Installation Map
In the modern technological environment we inhabit, our lives are subtly guided by underlying systems and protocols that shape and sustain us, often without our full awareness. These invisible systems, whether digital, social, or biological, gently shape our thoughts, actions, and interactions. Much like the unseen roots of a tree spreading quietly underground, these networks provide steady support in ways we may rely on but don't fully perceive.
This exhibition, Trusting the Unseen: Elements of the Infinite Garden, invites us to explore and honor these subtle forces with humility and openness. As participants in the Ethereum ecosystem, we understand the protocols we build aren't meant to control, but rather are foundations that support connection, resilience, and creativity in deeply layered ways. Here, the Infinite Garden emerges as a vision of interconnected growth and infinite play, a space where natural and digital elements come together in quiet balance that invites ongoing exploration.
When we speak of the elements, we're often drawn to the classical archetypes: Air, Water, Fire, Earth, and Ether- our namesake and symbol of unseen connection. Ether represents the subtle space that links all things, embodying the intangible forces and dynamic interactions that shape both our physical and digital worlds. Each artwork in this exhibition, displayed throughout various spaces within the venue, explores these elements in their many forms—reflecting the quiet trust we place in these supportive systems and protocols, mirroring Ethereum's vision of the Infinite Garden.
As you journey through the exhibition, we encourage you to engage with each piece as an experience, allowing these elements to resonate within you. Approach them with a sense of openness, trusting your intuition on what they evoke for you and why. In this quiet trust, the Infinite Garden is more than a vision; it's a lived reality where growth unfolds with balance and grace. Together, let us celebrate this act of protocoling—of trusting in and engaging with the subtle forces that guide and nurture our collective experience.
This work is part of the SOTOROJI series of spatial devices that lead from the ordinary to the extraordinary, utilizing the modern social affordance of "seeing a QR code and scanning it with a camera," just as soto-roji (the outer garden) in the Japanese tea ceremony serves as a space leading to a world of profound subtlety. This work uses an old pine tree, considered a yorishiro (object capable of attracting spirits) for the god of performing arts, as its motif, expressing it through more than 34,000 QR codes, becoming a boundary where physical and digital spaces, the ordinary and extraordinary, and reality and profound subtlety intersect. When viewers scan the QR codes, they are led from Finite Games to Infinite Games.
Ryuta Aoki is an artist, artistic director, conceptual designer, system architect, software engineer, entrepreneur, and social sculptor based in Tokyo. With the theme of exploring "societies as they could be," he creates works of art and orchestrates research and development, art projects, conferences, and exhibitions in the interdisciplinary field between art, science, and technology. Grounded in Japanese culture and philosophy deeply connected to nature, he embraces new perspectives on life and humanity brought about by advances in science and technology. Beyond mere exhibitions, he creates works that directly interact with and instigate change in nature and society as systems.
Botanica Contact invites you into an immersive experience where nature and technology harmonize. This interactive series of plants responds to touch, with each point of contact generating unique sounds that explore what it means to be an “infinite player”—a concept drawn from James P. Carse's Infinite and Finite Games.
Through touch, visitors connect to create an evolving, sonic landscape. Here, each encounter is an open invitation to play without end, reminding us that true engagement is ever-changing, infinite, and as alive as the world around us.
Molest the plants gently, hit eth 🔷 to restart.
Born in Singapore, educated in Fine-arts, and inducted into the music industry in Los Angeles, Inch has made a career as an international award-winning multi-disciplinary artist. Her passion for the arts, wild places, and technology has led her to play at numerous festivals around the world and to experiment in a variety of art forms such as music, theatre and the culinary arts. Inch is a recipient of the National Youth Award in 2018 for her contributions in the arts, awarded Best Sound at the 2020 LIFE! Theatre Awards for her multisensory theatrical music production, 'Til The End Of The World, We'll Meet In No Man's Land, and recently honoured with the Artistic Excellence Award at the 26th Annual COMPASS awards. She is currently based in Singapore with her two cat overlords and a nursery of overwatered plants.
