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The Last Question | A workshop and talk by Matthias Einhoff on the development of 'The Beecoin Project.'

This event is in the past
Bee Coin Image
The Bee Coin Project, beecoin.de Photo by Victoria Tomaschko

How can we design the blockchain towards systems that encourage equity, ecological integrity and living within the planet's carrying capacity? Einhoff will be joined by Lee White of ChinookX and artist Julian Hou.

When

Jan 22, 2020 3:00pm – 8:30pm

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Location

On Campus

Rennie Hall | Room B2160, Level 2, Emily Carr University of Art + Design

520 E 1st Ave, Vancouver, BC, V5T 0H2 See on Map

Contact
221A | hello@221a.ca
Open to Public?

Yes

The Last Question

Workshop: 3–5pm | RSVP
Roundtable/Public Talk
: 7–8:30pm, Room B2160, Level 2, Emily Carr University

For us to reclaim our full humanity, we have to understand that this will come from creating new systems of being with each other. So that in the new system, the value of a human being is the full human value, their value as a poet, a thinker, a lover, a carrier of the culture. That’s what the value of a human being is, that’s what we deserve and need.” – Ed Whitfield, Fund for Democratic Communities (F4DC)

“Expansionist thinking is rooted in abstract economic models and monetary analyses that are devoid of biophysical data and ignore fundamental physical laws. – William E. Rees, School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia

Isaac Asimov’s short story The Last Question (1956) is a canonical sci-fi parable about technological innovation, that infers humanity is both the creator and created. 221A’s Research Initiative Blockchain & Cultural Padlocks (2019-22) aligns with The Last Question’s paradoxical message by looking at the ways that a relatively new and widely speculated technology, the blockchain, has the potential to develop new systems that will allow us to “re-common” land, data and objects. Through these investigations, Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks seeks ways to escape the limiting discourses surrounding technology in both techno-fetishist (solutionist) and techno-pessimist guises, instead grappling with technology as a co-evolutionary byproduct which influences and is influenced by social life at large. (Reed, Patricia. The Valuation of Necessity. Vancouver: 221A, 2020) Please join 221A, along with our partner Emily Carr University of Art + Design (Vancouver/Unceded Territories) for a panel discussion that will explore these challenges by asking the questions: How we can better design social, cultural and ecological value on the blockchain in ways that incentivize us to seek out new collective ideals? Are there ways to perform our work, and live our lives in ways that put humanity and the planet on a survival path amid the collapsing climate?

At Emily Carr University of Art & Design on Wednesday, January 22 (workshop 3–5 pm; public talk, 7–8:30 pm) please join Goethe-Institut Guest Matthias Einhoff, Artist, Designer and Director of Z/KU, Berlin (Centre for Art and Urbanistics) for a workshop (3-5 PM RSVP).

Einhoff will share his learning from the development of The Beecoin Project, which assembles human and non-human actors in a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), with the ultimate goal of caring for bees by incentivizing us to encourage qualities of our ecosystem which keep the most important pollinators healthy. Data becomes the foundation for a crypto-economic system that redistributes resources with the aim of creating ecological integrity. Einhoff will be joined by Lee White of ChinookX and Artist Julian Hou.

ChinookX, a partner of 221A on the Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks Research Initiative, is an Indigenous-led nonprofit organization that is seeking ways for the blockchain to be designed with Indigenous consensus protocols in order to enable responsive resource management for traditional territories and data-sovereignty for First Nations communities. Julian Hou is an Artist Researcher working with 221A and is leading the development of a feasibility study for an artist-led community that draws from the notion of anoesis, a state of mind consisting of pure sensation or emotion without cognitive content.

In Hou’s view, if this anoetic resonance can be used as an organizing principle for communities developing the blockchain, it has the advantage of leading us to places that are less about individual choices or cognitive judgments because of its undeniable quality of communication and perception that can encourage more harmonious coexistence. In Hou’s words: “ethical questions around blockchain should be tempered by an equal consideration of natural life – our coextensive relationship with nature should be built into the ethics of blockchain.” The workshop is intended for students, designers, artists, planners, urbanists, and developers engaged with the blockchain. The workshop will be followed by a public roundtable with the workshop leaders (7–8:30 pm, Room B2160), introduced and moderated by Jesse McKee, 221A Head of Strategy.

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