The Immaculate Misconception

The Immaculate Misconception is an interactive storytelling environment inspired by pre-internet gamebooks. Participants make a series of policy decisions over time as Bitcoin proliferates and global sea levels rise: acceleration of the quest for limitless energy, attempts to exile Bitcoin off-planet, conducting an insurrection, or acquiescence to the new machine god. The game interrogates the environmental implications of cryptocurrencies, charting speculative futures that probe tensions between capital and ecology in the contemporary global regime dominated by scarcity economics. The work unfolds as a fictional narrative, where formerly ‘failed’ states make Bitcoin their official currency, as volcano-powered energy makes them the richest nations on Earth, and eco-conscious activists start rising up against mining farms.

The Immaculate Misconception was part of a two-fold project developed within the framework of the European Commission’s S+T+ARTS Repairing the Present residencies, hosted by Art Hub Copenhagen. The aim of Repairing The Present’s ‘Blockchain Society’ theme was to explore the promises and potentials of blockchain from the point of view of their symbolic and systemic aspects, including their consequences for representation and contemporary systems of knowledge and power.

For more information on the project and contributors, visit: https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/immaculate

Note: The game performance event at panke.gallery will be accompanied by a short artist talk and a club night to celebrate the 4th-year anniversary of 0xSalon.