Cloud Wallet series by Martin Lukas Ostachowski
Presenting The Series
With his digital wallet series, new media artist Martin Lukas Ostachowski highlights the misconception of how digital wallets carry digital assets and how they have become new digital identities. Their association, as wallets, falsely suggests digital wallets are vessels for cryptocurrency, crypto art, or any form of digital assets. More accurately, wallets can be seen as virtual bank accounts with the right to execute transactions of assets that reference them. As such, digital assets never leave the blockchain. The continuous creation of transaction blocks merely tracks how these rights are redistributed between wallets, conceptually similar to DNA and whose rhythm of creation acts as the metronome of the Web3 ecosystem.
On the other hand, the demand for interoperability in the web3 environment across metaverses, decentralized applications, and communities led digital wallets to become one of the primary forms of identification. Although digital wallets consist of only alphanumerical strings, the contents are accessible to anyone, and so are all associated transactions. Consequently, the permanent ledger concept of the blockchain, which documents every transaction since its inception, reveals the identity of a wallet’s owner in most cases. This renders a seemingly private environment as pseudo-anonymous, and the owners’ true identities emerge despite the many layers of encryption. Nevertheless, the digital wallet concept, paired with the permanence of the blockchain, fuels abstract concepts of futurism and posthumanism.
The digital wallet series also borrows from the artist’s recognizable Exclamatory Intermezzo series patterns, which he has developed for over 20 years both inter- and intradisciplinary. The series examines the artist’s questions around identity as a global citizen and digital nomad, finding personal constants in the sky rather than geographically. This conceptual fit of uniting these series can be seen in the digital wallets through the abstracted encryption layers and cut-outs, which render the conceptually folded cloud wallets transparent.
The Works
Cloud Wallets: Ascension
Animated Python-processed image frames superimposed on 3D animations and aerial videos recorded by the artists, 1,080 x 1,920 px, 1:00, MP4 w/ sound
Unique - 1 Edition
Considering the demand for interoperability across the metaverse and decentralized applications, digital wallets have evolved towards digital identities in the web3 environment.
In particular, the permanence aspect of the blockchain and digital wallets promotes conceptual ideas of futurism and posthumanism.
Cloud Wallets: Casting Shadows
Animated Python-processed image frames superimposed on 3D animations and aerial videos recorded by the artists, 1,080 x 1,920 px, 1:00, MP4 w/ sound
Unique - 1 Edition
Decentralized blockchains offer transparency into all digital wallet assets and their transactions since they are captured in transaction blocks.
Not only are these permanent digital traces examined by (tax) authorities, but they also reveal unconscious aspects of the owner’s personality and behaviour.
Cloud Wallets: Constructed Emptiness
Animated Python-processed image frames superimposed on 3D animations and aerial videos recorded by the artists, 1,080 x 1,920 px, 1:00, MP4 w/ sound
Unique - 1 Edition
Constructed Emptiness explores the misconception that blockchain-backed digital assets could ever leave the blockchain.
Digital wallets consequently remain empty and cannot carry any digital assets; hence they can be restored with their seed phrases.
Press
The work is exhibited at the first edition of the Miami Digital Art Fair during Miami Art Week on December 3, 2024.
The Artist: Martin Lukas Ostachowski
Martin Lukas Ostachowski is an artist based in Canada who explores geometric abstraction and minimalism using physical and digital languages through the use of technologies like blockchain. The cloud wallets are part of Martin Lukas Ostachowski’s current body of work Network of Hope. He explores clouds as a symbol of the blockchain’s transformation, intangibility, internationality, and underestimated fragility.
Passionate about the transformative potential of blockchain for society, the artist focuses on educational artworks about the technology he considers essential for future inclusion. Since 2018, Martin Lukas Ostachowski has demystified technical aspects and introduced the public to the technology through artworks and visualizations. Parts of this growing body of work were initially exhibited during his solo exhibition Tropopause Contemplation: Blockchain Technology and Inclusive Decentralization in 2019 and physical group exhibitions in North America, Asia and Europe. Most recently, Ostachowski created a historical overview of blockchain art history for one of the first institutional group exhibitions: DYOR Do Your Own Research at the Kunsthalle in Zurich, Switzerland.
Aside from exhibiting and tokenizing crypto art since 2018, Martin Lukas Ostachowski co- authored a position paper on the subject in 2019 and started publishing his research of the crypto art history as a timeline in 2020. His comprehensive overview and articles earned him the crypto art historian nickname and led to numerous international public speaking engagements over the past few years.
