What the Tech
A collaboration with conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll on questions of trust, authorship and ethics: carried out through Ethical Imagination, a project supported by Visions2030.
The question
In its first year Visions2030 incubated artist collaborations, pairing artists with scientists, engineers, ethicists and technologists to move ideas toward real-world application. This is one of them: an artist and a technologist working the same problem from opposite ends.
The method is literal. Ideas are transformed into code and recorded as smart contracts on a blockchain, which points toward new ways of verifying origin and intent in an era shaped by forgery and deepfakes. The contract is not a market instrument here. It is a witness: a record that says who made a claim, and when, that does not depend on the claimant still being around to confirm it.
Mary Ellen Carroll, conceptual artist
Visions2030
Ethical Imagination