Zima Red ep 100: Sarah Meyohas - Creating Bitchcoin, NFTs Before NFTs in 2015
Primer: Before there were NFTs, there was BitchCoin. In this episode of the Zima Red Podcast, Sarah Meyohas shares why she jumped from finance to art, and how all her art projects (including BitchCoin) revolves around her musing of the term “value.”
Background
A creative with a financial background
Studied finance at Wharton. Went to Yale to do a Masters of Fine Arts in photography
In 2015, she created a project called BitchCoin
Decision Process To Jump From Finance To Art
Used to be into fashion. However, the industry was a nightmare
Taking into account her interest in photography, she thought she could do better in the art market
“I think a lot more people should try that and be more risk takers in their 20s, it makes you a much more interesting person.”
- Sarah Meyohas
Her professor, Terry Adkins, inspired her to go to grad school
Her Time At Yale
Felt like a reality show
Had 5-6 weeks to produce something to fill a room for critics (famous artists or writers) to grill you in front of your peers
Was challenging for her as that’s not her way of working
Was interested in the concept of value — What is value? How do we define it? What is the nature of currency?
During grad school, she started collecting currencies from different countries
Bleached one side of the currency from 8 different countries. Turned them into all white abstractions as to how currency and materiality intersect
Diving Into The World Of Value And Currency
It started when she got into art — art has a relationship to value/gold
Before being used as microchips, gold was valued for its metaphysical brilliance across different cultures
Photographs do not always have to be art, but some photographs are art and are deemed to be valuable
How Does She Think People Value Art?
A very difficult question:
Some artists are historically important, but the market doesn’t value them
Some artists aren’t historically important, but the market values them highly
“Art is just the extra energy and desire of society after all other needs have been met.”
- Sarah Meyohas
The structure of a market affects what is valued
Painting has always been more valued than other mediums because it is archival
Roses symbolize love and beauty and can be bred into different colours and shapes. Hence, it is a flower that we value
BitchCoin
Created BitchCoin while at Yale
Was her thesis project
It was in the Fall of 2014 and a friend in her program told her about Bitcoin
Bitcoin was love at first sight
Saw that other people were creating their own coins and thought it would be an amazing conceptual artwork to create her own
She came up with BitchCoin in an iterative manner
Was reading up about relational aesthetics — the artwork comes from the audience’s participation
Financial exchange was her interpretation and take on relational aesthetics. She had to figure out how to make her own currency
Named it BitchCoin as a play on words on Bitcoin
Used a two-way mirror setup that is a metaphor for the blockchain — blocks repeat themselves infinitely
The BitchCoin Gallery
Inside a shipping container unit
Wanted it to be hyper-feminine, very pink and reflective
Placed a computer in the container unit
Stapled mylars to the walls of the unit
Backing BitchCoin With Her Artwork
Unlike Bitcoin, BitchCoin does not have mining. Need to have something valuable (art) backing it
Made the Speculations photograph series for BitchCoin
Each BitchCoin is backed by 25 square inches of the Speculations photography series
Had a client for people to download, but no one wanted to download
Made gold certificates that had gold lips embossed on them
That led to a set of first principles — going into a formal space and breaking it up with a natural element:
Went from her body —> flowers —> liquid —> smoke
Process Of Creating BitchCoin
Mined a ton of BitchCoin, but only released 200 of them
Was in grad school at that time. Thought of expanding the project because it got enough attention and the idea was sticky
Thought of doing it with established artwork like Picasso, but realized it would be classified as a security
Laid the project to rest. Did not think the space would grow
After BitchCoin
Did another performance art piece where she manipulated the value of different stocks
Every day, she would trade a stock, move its price, and gesturally redraw that line on a white canvas
“In the case of the stock market, it's the most amazing aggregator of information, it's all of the reality of the world that gets condensed to this point on this line that represents the exchange between two people at a given time. And this is somehow supposed to be representative, a reflection of the entire company. And obviously, in that reduction, the price itself becomes its own reality.”
- Sarah Meyohas
Picked funny names (e.g. Paradise Incorporated, Golden Enterprises, Amen Properties)
Cloud Of Petals
Bell Labs have a building that was designed by Eero Saarinen in the middle of the countryside in New Jersey
Fell in love with the space and decided that she had to do something there
Was also inspired by the Google scanning project
Had a performance of 16 men at these stations in uniform, picking and photographing 100,000 rose petals
“This is the thing about art, you kind of feel your way to the next steps, like, when I set up the performance, I wasn't actually sure what I'd end up doing with the dataset, I just was mimicking the rest of the world, creating abnormally large datasets, and I would just see where it went.”
- Sarah Meyohas
Asked the men to choose the most beautiful petals and press them. Ended up with 3291 petals
“Cloud of Petals is this giant proof of work, it's this giant performance of labor.”
- Sarah Meyohas
When Did She Realize That Crypto/NFTs Are Booming?
Kept tabs on the space
Did VC investing and invested in the seed round of OpenSea
After Cloud of Petals, she started writing a screenplay to make a movie
NFTs started picking up and people encouraged her to bring back BitchCoin
The only BitchCoins that became NFTs are those that have been backed by rose petals
Conversely, the physical certificates are still backed by the Speculations photographs and will remain completely physical
“It's really cool to hear the story of essentially creation, death, and then rebirth. I think that's a really cool kind of process that's happened all within this digital realm.”
- Andrew Steinwold
Where Does She Want BitchCoin To Go?
Could go in a number of different directions
Trying to locate BitchCoin within the cultural history of crypto
The other projects she’s developing will support or add to BitchCoin
Retraining AI to make high resolution pictures of the rose petals
Her movie script is an adaptation of the myth of Medusa set in the contemporary perfume industry, which is in line with BitchCoin
Is She Planning Another NFT Project?
Made some new Speculations photograph and sold them physically. Added NFT as part of her photography auditioning
Created the Non-Existent Token:
Users bid for generative bubbles
Bid winners get the NFT of these bubbles
The next bidder has to bid 10% higher and the previous owner will have a receipt that advertises their returns
The animations for the bubbles change over time
“And so the thing with this piece is, it's called the Non-Existent Token, right? Because you get this NFT that doesn't fully exist, because it just turns into a receipt, the bubbles kind of keep going and going.”
- Sarah Meyohas
Plays into the Greater Fool theory
Thoughts On The NFT Market Today
Incredibly exciting, a reinvigoration of art
The physical and NFT art world will blend into other cultural fields
Single Favourite NFT
A Synth Poem from Deafbeef
Deafbeef is generative audio visual artist
Most Controversial Thought About NFTs
In the traditional art world, your genetic makeup is important to your identity as an artist
In crypto, it doesn’t matter
If She Could Improve Something In The Crypto/NFT Space
Gas fees
Has to have a better way of engaging the community other than Discord
The NFT Ecosystem In 3 Years
NFTs will be everywhere
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