• Book Publication | ARTeCHO - Investigating decentralized action in art 

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    Posted: 19 May 2025

    Baltan Laboratories is proud to announce the launch of the ARTeCHÓ publication. The book is available for purchase at Lecturis and at Idea Books.

    In recent years, there has been a surge in the use of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), for instance, to economically exploit the digital art market. At the same time, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a tool for facilitating everyday tasks and providing services. The complex nature of these technologies and their entanglement with the global creative sector, economics, politics and natural resources has created an urgency to explore the role that these technologies have played in society to date and how they could be used to enable a more sustainable and equitable future.

    The ARTeCHÓ publication brings together artists and researchers who have delved deep into the complexities and nuances of AI and decentralized technologies, as well as the new realities they invite. The book invites the reader to ground oneself where the hope of a more sustainable future brought by decentralization and the colonial and extractive legacies of technological progress collide. Decentralization implies a move away from centralized control to a web of smaller control centres, each contributing to a larger whole. But do we instantly speak about decentralized power when speaking about decentralized technology? Can AI not simply be trained but also educated? And can its further development be reconciled with the limited capacity of global power grids?

    The essays and conversations contained in this book suggest ideas and raise questions that could serve as a guide for the development of a new economic thinking that looks beyond anthropocentric and extractive logic of the modern capitalist economy or that could expand the digital space for an autonomous knowledge commons. The publication ends with a catalogue of artworks produced by ARTeCHÓ fellows, which give examples in which, despite all the uncertainties and unanswered questions, they have put their ideas into practice and enacted a decentralized reality.

    Book credits
    A book by Baltan Laboratories

    Editors: Lorenzo Gerbi; Marlou van der Cruijsen & Julia Kassyk
    Contributors: Lorenzo Gerbi; Marlou Van Der Cuijsen; Ruth Catlow; Eva Jäger; Marina Otero Verzier; Renee Turner
    Artists: Azahara Cerezo; Carlos Monleón Gendall; César Escudero Andaluz; Cristóbal Ascencio Ramos; dmstfctn; Egór Kraft; Fanny Zaman; Hrvoje Hiršl; Ianis Dobrev; OPN Studio; Merlina Rañi; Michele Bazzoli; Paula Nishijima; Peter Kærgaard Andersen; Silvia Binda Heiserova
    Proofreader: Steven Corcoran
    Visual Identity and Book Design: CRSL.STUDIO
    Printing: Navapress.com
    Distribution: Lecturis; Idea Books
    ARTeCHÓ Partners: Baltan Laboratories; Meet; Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation; The Frankfurt School Blockchain Center; SERN

    About ARTeCHÓ
    A European initiative, ARTeCHÓ was created by five institutions: SERN -- Startup Europe Regions Network (Belgium), Baltan Laboratories (Netherlands), the FZC-Etopia Center for Art & Technology (Spain), the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center (Germany), and MEET Digital Cultural Center (Italy). It was funded by the European Commission.

    ARTeCHÓ was designed to build a peer-learning community in which artists could explore the intersections of art, Crypto Art, blockchains and NFTs. Participating artists were provided with the technical resources and mentorship required to support their artistic and professional growth, with a view to promoting new business models, copyright protection and public engagement with the digital arts. Through decentralized technologies, they explored social, environmental and economic themes, examining issues such as digital scarcity, resource distribution and ecosystem balance.

    ARTeCHÓ is co-funded by the European Union. Grand agreement n° 101056278. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting can be held responsible for them.

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