Sean dB 🦇🔊 seandb.eth 💣

SEED is a collection in which each piece presents a generative visual metaphor for 1 of 155 seed phrases i drained, with explicit consent from the former owner, as a work of digital performance. it delves into the visual poetics of transforming abstract digital identities - embodied in seed phrases - into conceptual art, exploring the nuanced interplay between visibility and encryption, presence and absence. for each word of a seed phrase, hundreds of images were generated using a modified diffusion algorithm and then hand-picked by my team. to select the 1896 images that make up the final pieces, we sorted through well over 1,000,000 image generations in just 4 days, keeping an eye out for visual serendipities within the phrases and selecting visual metaphors for difficult words that have no concrete representation. this process not only served as a translation of digital keys into visual language but also as a reflection on the essence of digital identity and ownership, where each image stands as a guardian of the hidden yet potent narrative of personal security and privacy in the digital age. 𒐪𒐪𒐪 𒐪𒐪𒐪 𒐪𒐪𒐪 𒐪𒐪𒐪 these pieces were offered exclusively to people who had entered seed phrases into a form on my website during the peak of the 2024 Solana memecoin mania, at a time when crypto users were sending millions of dollars en masse to wallet addresses posted on twitter in the hopes of profiting from hyperspeculative presales. on March 15, 2024, i hinted at a presale that could be secured only by sharing seed phrase - the cardinal sin of crypto wallet security. although intended as satire and expected to only garner burner seed phrases from savvy users, this experiment was more successful than anticipated as the form received more than 600 seed phrases with over $1.5m in combined assets during the few hours that it was open, largely from an unintended audience chasing memecoin presales. this pivotal moment underscores the delicate balance between anonymity and exposure in the digital realm, challenging the conventions of digital ownership and the vulnerability of our online selves. rather than launching a liquid memecoin, however, i subverted expectations and instead offered participants the option to sublimate their speculation into art by purchasing a 1/1/N conceptual art piece. the price of their piece was based on a snapshot of their wallet balance when entered, effectively creating a retroactive sealed bid auction in which the participants thought they were bidding for an allocation into a token instead of an art piece. this extreme distribution method is a continuation of my (at times controversial) exploration into the artistic ramifications of linearly ranked collections with exponential pricing. my most unequal work prior, $CAR, utilized a bulk ranked auction format and had a Gini Coefficient of 52.3%, placing it at about the level of the world's 12th most unequal country. SEED's Gini Coefficient is a stunning 76.1%, placing it about 13 percentage points above South Africa. while the relative "value" in $CAR came from my own subjective rankings of the wreckage fragments based on aesthetics and function, here the value is simultaneously more circuitous and more direct: the amount paid for the artwork is a function of the extent of the patron's financial participation in the performance of the seed drain. the amount drained from the wallet is overlaid on the piece, re-centering the interwoven themes of financialization, hyperspeculation, and radical artistic experimentation, now intertwined with the complexities of digital identity and the paradoxes of digital ownership and security.