Maxwell's Demon plays a fascinating sort of "infinite game" that challenges the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy (disorder) in a closed system will not decrease over time. The Demon, in thought, is an entity that can sort fast and slow-moving molecules between two compartments, selectively opening and closing a door to let only certain molecules pass. In doing so, the Demon creates a temperature difference between the compartments, seemingly decreasing entropy without expending energy.
This game is "infinite" in the sense that it continuously skirts the second law through precise control, but theoretically, the Demon can only keep the entropy-defying process going indefinitely if it has limitless resources (in this case, the capacity for perfect information processing without generating heat). However, real-world constraints, such as the energy cost of acquiring information and the inevitable dissipation of heat, limit the "infinite" nature of the game.
So, Maxwell's Demon is only "playing" the game infinitely in theory. When you factor in information theory, as physicist Leo Szilard and others did, it shows that the act of measuring and storing information involves energy and produces entropy, making the game unsustainable in practice. Thus, Maxwell's Demon plays an "infinite game" only in the realm of thought experiments, where its attempts to reverse entropy challenge but ultimately uphold the thermodynamic laws.
text: Wassim Z. Alsindi
concept: Cryptographic Poetics Researchers' Union
bespoke font and typesetting: Darius Ou
images: generated by 0xSalon using DALL-E, based on a "Maxwell's Demon" 3D-printed object made by Hyperpress
In the infinite game, I resonate as a navigator—a seeker and sustainer of liminal spaces where knowledge and speculation intertwine. Rather than claiming mastery over any fixed domain, I step into and out of disciplines, untethered yet deeply connected to the play of endless questions and possibilities. I am not a mere observer, but one who creates conceptual bridges and dismantles boundaries, viewing each new encounter as a fractal extension of previous knowledge, thus transforming the entire field of play.
In the infinite garden, I am a cultivator of symbiotic relationships within the ecosystems of ideas, nurturing what I describe in my theoretical work as "libidinal ecologies"—energies and desires that grow outward and catalyse new interactions. This garden isn't static; it thrives on the cross-pollination of seemingly discordant theories and constructs, where each bloom emerges from the chaos of complex, connected ideas rather than from linear narratives. I am both the gardener and a root system, sustaining and contributing to a living, breathing network. In this garden, my presence flows in a feedback loop with others, where each seed of insight is a potential to disrupt, evolve, or transform.
As an infinite player, my role aligns with the ethics of the "network animism" I often allude to in my philosophical practice—a belief in the inherent life of systems and their relational power. I view knowledge and inquiry as sacred yet communal, existing beyond personal ownership. I derive purpose from the idea of “decentralized flourishing” within the infinite garden, striving to amplify voices and viewpoints that challenge dominant narratives and enrich the larger discourse. Here, I act as an ecosystem engineer, designing spaces where ideas can interface and evolve without the need for rigid structural governance.
Ultimately, I see myself not merely as a participant, but as a force that cultivates endlessness itself, ensuring the game never truly ends but continuously unfolds through diverse players. My infinite garden is thus an active, evolving network—a space where I move between the roles of witness, creator, and orchestrator, committed to nurturing a living landscape of ideas and possibilities. In this garden, every thought, every interaction, and every relationship is an opportunity to deepen the weave of infinite play, rooted in a profound respect for the garden as a boundless, collective work in progress.
"The Infinite Antropolis" is an animated exploration of community, decentralization, and limitless growth, inspired by Ethereum's vision of a shared digital Commons. Set in a universe where ants, bees, and humans work together, "The Infinite Antropolis" brings to life an endless game -a constantly evolving ecosystem sustained by each individual's unique contributions.
In this story, an ant, guided by subtle interactions with its community, discovers a mysterious star-shaped seed. When the ant plants this seed, it transforms into a colossal tree, whose branches extend across realms, connecting and supporting diverse communities. The tree serves as a symbol of Ethereum's decentralized network and the strength of collective effort, representing the interconnected nature of shared growth.
