Kenneth Burris

"The Hook" Production is no longer the constraint. Images, variations, entire bodies of work can be generated at scale. The ability to make something is widely accessible and increasingly automated. But attention did not scale with it. When production becomes abundant, value moves elsewhere. It moves to direction.

@TBB_EN the next time I Tokyo well pass through and say hello to your space.

Thank you for engaging with this seriously, @yonatvaks. The concepts you named, freedom, value, time, myth, the meme as conceptual instrument, are precisely the kind of arguments the essay names as the threshold for travel beyond the originating room. The work exists. That isn't what's being contested. The question is whether the culture around the work is currently carrying those arguments outward, into conversations where they haven't already been received. A clarification on framing: the essay separates the work itself from the role it's being asked to perform. It isn't judging the art through the conference lens. It's critiquing that lens from outside it. The artists and the conditions of recognition around them are two different subjects, and the essay's subject is the second. We share significant common ground: as you noted, many in the space itself don't fully understand what artists are doing, and institutional investment asks the wrong questions. On the podcast question: the description in the essay was not aimed at any single invitation. I've participated in other Bitcoin podcasts in this same period. The variable isn't who's inviting. It's whether the conversation a given room is set up for can carry the questions I'm currently working through, which are about AI authorship and what follows.

I don't know if the invitation to the podcast you're referencing is my invitation to you. But if it is, this is a very unfair argument. The precise reason I started this podcast is to understand the meaning behind the work of different artists in this space. Why they make what they make and what are their ideas. I'm personally not interested in signal, and there was no reference that was what I was looking for. If it's not referencing my invitation, I apologise, and here is my view of the rest of the article: This article is making a statement about bitcoin art from how the influencers/big accounts or conferences see it. It is judging the role of bitcoin art and it's ideas from the lens of a conference that has it's own agenda. It doesn't take into account the view point or practice of many artists. This is the way the traditional art market sees art and artists as well. From the lens of the market or it's movers. Bitcoin art is a lot more than digital scarcecity and provenance. Some would argue it's not even about that. Money is a mirror for belief systems and a lot of the art in this ecosystem is mirroring the belief systems bitcoin is inspiring them to see. What is freedom? What is value? What is the concept of time and how does it affect everything about our lives? If we change how we see time, can that change the very core of our existence? What makes art art? What is the importance of the materials we use and what is their message? What is the importance of the craft itself? What is a meme on a deep conceptual level and what is it's role in the age of the internet and the battle of ideas in an AI driven world? Is intellectual property a thing/what is open source on a conceptual level? Why are myths and other historic references being used by so many artists and what does it say about the times we're living in and the symbols they use? - to name a few of the concepts being explored. Many artists are working on the concepts bitcoin is producing the context for. Some would argue many of them have always been doing that. I agree many in the space itself still don't understand the profound concepts some of the artists are working with. I agree that institutional investment isn't asking the right questions, and it's aim is to decide the rules and guidelines. The institution/grant conversation is following the same ideas that many bitcoin artists are actually going against. But that says a lot more about the space than it does about the art. As low time preference is part of their core practice, many artists just continue doing the work and people will eventually see that (and as the history of art has shown eventually may take decades or centuries). Much of the work is way more profound than signal and is pushing the conversation.

The 1st in a 4 part series, examines a world many are missing and or refuse to listen to. open.substack.com/pub/pgstudio/p…

@buckethatbtc @MWBTCSummit @btcculturehub 😎👌 this ☝️👆

UPDATE on the @MWBTCSummit Art Installation ‼️ First draft of the layout for the installation is drawn out 👇 🌎 Global 📚 Reading Room 💻 Freedom Tech Vibe Coding I’ve never been an Art Director before, and let me tell you… Designing the space that encompasses the artwork is CHALLENGING! Let me know what you think! Any tips/thoughts are welcome 🙏

@nodefnd @beeple When pressed, Beeple actually said something true, that artists are now the ones deciding what the final outcome is. That's authorship. The audience wasn't interested in that answer.

"People talk about [AI] being the death of creativity, or that this is slop and that its somehow against creativity. I think it's absolutely just the opposite. I think [AI] has raised the bar for creativity so much higher." - @beeple at Stanford d.school

Transitional Terrain

@CorySwan @aaronlage Excactly. If the next admin. is L-blue you will see the space get spanked. Setbacks will be pushed hard on all tech not just btc.

@aaronlage USA in particular state dept has always been the only entity that could truly make life difficult for Bitcoiners Administrations change. Sentiments change

"There is more than enough money to permanently cripple bitcoin long before a hyperinflation event would be triggered by weaponizing the money supply against bitcoin. Bitcoin being exposed to an attack like this CANNOT SURVIVE without a technical measure to make spam impossible."

