Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, has brought NFTs back on the scene at Art Basel with a pack of robot quadrupeds that snap photos of visitors and poop printed artworks that double as crypto collectibles.
The interactive installation, titled “Regular Animals,” is on show through December 7 at the Miami Beach Convention Center as part of Art Basel’s program for new digital works, Zero 10.
Each four-legged robot carries a sculpted silicone head based on figures from the worlds of art and tech, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Beeple himself.
The robots roam the floor, their cameras capturing scenes from the fair, which are processed into stylized prints tied to the identity on each mask.
Project materials indicate that some of those images contain codes that allow visitors to claim NFTs, linking the physical print to a token on a blockchain. A Luma event description indicates that “1024 free prints and 256 free NFTs” were distributed on Wednesday.
“We’re increasingly seeing the world through the lens of how they would like us to see it, because they control these very powerful algorithms, and they have unilateral control over how we see the world in many ways,” Beeple said in a video interview with CNN.
The robots will “only take pictures and develop these memories, and the memories will be logged on a certain blockchain, because I think that’s a great use for this technology,” he added.
The robots use a commercial quadruped platform fitted with sensors, cameras, and a compact dye-sublimation printer that produces the images seen on the fair floor, with each unit modified with a hand-sculpted platinum-cure silicone head, according to a technical description from art magazine Whitewall.
“This is AI reinterpreting the images and what the humanoid is seeing. There is an analogy; we’re increasingly going to view the world through AI,” Beeple said in an interview with The Art Newspaper.
Artists and tech leaders, like those represented in the robot dogs’ heads, continue to “shape what we see, probably more than anybody else,” he added.
Each robot was priced at $100,000, except the one with Bezos for its head, which wasn’t for sale at the VIP preview on Wednesday, when all pieces sold out.
Print photos produced by the robot dogs contain a disclaimer describing the artwork as having been “tested and verified as 100% pure GMO-free, organic dogshit originating from a medium adult dog anus.”
Decrypt has reached out to Beeple Studios and Art Basel for comment.
Beeple's "crazy art projects"
Beeple’s latest work arrives more than four years since his record-breaking 2021 sale of “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” a 5,000-image digital collage whose NFT went for a whopping $69.3 million at Christie’s.
That auction placed Beeple among the most expensive living artists and helped propel NFTs into the center of a global market boom.
"I’m interested in crazy art projects that I just couldn’t do before, but now I can,” Beeple told Decrypt in a June 2021 podcast, when asked about how he plans to spend the money.
The frenzy for NFTs had largely cooled by mid-2022, with volumes and prices falling across most segments. By early 2023, there was still some traction.
“It’s crazy to me to think about those times, because NFTs have been hated for so much longer than they were loved,” Beeple said in an October 2024 interview.
By July this year, industry analytics showed that NFT sales have surged 78%, largely due to lower floor prices, although to the detriment of overall trading volume, which took a 45% quarterly plunge.
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