The art collective Okhaos has applied blockchain to create life. The Plantoid is a robot plant sculpture to which you can pay bitcoins to help it employ artists to replicate itself through use of smart contracts. It is set up to own itself, process energy, act autonomously and reproduce which are the essential features of life.
Spans the virtual and physical worlds, it is an example of a Distributed Autonomous Organisation (DAO). These systems open the door to organisations run exclusively by machines as well as Pandora’s box of legal issues. The plantoids are unlikely to cause legal problems however as their primary purpose is aesthetics but it’s not a stretch to imagine DAOs reaching beyond the realm of art.
The main interest to me is that I have made biomimicry workshops my focus in 2017 and this represents a leap in my research material for the workshops I run. Biomimicry is the study of nature in creating insights for human design. The planetoid is a bold step in exploring how nature can assist in evolution of human creations.
The other main lesson for me is that the art world leads ahead where business can’t pioneer and that this promotes the case for investing in art based projects for organisations looking to innovate.
Find out more at www.okhaos.com/plantoids
Max Kalis,
