Recently, I gave a guest lecture at an art college in the UK to cover, specifically, the way that artist publications have intertwined with magical sensibilities. This question has become something of a niche specialty of mine, and the school’s faculty thought it might shake something loose in the students. Sure, how could it not? Even via Zoom. Most of them were already esoterically driven, I was told.
I won’t go into the talk too deeply, except to mention that it started with the Acephale group, transited Fortean Times and wound its way through early internet art, as well. After cataloging the work of a few sympathetic fiends, I wanted to end with something that looked toward the future. Naturally, crypto art and NFTs seemed an exciting place to investigate. I’ve given plenty of art school lectures, and have not yet mentioned NFTs once, despite my involvement in crypto for some time.
I showed a work by Spaced Painter and CryptoSpectr, Dryad & Satyr. It was a piece which I had already decided I loved, and now, I got to think about it more deeply.
What I said when showing the piece (and I can’t back it up with anything more than inklings) is that the space that crypto art exists in is natively informational, and thus may be extremely porous to magical intention and the esoteric. Dryad & Satyr, ostensibly the story of two woodland divinities trading energies, proves this possibility in spades, and also brings in some new context.
Until very recently, esoteric artists have existed almost entirely IRL. Their work, economy, communications were linked to physically grounded spaces and contexts, by and large. To them, a sojourn into the informatic was often a form of exit. This was as true for Icelandic sigil craft as it was for Bataille’s cultish poetic journals. Crypto artists exist in a mostly informational space, instead. For them, it is a native habitat, and their realism is, potentially, one of emanant conjuring.
This can occur in ways that are straightforward, as well as ways that are oblique. For example, the recent rally-cry of “Doge,” for the WallStreetBets hordes, in the wake of their GME victory, was an act of conjuring. Doge is a meme coin, but it personifies the radical, euphoric, humorous trust in the collective energy that pulses through crypto and meme culture. That faith is its fundamental value.
The word Doge may be a “killing word” to traditional finance, like the word Maud’Dib in Dune. The prophesied name of Paul Atreides, Maud’Dib, when spoken with the techniques of Weirding, could split rock in two. Doge, when spoken as an energy release and evocation of one-mindedness, for a society exiting from its economic shackles, can…well, bring much moon. But, maybe more than that.
Anyway, I digress. Assuming that information space is a medium for magical transmissions (it has been considered that in traditional magic of many), it is possible we will see this notion evoked in its most thoughtful artworks. Dryad and Satryr is a particularly rich example of this. The thematic, mirrored, energy rich gigantism and hermetics of SpacedPainter and Cryptospectr’s work explores the oppositional nodes of the creature’s bodies, as forms of architecture. In the piece, we are treated to the potential of immersive informatics, which, as AR and VR, may only hasten our plunge into the esoteric. Perhaps, as was professed in Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End, we will one day chose to navigate life with an overlay of our choosing. For some, this may involve the mores of myth, observing the spiritual dimension in the every day, just as we once did.
It is also interesting to also see this magical pretension brought to bear in crypto through the persona of Maren Altman, a practiced astrologer and student of philosophy who has recently become well known for her remarkable readings for crypto markets. Her skill in recognizing patterns and sensing the celestial as a signaling space is noted, and it is evocative to see traders taking heed of her tips. I couldn’t say to what degree her readings have become truly activating for traders, beyond the meme, but just noting the collective desire we have to find some sense of order, beyond market whims, seems vital.
There is a need to connect to a structure to sense the future, be it in myth, astrology, science fiction, etc. In the face of great decisions, especially those that are guided by masses of individuals communicating anonymously through the internet, such as DAO governance, some form of vernacular seems to develop independently of will. This a language that reaches beyond the factual, into the soup of memes and generative meaning confluence between collaborative groups, and this often does utilize the empowerment of magical contexts. Yearn Finance’s recent decision to mint tokens as a way to keep their operation competitive settled quickly on magical numbers, at first 3333, then 6666. This numerology and the timing of the decision was then checked with Maren Altman, at one point, to ascertain the health of the burgeoning consensus of Yearn governance against her charts.
DeFi is not a quantitative space alone, it is energized by human action, and acts, just as Jung’s archetypes might, within a human sphere that is mirrored cosmically. The epic that is being woven here may be tangible partly through its groundbreaking technology, but it is a technology built to enable human agency, in more open and decentralized fashions. So, while we may all be in it for the tech, to some degree, we are inescapably a community of radically connected individuals, telling our own generation story to each other. And stories like that are magical ones. They can be nothing else.
“Dyrad & Satyr”, by Spaced Painter and Cryptospectr is in the collection of the Museum of Crypto Art
“Oracle & Agora” , by Zemm, is available on Rarible.com