco, Ruth Catlow, Ben Vickers, Tom Pearson, Malavika Rajnarayan, Prayas Abhinav and Satya Gummuluri.

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We will be considering ideas that include the most immediate use of the block to attribute authorship and hence intellectual property, and copyright, whilst asking further questions, a few of which are below:

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• how might blockchain help develop alternative models of sharing?

• what contractual agreements might be developed - dependent on usage and user?

• how might these function within an economy that has been described primarily as a gift

  economy?

• how might blockchain facilitate the development of new institutional models?

• what can we learn from previous precedents that share similar attributes to blockchain in archival projects?

• how might blockchain, with it’s capacity to render all items ultimately searchable, perhaps shut-down previous modes of working? that include: sampling, copying and appropriation

• and many more...

 

As the online digital puzzle develops through the workshops we will include written and visual

contributions, leaving traces in the chain, and displayed in the project space as a work in progress.

With programming by Anne De Boer.