Artist/Art Residency in the European understanding means the Artist goes to a foreign country mostly within a study program, gets free accommodation and an atelier space plus a basic set of working materials. A private Residency with a v 4 v character, not too expensive, to be paid in Bitcoin and Artists are working on an Exhibition together.. something like this ? :)

I couldn’t wait for the next part because I wanted to share already. Everyone I know is a massive fan of Edward Hopper and his clear influence of film noir within his beautiful stark, lonely urban landscapes. His use of shadow and light give off such a mood and atmosphere which is somehow different in every painting. He captures such a a sense of isolation and unease with his solitary figures and empty streets.

❤️🍷☺️

#GM #Coffechain #Nostr

“My influences come from real life. I’m interested in life – what one does and how one interacts.”

Sir Steve McQueen is an artist.

Some may know him for his Oscar-winning films such as 12 Years a Slave, Hunger, and the brilliant Shame with Michael Fassbender.

His pictures leave a lasting impact, his stories delve into the uncomfortable and deeply into human aspects of life without sensationalizing them.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to see his retrospective at the Schaulager Basel, where he said, "I want the screen to be a massive mirror." His artistic language resonated with me and it expanded my vocabulary.

Art and artistic standards are present in almost every aspect of our daily lives. Aesthetics and design have the power to bring us comfort and joy.

How art resonates with each is a personal experience, influenced by our own interpretations and perspectives. Appreciating art does not require formal training, but rather a willingness to engage with new ideas and challenging our Mind-Heart Axe.

McQueen's statement,

"When you have a safe environment, everyone wants to invest in the project and take risks,"

applies not only to make art but also to processing of complex issues such as politics, anger, love, philosophy… through art.

I am eager to explore how technology can be utilized to elevate the experience of feeling art, prompting us to delve deeper into self/reflection, pushing us to think and learn in new ways.

The blocksize war wasn't so much about the blocksize (or, even, scaling Bitcoin). It was really about who controls the consensus rules and how we upgrade the protocol.

For context, a bunch of startups raised tons of money between 2013 and 2016 based on ridiculous user sign-up projections and then we had a long and painful bear market and they were looking for scapegoats (the developpers that were "throttling the network") to justify the lack of growth. I am thinking here specifically of Coinbase, Bitpay and Blockchain.info.

The vibe I got is that they thought of Bitcoin itself as a corporation, that they were the equivalent of Bitcoin's board of directors because they represented the interest of VC investors, and thus they were entitled to decision making power over the network.

I don't doubt that a few people were genuine about scaling p2p e-cash (e.g. Roger Ver) but I suspect what really motivated them is that they believed control of the Bitcoin network would be an asset to their business interests, and lack of control was being used as an excuse to why their interests weren't being satisfied.

There was also a bunch of developers that I believe may have been afraid of losing their relevance (Gavin and Garzik specifically). Regardless of their intentions or psychology, it seemed clear to me that the consortium of vc-backed startups (particularly Bitpay, Coinbase, blockchain(.)info and Roger) had picked a team of developers they thought they could control and wanted to appoint them as a technical management team whicn would execute their strategy, and these guys were willing to step up for that role.

I was physically in the room when the CEO of Blockchain.info (with the very obvious support of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong) announced that Bitcoin Core devs were being fired and would be replaced. This was after a couple days of failed discussions with other industry people. This was the moment when I realized what was really going on.

And finally, you had a Bitcoin mining giant (Bitmain) controlling both asic production and mining pools with a vested interest in promoting the idea that Bitcoin was a democracy and the way to vote was to buy hashing power. The main ideology being pushed here was that a formal governance mechanism of the protocol needed to be established and that hashrate was the only objective measure of who makes decisions.

The underlying big blocker ideology was that the chaos of spontaneous consensus of nodes is unpredictable, flimsy, bad for business. The absence of a formal governance process was seen as the root cause of the issue.

These companies really believed they could control the protocol, and controlling development of the protocol was seen as a very valuable asset to your company. I imagine they thought of themselves as the founders of a new consortium that would solidify itself into a permanent institution. The business interests would pay developers and set the goals, and the mining interests would ratify their decisions with hash power voting. That was their plan.

This became blatantly obvious when Bitmain used its refusal to activate segwit as leverage to get what it wanted (a blocksize increase and recognition of its hashpower as a vote mecanism) even though Bitmain iself acknowledged it was not really opposed segwit.

It was classic traditional politics: I'll give you segwit if you give me something in return.

This is the language the VC suits, investors and tech startup people understand and they were very happy to "negotiate" and find "consensus".

This eventually materialized into the New York Agreement, negotiated literally as a backroom deal during theConsensuss shitcoin conference. I was there and I refused to attend.

This (private) meeting consecrated the alliance of startups/investors and bitcoin mining interests in their appointment of a technical management committee. If you think this sounds like Jekyll Island, you're not alone.

They packaged segwit with a blocksize increase (Segwit2x) and decided to force a hard fork as a condition to "allow" us to have Segwit.

We know the rest of the story: we ended up activating anyway via UASF (or more precisely, the miners activated Segwit after they New York Agreement signatories became scared UASF would lead to a chain split which they were going to lose). And the blocksize increase was also abandoned shortly after when they realized their hard fork would cause a chain split and that they would not be able to claim that their new shitcoin is the real bitcoin.

All these people were subsequently were very pissed off they couldn't control the network, which they thought they were entitled to. Some ragequit, others created a bunch of shitcoins out of spite, Roger went on to spearhead BCH as the real Bitcoin, all these fools realized they might as well make some money off of it, everyone went all-in on the shitcoin casinos after that. The "small blockers" eventually went on to evolve into the Bitcoin Maximalists and cypherpunks that today tell you to run your own node and own your own keys.

This is a great thread of artists posting beautiful and interesting stuff on nostr.

nostr:note14p4pxxwd4xr845tezp3sxsmr2c06aezk6lqjhdcgchq97ew8rljsex2sdx

I need a little muse and time to create something new. In the meantime, some Artworks of Berlin mates .

“Tony Futura presented his art work in various places around the globe, from galleries in New York City and Italy to Museums in Peking and Germany and many national and international publications, blogs and magazines. Considered one of the founders of "New Pop", he places familiar images in a new context, creating surreal art to poke fun at the materialism and pop-culture focus of modern Western life.

‘Rumors of War, 2019’ by Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley created this sculpture in response to the Confederate-era monuments littered all across the US that serve no other purpose than to celebrate a failed resistance, white supremacy, and slavery.

This is the actual work of art that I was referring to in my first post #[0]​ and #[1]​. It’s things like this that make me wish Damus allowed people to delete notes.