DISTRIBUTED GALLERY

The Chaos Machine, 2018

Materials: Oak wood, steel, slate and glass
Dimensions & weight: 192 x 52 x 52 cm / 198 pounds
Required floor space: between 8 et 10 m2
Electricity: 220 V

Exhibited at “Perfect and Priceless” show, Zürich, Kate Vass Galerie, 2018-2019

Description:

The Chaos Machine is the second blockchain-based artwork of the Distributed Gallery deepening the links between art and money. One year after the poker-like joke of the Ready-Made Token (appropriated Richard Prince scam), the Distributed Gallery engaged in a more physical artwork.

In one word, the Chaos Machine allows anyone to insert a banknote inside; once inserted, this note falls into the window space and is deposited on a heating resistor. In exchange? The machine will randomly play music and offer the user, via a smart contract, the possibility to integrate a song to the playlist. At the moment, this machine exists in two copies. One is on display at Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin and the other in the Perfect and Priceless exhibition. As soon as a ticket burns on one of these Chaos Machines, music is played on each one. So, if one hears music coming out of the Chaos Machine but no bills are burning, then it means that someone else is burning bills on the other Chaos Machine.

Is it a crypto-jukebox? Or a sophisticated toaster? In the special edition of the Chaos Machine, published on summer 2018 by R.U.S.T editions, Bernard Aspe, a french philosopher call it the Exterminating Angel, maybe because the Chaos Machine shows in a spectacular way, either the passage from a fiducial currency to a cryptographic currency, or even the emptiness inherent in any monetary abstraction.

Unlike the Ready-Made Token, the Chaos Machine is a physical artwork, designed to be reproducible. In order to become a virus-like machine, the Distributed Gallery left the plans and the code available for anyone to build their own Chaos Machine.