Mark H. Ramos
what_if_we_kissed_by_dogecoin_peak
navigable online landscape, 3d assets re-skinned with cryptocurrency textures, three.js implementation, 2021 © the artist
There was an old American credit card commercial that went something along these lines: "There are somethings that money can't buy:
Two plane tickets: $2,700
One luxury hotel suite: $1050
Chilled champagne: $600
A second chance at love?: Priceless."
In the midst of an nft-minting gold rush, what does "priceless" even still signify in an age of cryptocurrency driven enthusiasm?
This website presents an navigable online landscape made out of re-skinned cryptocurrency symbols: A dogecoin sun rise over a bitcoin mountain range. An XRP Ripple waterfall cascades into an ethereum ocean. Iota clouds float gently over a field of Monero poppies.
Priceless moments (like epic sunrises and sunsets posted online) are re-skinned with crypto-currency symbols to investigate notions of what is still "priceless."
By turning crypto-currency into something else, can we reinvent non-transactional ways to be online?
You are invited to wander through the golden Bitcoin paths, sit by the Ethereum waves, or even climb to Dogecoin peak to watch the sun rise amongst the Monero poppies.
Mark Ramos is a Brooklyn-based new media artist. He is deeply committed to the ethos of open source: the free sharing of information and data + creative uses of technology. His work is engaged with democratizing the worlds of art and technology through community and individual empowerment via the means of technological production. Mark makes fragile post-colonial technology using the mediums of physical computing (using computers to sense and react to the physical world), web/software programming and digital sculpture to create interactive work that facilitate encounters with our own uncertain digital futures.
He has exhibited his work locally both in New York City and San Francisco, including the inaugural exhibition of Arsenal Gallery in Brooklyn and as part of multiple exhibitions at Artist Television Access and internationally in Europe and Asia.
He is an adjunct faculty member at the School of Visual Arts and Hunter College.
You can also find him playing drums for various bands in Brooklyn.
