Web3 Through The Lenses Of Art And Science
A Conversation with hex6c
hex6c is a Data Scientist and Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics of the University of Udine, in Italy. He is also a generative artist who is very active in the field known as Crypto Art.
The encounter of art and science is the driving force that inspires and guides his work, supporting the idea that different areas can influence each other in a profitable and lasting way.
In this interview, hex6c addresses different topics ranging from the genesis of a work of art to the possible applications of the blockchain in the field of education and learning; from the investigation of the Metaverse (through one of the first degree theses in Italy that deals with this theme) to the future of Web3.
The vision of the blockchain expert scientist alternates with that of the artist who knows how to juggle in the field of Crypto Art, thus making him an interesting interlocutor to touch and deepen topics and perspectives not yet much discussed.
Our exchange took place via email in August 2022.
Beth Jochim (B): I would like to start from your practice as a generative artist and ask you to guide us in your creative process: where do you find inspiration and what are the themes you like to develop?
hex6c (h): I love to mix things and I find my inspiration at the edge of two or more disciplines. For example, in my latest SuperRare series Almagesto (2022) I explore astrology through a Ptolemaic epicycle/deferent scheme, which was originally proposed to describe the motions of the planets and stars around Earth.
In an early small SuperRare series called Incomplete Falling Trees (2020), instead, I overlap logic and computer science by inscribing the artwork, which is a bunch of trees freely floating on the canvas, with Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem (that roughly claims that ‘there are truths that cannot be formally proved’) and the artwork’s generating code. In doing so, I make a self-referential piece of art.
I think interdisciplinarity and cross-pollination define the theme of my artistic research. There is something at the intersection of things that really talks to me: a privileged spot where I can peep through different dimensions. The outcome always speaks many languages and has many flavors.
B: You are an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics of the University of Udine, in Italy. Since 2018, you have also introduced topics related to Crypto Art, cryptocurrencies and blockchain into your teaching program. How does your activity as a researcher and educator inform your practice as an artist?
h: These two fields inform each other. On the one hand, although I am a scientist by training, I have explored the blockchain as a generative artist (i.e., as an artist who writes code which in turn generates art). Crypto Art is an attractive case study for my computer science students — some of them even followed my path and became crypto artists themselves! But it is also a succulent dataset for my research: as a data scientist, I use raw data to mine information and create knowledge. An example is my current work with my bachelor student Davide Della Libera: we are proposing methods and tools to investigate the risks and returns of an investment in Crypto Art, calibrating our metrics and the web app on the SuperRare dataset.
On the other hand, my research in math and computer science infuses my art. For example, in the relatively unknown project Primenuum (2019), which was made in collaboration with the artist duo Hackatao, we explore a creative visualization of prime numbers (i.e., special numbers that cannot be formed by multiplying two smaller natural numbers) that are considered to be the building blocks of mathematics. In a nutshell, my entire work is based on a cross-pollination of art and science and the result is often very fulfilling.
B: You have been active in the Crypto Art scene since its inception. Your work can be found on several platforms, including SuperRare, Foundation and KnownOrigin. Why did you choose to put your work on many different marketplaces? Is it just a strategic choice or are there other reasons, for example the different communities of collectors?
h: In early 2018 I started minting my work first on KnownOrigin and later on SuperRare. That was a special time for Crypto Art: most of us, perhaps all of us, were unaware of what was happening, but we all felt the excitement.
I tried other marketplaces for the sake of exploration. Just to make you understand, in the gallery formerly known as Hic et Nunc (HeN), I had the possibility of minting large and unpretentious series of artworks that were listed for a few tezos. My genesis piece on HeN was released in 314 editions and sold out overnight. It was bought by hundreds of different collectors. This gave me not a lot of money, but a burst in popularity. On ArtBlocks, instead, I worked hard for 6 months on the same generative art project . I gave myself the goal of making it a curated project and entering the Olympus of generative art, but I failed ;-) However, I am happy with the work done and the project, which was scaled down, suddenly sold out. Every gallery was a new challenge that fueled my creativity.
B: You have been the supervisor of one of the first degree theses in Italy that deals with the topic of the Metaverse. Can you tell us about this experience and how this theme is currently being addressed at the academic level?
h: My bachelor student Riccardo Russo did an immersive internship within several blockchain-based Metaverses: the Sandbox, Somniumspace, Decentraland, and Cryptovoxels. He reviewed this experience in his thesis, discussing risks and opportunities of a massive and pervasive adoption of the Metaverse technology. Furthermore, he compared Second Life, which can be considered the early Metaverse, with the current blockchain-based ones and with the Metaverses designed by Meta and Microsoft. To be honest I am not aware of the current academic research on the Metaverse because it is not my field of research. I am slowly approaching the subject with an informative rather than a scientific approach. If the meaning of the Metaverse is just to escape a poor reality, this is nothing new. Books and movies are much more effective in doing so. Nevertheless, I am quite sure of a couple of things. First, the current Metaverse experience is not fulfilling and will need at least 5 more years of research and investments to become rewarding for the average user. Second, in 5 -10 years the Metaverse will shape a substantial portion of our real life, including education.
B: As an expert on blockchain, what is your opinion on the current state of Web3? How is it developing?
h: We have to distinguish between the underlying technology, which is the blockchain, and the applications built on top of it, such as decentralized finance (DeFi), Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and the Metaverse. The blockchain was first proposed by Stuart Haber, a cryptographer, and Scott Stornetta, a physicist, in a paper published in the Journal of Cryptology with the title How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document. They investigated the epistemological question of what is true in the digital era and proposed a method to certify, in a decentralized way, when a document was created and modified. However, until the blockchain materialized in the Bitcoin protocol devised by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, this technology remained mostly unnoticed. Blockchain technology is a clever blend of mathematics (cryptography), computer science (distributed systems), and economics (game theory), in which honesty is the most rational strategy. It is a fact that, so far, the major blockchains, in particular Bitcoin (2009) and Ethereum (2015), have never been successfully attacked. To me, blockchain technology is a gem and I presage (and hope) that Satoshi Nakamoto will receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.
The applications built on top of the blockchain are, in general, less attractive and resilient. In a recent paper, I analyzed the current state of decentralization of DeFi and NFT applications. I found that a (substantial) dose of delegation and centralization is always present and practically inevitable in even the most decentralized system. This is because not everybody has the will, the skills and the time to learn a complex field like that of the blockchain. The interests of Microsoft and Meta in the Metaverse go in the direction of centralizing their applications, therefore in contrast with the common trend that is to design decentralized Metaverses based on blockchain.
It is worth pointing out that the blockchain is a political technology that supports decentralized power and individual sovereignty. The real challenge for the future development of Web3 is the realization of these original promises for both the underlying technology and the applications built on top of it. A related issue is the introduction of a wise and fair regulatory system that operates at the level of communities in different countries: a step that will be neither immediate nor easy, given the (political) nature of the blockchain.
B: Do you have a new project you would like to share?
h: Yes, I want to study how cutting-edge Web3 technologies can change the world of education. So far, Web3 has had an impact on finance, art and gaming, but not so much on teaching and learning. Leveraging on the promises of Web3, such as decentralization, autonomy, democracy, transparency and sovereignty, I would like to propose a new learning model focused on bottom-up participation, inclusiveness, responsibility, meritocracy, commitment to learning and teaching.
Specifically, I will model a classroom as a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), with incentives for learning and help offered through non-transferable governance tokens, immersive classes organized online and also in the Metaverse, and credentials of competencies attested via NFTs. I took a sabbatical year to carry out this project that will start in October 2022.
