Two short video essays start off our curated materials for the week. We invite you to consider how we can artfully relate the internet to our current institutions and thereby transform both.
How does this fit into Kernel?¶
Art is that which gets us to question value and meaning most deeply. These videos, themselves a series of artful expressions cut together with digital tools, reveal some aspects of the enormity of what we can craft with careful intention, attention, and a deep appreciation for the meaning of our media environments.
The question this brief is crafted around/within is simple: what is the proper subject of art? Is it in any way related to the subject(s) of internet-age institutions?
Brief¶Art begins with work which throws a veil over the invisible so its outline may be seen. It is brought to completion in the moment of encounter with an other. That is, art is not created as you are painting, or writing, or composing, or sculpting, or coding. It occurs when your work inspires an experience of a state of consciousness otherwise unknown.
💡 At its best, art transmits what cannot be said, or sung, or heard, or felt.
We have always used technology to achieve this. For instance, the invention of metal ferrules—the little bit that connects the bristles to the shaft—led to the flat paint brushes so beloved by Impressionist painters, who used them to capture the effects of light in different environments. Technological innovations in the tools we use to express ourselves often result in significant artistic advances in sight, perception, philosophy and—ultimately—culture.
Our proposition in putting all this to you is that there is, in fact, a "proper" subject of art. Which is not a very popular proposition in modern culture, after all the many movements and -isms of the last few centuries. Moreover, this proper subject is the sacred. By "sacred", we do not mean religious, nor do we wish to confine art in any way to any particular kind of content or mode of expression. The sacred, as we will explore in Module 7, is simply that which is greater than me. That which connects, that which continues, that which relates all of these differences in space and time—with due respect and reverence for such diversity—to our single origin and destiny.
In art, the sacred is something like an atmosphere, connected to the ancient Hebrew concept of "shem", which is often translated as "name". This is not just the specific sound by which you are called, but the whole sound and light and vibration of your being; that which radiates from your heart and infuses those who encounter you and your work with the unique message you are scent with.
The idea that art is the province of that which is greater than just me and my struggles is prevalent across cultures, and still observed closely in many non-Western traditions. For instance, here is Oliver Mtukudzi talking about the "purpose of song" in Shona culture. It is, according to Mtukudzi:
"To give life and hope to the people. To heal the broken hearts."
Following this line of inquiry, we can investigate what it would mean to make online, transactional spaces more artistic. Which is to say, now that money is programmable, are there ways we might merge individual expressions of what is held to be sacred with what we all agree to have meaningful economic value? This is not to say that doing so is better or worse than any other artistic possibility, it is simply to point out that such action is now available to us by virtue of the state of our shared technologies.
One example of this is Prison Art. Another may be found here.
The point this brings us to is a surprising one, because it turns out that there is a prerequisite for this form of art to really flourish. It is a prerequisite which links art and its proper subject to the subjects of internet-age institutions. The prerequisite is privacy.
The Private Public¶Technological privacy is often discussed in contexts which makes it difficult to distinguish from the covert, the hidden, that which is by nature suspicious. Its advocates are often eloquent in their attempts to illustrate why this is not true, why privacy is a human right, why privacy is normal and why you should care about it rather than cringe slightly at the thought of needing to hide stuff and then remember where it is and how to access it.
You can find good examples of such work here and here. You can see how all this fits into Ethereum here. You can join many other Kernel fellows doing privacy related work here.
When approached through the lens of art and the so-called "humanities", though, the context is quite different. We do not need to justify what is kept private, it flows naturally from experiencing the practice of art. That is, as Kernel fellow Joan writes,
"The meaning of me sharing something with you voluntarily is very different from the meaning of any information you may be able to forcefully gain from me, or about me. Take away privacy, and you take away my free choice - then I can no longer share voluntarily, and you will never know what it is to be trusted."
Fully public environments do not allow for this kind of nuanced development of trust. In this sense, they may actually be "trustless", but that is perhaps not all it is cracked up to be. However, fully private environments also cannot, by definition, enable the sort of encounter and chosen vulnerability we've been considering above. As Joan writes,
"a balance must be found between on the one extreme exposing everything to everyone always—which would not be tolerable, and most likely also would lead to the death of our fledgling initiatives—and on the other extreme keeping everything to ourselves always, isolating ourselves and denying our fledglings the chance to grow through contact with the world."
Read through the lens of how we artfully develop trust,a document many refer to when discussing privacy–A Cypherpunk's Manifesto–reveals something fascinating. It defines privacy as:
"the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world"
Privacy is inseparable from acts of selective revelation. In this sense, it is indistinguishable from art. In either case, what is shared is deeply revealing information which could potentially be used to compromise its originator, and thus represents a real trust and gift, a true call to encounter the universal through my particular re-presentation, an invitation into the infinite.
The way in which such revelations occur is what links the proper subject of art above with the subject(s) of internet age institutions. When creating art or interacting with internet-age institutions at their best, we will be—in either case—throwing a veil over that which is most invisible to us: ourselves. This can be done in a crude fashion, like a poem about personal trauma that never takes you anywhere other than pain, or revealing information transmitted in plain text to a single server; or it can be done elegantly, like this poem also about personal experience that resonates with much more, or something like Zupass.
Do we selectively reveal ourselves in such a way that concentrates wealth and power in so-called "siren servers", or will we co-create protocols that do not require knowledge about their customers, only a succinct proof of what is most relevant in context? Do we selectively reveal ourselves in media that others own and extract value from, or will we co-create ceremonial transactions capable of carrying our unique encoding of sacred economics via the shared signatures of all who participate?
No Knowledge is Sufficient¶Artful revelations of trusted information that are contextual and succinct, and which do not concentrate wealth and power in a few hands may be achieved via "zero knowledge proofs". In truth, art which revolves around the sacred also emanates from a state of zero knowledge, or what John Vervaeke calls "learned ignorance".
Part of throwing a veil over the invisible—either in the context of creating art, or when interacting with internet-age institutions—is precisely the ability to ignore all that is not relevant. This is not ignorance as crude dissociation or bypass: it is a finely honed skill premised on a wide grasp of all that could possibly relate to a given context and the wisdom to discern what truly matters right now.
These kinds of artful and selective revelations are not currently how we interact with institutions online, precisely because we have just ported old authentication regimes into the digital realm. The practical effect of all KYC implementations we have ever seen is to make it more difficult for honest actors to comply without meaningfully making a difference to those who would be dishonest in either case.
Indeed, the acronym is a total misnomer. No-one is looking to know their customers, whatever such knowledge might entail. We're looking for sufficient proof of particular details relevant to a specific context. Sufficient proof is a more powerful way to think about authentication and accountability more generally, because it more precisely orients us towards cryptography generally, zero knowledge proofs specifically, and the question of how we can provide sufficient assurance without exposing unnecessary data.
The world of sufficient assurance is very different from that of knowledge and identity, and is much more simple to reason about and create meaningful, beneficial technology for.
Once you know what is sufficient, we can open the conversation into that which is beyond proof.
Truly World Wide¶Mother Earth Mother Board
