Hashd0x [Proof of War]

2022;
Custom built Raspberry Pi-based cameras, custom designed drone, LED wall, server running interactive phogrammetry model, software includes smart contract on Ethereum blockchain, web platform, mobile apps on Android & iOS.

Cryptomania, Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen, DEU, 2023

The title of the artistic intervention reads as Proof of War. It’s a word play on the technical term Proof of Work (abbreviated as PoW). This term defines a common algorithmic consensus principle across various blockchains and a form of cryptographic proof in which one party proves to others that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Proof of Work and its less energy-hungry sibling Proof of Stake are hard coded rules in blockchain ecosystems that model incentives and rules of participation within their networks.Captured via custom built camera, Proof of War takes the shape of a video installation, a film and an online archive.
The moving image displays panoramic views of a point-cloud 3D scanned data of a shattered residential building. Images of this building are vastly present in myriad articles covering the atrocities of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. The building, situated in the tragically infamous Ukranian town of Borodyanka in Kyiv region, was pierced through by a missile. The 3D model of this building was algorithmically produced from hundreds of images and video files captured via the drone, designed to accommodate a custom design hashing-capable camera. Such form of 3D scanning involving a dataset of images was achieved via a software technique – aerial photogrammetry.

It is a technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of interpreting photographic imagery, which allows the generation of 3D digital models as an end product. As each and every image involved in the production of the digital 3D model has been captured via Hashd0x, decentralised app, they all have algorithmically assigned hashmarks in a form of immutable blockchain stamps. If we assume the success of involved blockchains will prevail, these documenting tragedy on-chain records will remain stored across a vast network of personal computers for countless years, serving as a digitally sculpted memorial to the atrocities of present-day war crimes, forever preserved in our digital archives, uncorrupted, uncensored, and time-stamped. This digitally frozen datascape depicts evidence of some of the most dramatic and terrifying acts of violence in recent decades of European history. Following-up on grassroots initiative taking shape of a tactical software, this hactivist intervention addresses genuinely troubled condition of truth in today’s world; A world largely driven by information epidemics and information wars at a scale unseen before.

Hashd0x & Proof of War Video Documentation

↑ Lies, Half-Truths & Propaganda [The Bad, the Worse, and the Worst], alexanderlevy Gallery, Berlin, DEU, 2022