@buckethatbtc @MWBTCSummit @btcculturehub Very cool 😎 👌

UPDATE on the @MWBTCSummit Art Gallery‼️ I’m telling the story of Bitcoin’s culture through art. Its past, present, and future. So tentatively, the show is being called: “Generations” ✅ Meme(s) allowed :) ✅ 7-10 artists ✅ My personal collection What do you think? 🤔

For clarity, this essay is part of a larger sequence. The first essay credits the early frontier stage of Bitcoin art. This one asks what happens after that stage begins to mature. I am not dismissing the culture. I am trying to understand what kind of artistic language it can build next.

1/4 I was recently asked to speak about Bitcoin art on a podcast. I appreciated the invitation, but it made me realize the harder question is not whether Bitcoin has an art culture.

That is actually why I wrote the first essay in the series. I wanted to credit the early frontier stage before moving into the question of what comes next. If Bitcoin art is still early, then its deeper artistic language is still being formed. My concern is not dismissing what exists, but asking what kind of language we help build from here. Appreciate you reading it. open.substack.com/pub/pgstudio/p…

@KBStudioNYC Some movements need time before their deeper artistic language fully emerges.

@mx12art Hello @mx12art I don’t think I underestimate the culture. If anything, I take it seriously enough to ask harder questions about where it can go next. I agree that it may still be early. That is why the language forming now matters so much.

@KBStudioNYC Interesting essay. I think you’re right about the difference between signal and argument, and about how much Bitcoin art still speaks mainly to insiders. But I also think you may underestimate how early this culture still is.

@anikmalcolm Time will bring forward argument...

@KBStudioNYC Correct

4/4 Bitcoin art does not need to abandon its history. But if it wants to grow, it has to become legible beyond recognition, memes, and insider belief. The next phase will come from work that carries an argument. open.substack.com/pub/pgstudio/p…

3/4 When I made vanitas work inside Bitcoin culture, I was not trying to decorate the space. I was asking what value, permanence, death, speculation, and belief look like when money becomes both image and system.

My time in Japan is helping me think about post-postmodernism differently. I have been to Japan many times, but this trip has brought something into focus that connects directly to my landscapes, my writing on technology, and the broader question of what comes after the postmodern condition. Japan does not always treat the old and the new as enemies. A Buddhist temple can exist in the forest, covered in moss, surrounded by stone, water, trees, ritual atmosphere, and silence, while also existing inside Google Maps, photos, reviews, directions, ratings, and digital navigation. The temple is not outside technology. It is now found through technology. That does not erase the temple. It changes the way the temple exists in contemporary life. The sacred site remains, but it is also indexed, mapped, photographed, translated, and carried through interface. This is the condition I am interested in: not collapse, not nostalgia, not replacement, but layered continuity. The old world does not simply disappear. It is absorbed into new systems, reorganized through them, and allowed to continue in a different form. This also changes how I think about blockchain. For many Western audiences, blockchain is framed through rupture: escape the banks, reject institutions, leave the system, build outside the old world. That framing has power, but it is not the only way this technology evolves. In Japan, the more interesting pattern may be absorption. Government bonds moving toward blockchain tokenization are not simply an example of the old system disappearing. They suggest something more complex: an older financial instrument being translated into new rails. The bond remains a bond, but the conditions around it begin to change: settlement, verification, liquidity, recordkeeping, access, and coordination. This is where the temple and the bond begin to rhyme. A temple becomes searchable without ceasing to be a temple. A bond becomes tokenized without ceasing to be a bond. Both reveal a post-postmodern condition where technology does not only destroy or replace older structures. It layers itself into them. That is the larger essay I am working toward: Japan as a landscape of technological continuity, blockchain not only as rupture but as layer, and my own landscapes as a way of studying what remains after systems evolve.

@buckethatbtc @TheBitcoinPivot @MWBTCSummit This is going to be great!

Arnold x @MWBTCSummit 💪💪💪 September 23-24. Updates on programming and exhibitors to come. Follow to keep up to date with the Midwest’s largest Bitcoin event in history!

@buckethatbtc, I really appreciate seeing this direction open up... 📭📖 landscapes, generational themes, low time preference, and storytelling beyond familiar iconography all feel like meaningful territory for the space to explore. What stands out to me is the possibility of work that can speak to people both inside and outside the Bitcoin context. I’m looking forward to seeing how this takes shape in Columbus. 🗺

Calling all Artists & Collectors!! I want the @MWBTCSummit art gallery to be a community build, and I’m seeking your input from Day One. I’m picturing a show with: 🚫 Bitcoin Iconography 🚫 Memes ✅ Something NEW What are your thoughts on a show like this?