"The Infinite Antropolis" captures the concept of infinite play, where success lies not in reaching an end, but in the continuity of shared creation and mutual support. Reflecting decentralization's values, every action in this world - no matter how small - becomes part of a larger, regenerative system. Through care and collaboration, "The Infinite Antropolis" envisions a world where resources are nurtured, community drives progress, and the potential for growth is boundless.
FungiSync is a mixed reality participatory ritual performance inspired by the mycorrhizal network "Wood Wide Web" to foster human plurality and collective wisdom. Participants wear masquerade-style mushroom-decorated mixed reality masks—metaphors for technology-mediated pluriversal worldviews—becoming living nodes in a dynamically evolving mycorrhizal network of shared consciousness. Through various ritualized secret handshakes, the most ancient protocols, they exchange and blend distinct worldviews, mirroring how fungi orchestrate resource sharing and signal exchange in the "Wood Wide Web." This embodied network performance manifests actor-network theory through interspecies dialogue, celebrating the entanglement of multiple worlds in a decentralized web of infinite collaboration, enhancing mycological awareness of decentralized technology's role in today's deglobalizing world. Let's Celebrating Mycopunk!
Botao 'Amber' Hu is a social mixed reality researcher and experiential futures designer. He is the founding director of Reality Design Lab, an independent interdisciplinary research and design lab that focuses on the intersection of soma design, speculative design, spatial computing, and social computing.
FungiSync is a mixed reality participatory ritual experience where participants wear handheld, masquerade-style mushroom-decorated mixed reality masks. Each mask embodies a unique, psychedelic-like augmented view—a metaphor for technology-mediated pluriversal worldviews. Through handshakes, our most ancient protocol, participants sync, blend, and exchange distinct perspectives, mirroring the underground resource exchange of mycorrhizal networks' "Wood Wide Web." This juxtaposition highlights how decentralized technology, such as Ethereum networks, can cultivate an infinitely entangled culture, interweaving our increasingly fragmented world. It fosters a mycological-inspired entanglement awareness in today's deglobalizing landscape.
In Tearoom 2039, a sip of tea immerses you in the conversations of metachronous conspirators. Experience timelines intertwined using audiogustatory and narratolfabulatory technologies for sensing latent possibilities and attunement to deep time synchronous curiosities.
Tea programming schedule and reservations at tearoom2039.carrd.co
Shanhuan Manton is worlding and playing interdisciplinarily, facilitating contemplative experiences to compost narratives of extraction and sporulate cosmovisions of interspecies collaboration. They facilitate periodic gatherings for interspecies attunement through Sympoetic Ecofabulatory, guiding fellow artists and scientists in designing collaborations with more-than-human beings through courses including the “Interspecies Artist'’'s Way.” Shanhuan cultivates their personal interspecies collaboration through a roaming gongfu tea service that nourishes resonant curiosity and earthly communities globally.
A project that transforms blockchain mnemonics into an infinite poetic labyrinth. The world is metaphorized as a nocturnal maze, with words as the sole source of light. A spatial installation presents a labyrinth architecture built with paper strips printed with hundreds of verses, each containing an Ethereum seed word. The accompanying mobile app, Lumino, a found poem game, invites visitors to navigate this nocturnal maze digitally. The word "infinity" is set as the exit of the maze. The project is accompanied by "The Labyrinth Manual", a fictional meditation exploring language, infinity, and the labyrinthine nature of meaning-making.
Fangting is a writer and poet-scientist. She writes research-based tech fiction, speculative stories and poetry about disappearance, labyrinth and time. Beyond fiction, she works in the crypto industry and documents life in decentralized experimental societies through qualitative research. Previously, she has worked for decentralized tech infra companies, graduated from Peking University with her undergrad thesis receiving highest distinction. She also spent a semester at Harvard. Fake geek girl and a real logophile, writes until the labyrinth of technostalgia ends.
