The Making of “decentralize”

The giant tryptic with horizontal stacked panels, which together form a square, depict three images taken by JPL/NASA, with the center image about ½ the size of the other two, further modified digitally, and holding the words “decentralize” in laser cut transparent acrylic letters.

decentralize / 60x60 / 2020
available Oct. 2020 at Art At the CAVE / $500 payable in fiat or BTC

This is what I feel when I think of politics: I think of the red and blue, A or B; the linear thinking which dominates the political sphere. I wonder why we are continuing to do this. Why, when expansion, exploration, networks, nervous systems and network systems bring us closer to understanding? Why not expand our perspective, to discover how we ourselves can and must tackle the divisive and crippling effects we’ve since had on our societies and our planet.

When I came about the idea, I was reflecting on a really good image I had created in college for an instructor’s blog. It was of a center circle (a microphone diagram) emanating out sound, with additional wave forms highlighting sound travel. I felt this work needed to be resurrected. I rarely see triptychs done in a horizontal stack, so I thought that would be really neat too. I searched for images on JPL/NASA, which is something I’ve been doing sub-frequently for a number of years.

I quickly understood that I wanted an example of the precipice of a sudden change. I was thinking of black holes, merging galaxies, quasars. I was also looking at the names of images. The names and the images of “The Invisible Dragon” and “A Royal Celebration” stood out to me. When I read the descriptions, I could draw connections to concepts that seemed evolutionary.

The Invisible Dragon: A dragon-shaped cloud of dust seems to fly out from a bright explosion in this infrared light image from the Spitzer Space Telescope. These views have revealed that this dark cloud, called M17 SWex, is forming stars at a furious rate but has not yet spawned the most massive type of stars, known as O stars. Such stellar behemoths, however, light up the M17 nebula at the image’s center and have also blown a huge “bubble” in the gas and dust that forms M17’s luminous left edge.

The stars and gas in this region are now passing though the Sagittarius spiral arm of the Milky Way (moving from right to left), touching off a galactic “domino effect.” The youngest episode of star formation is playing out inside the dusty dragon as it enters the spiral arm. Over time this area will flare up like the bright M17 nebula to the left of the dragon, glowing in the light of young, massive stars. The remnants of an older burst of star formation blew the bubble in the region to the far left, called M17 EB.

“furious rate” “stellar behemoth” “domino effect” “spiral arm” “young, massive stars”

A Royal Celebration: …Within this image (of the Milky Way and containing Cassiopeia) are dozens of dense clouds, called nebulae. Many of the nebulae seen here are places where new stars are forming, creating bubble like structures that can be dozens to hundreds of light-years in size. The process of star formation within these giant clouds has been likened to fireworks, celebrating the birth of new generations of stars. But the death of stars is also seen in the remnants of a supernova explosion that was witnessed by the astronomer Tycho Brahe in 1572 AD. This remnant is located about one-fifth of the way from left of center, and about one-sixth of the way up from the middle of the image.

Yes, this was starting to come together. I began laying out the concept in my layout program. I thought of another concept in college that I wanted to resurrect, and that was imposing 3d acrylic text on top of images. But what could it say?

The only politically related idea that reaches this scale is Bitcoin. My partner is deep into understanding Bitcoin and related technology. I understand it a bit. I went to see Andreas Antonopoulos talk once. I’ve watched some videos, and I discuss it with my partner occasionally. I talked to him about this idea and, well... he got very excited. He also saw many coincidences in the concept.

The idea came full circle, or as I always like to think of things, in a bit of a spiral. I began to associate the dragon, with the future. With the impending (furious rate) evolutions of Bitcoin adaptation.

The “Royal Celebration” felt like the past. It’s even referencing monarchy, something we’ve barely evolved from. But it’s also useful as it shows a big picture. It’s a composite of 442 images and depicts the Milky Way. Together all these snapshots of time and space make up this beautiful composite. And if you were to get back even further (and likely from a different angle), you would see perhaps that we are merging with the Andromeda galaxy. Here are two galaxies on the path of eventual collision, each with their own set of unknowns and unfamiliars. But are they that different, after all? Are any of us?

My mind wandered... “Speaking of us, perhaps I should print this center image on transparent paper and mount it to a mirror. I like that effect, and it connects the center content even further to our linear and terrestrial brain; as do the graphics themselves. Then I could make the word in transparent acrylic. But what word?” I began thinking more about Bitcoin and realized that decentralize was the concept that best reflected what I had envisioned. Decentralization is like the act of working together as a well balanced network producing new baby stars.

“So I have the past on the bottom and the future on the top. So what then for this center image?” I thought, reflecting on the graphic from college. “Is it sufficient as it is?” I knew I wanted to change it and it only seemed natural to replace the backdrop with an image of merging galaxies. I also replaced the graphics of microphone diagrams with a simple circular one and the sound waveforms with something spirally... something like ribbons or DNA... fabric of space time and all that… so I used a ribbon form and it fit. Everyone says we’re on the precipice of something. People talk about the impending doom, collapse, revolutions, evolutions. What can be done, and how can we do it well?

I don’t know, but I have hope. I don’t know if Bitcoin is the step we need to take to convert our divisive and polluted world into one of harmony and healing. But it’s here. There’ve been many attempts to evolve societies through governance, politics or power structures, but we keep finding ourselves repeating old habits. Perhaps we are not scaling societal ecosystems at the same rate of reproduction and development.

According to my partner, Bitcoin offers: rules without rulers, money without censorship, participation without discrimination, transparency with privacy and community without borders. Those are some big ideals, and I wouldn’t mind having them. I am exhausted by our terribly slow approach to equality.

Also, I enjoy comparing our existence to very scaled up or very scaled down applications. I saw connections here, and put them to paper. I did this for fun, for exploration of my own feelings around politics, and for you to enjoy and consider.

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