The main section of the Art Dubai 2023 exhibition occupies several large halls with high ceilings, white walls and spotlights that illuminate details on selected pieces.

To visit the digital art section, visitors exit the halls, cross the food court and walk a few minutes within the boundaries of the massive Souq Madinat Jumeirah, a popular shopping and dining mall built in retro-arabesque style. 

At the entrance of the digital wing, there is a large stand-alone installation that welcomes visitors: a robotic arm that transfers olive oil from one tub to another. 

At first glance, there is nothing much to ponder. Robotic arms were a novelty a decade ago, but now, one can stumble upon them, making coffee and flipping burgers in an increasing number of venues across this futuristic Gulf city. 

The real innovation in this piece, however, is not within the robot but the oil. Inside one tub, the liquid’s DNA was altered and infused with a code. If analyzed in a lab, the code could be extracted and assembled again. The code would form a Solidity smart contract that forms a cryptocurrency on the Ethereum blockchain called Olea. 

Would you like some DNA with your olive oil?

“This work is an analysis of the idea of economic value,” said Soliman Lopez, a Spanish conceptual artist and the creator of Olea. 

Lopez explained that he was contemplating agriculture as the very first source of making value, manipulating nature to create something new with various uses. In ancient Greece, olive oil was used as currency for trade and for paying taxes due to its value and high demand.

 “This is a link between the very first economy and the future one,” he said. 

Lopez has long been occupied by the concepts of storing value, memory and the history of  technological progress. In 2015, he founded the Harddisk museum, a curated 2 terabytes of  original digital creations by various artists saved on a physical hard drive. He wanted to isolate them “away from the noisy Internet” and preserve them in a more stable form. Later, he cooperated with scientists at Eth Zurich University to upload the museum on DNA. 

This technology is not new and has been intertwined with art since its inception. The binary code of the computer is turned into a quaternary code for the 4 components of the human DNA. In 1988, American artist and Bio-art pioneer Joe Davis stored a 35-bit image of an ancient Germanic rune in the DNA of an E.coli. Modern advancements in bioscience made it possible to store larger sums of data and keep its integrity. 

As Soliman became familiar with blockchain technology, he believed it was a natural extension of his work. “Blockchains are like witnesses to my actions and interactions. A certificate of my work,” he said. As artists were drawn to blank canvases, then to the Internet, he believes many artists now consider blockchain as a new medium to explore. Hardisk museum recently moved to the non-fungible token (NFT) space. 

A Bodyless Metaverse 

After visitors cross the Olea robot, they go down the escalator to reach the halls of the digital art section.

Contrary to the main section, the walls are dim, the ceilings are low, and the main source of light comes from hundreds of screens featuring animations and digital creations by artists across the world. 

It’s here that Lopez exhibits his second piece: Introns - an NFT public profile picture collection that carries the holder’s DNA. 

Introns

The project’s name has a double meaning. It refers to the DNA introns, which are parts that are essential in the human genome but do not carry instructions for making proteins. It is also a subtle wordplay on Tron, a 1982 movie that’s one of the earliest depictions of a 3-D immersive metaverse in cinema. 

Profile picture NFTs are among the most popular uses of the new blockchain technology, thanks to early viral collections like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes. This collection has completely different aesthetics and pictures made of circles, abstract lines and curves that are annotated with triangles, dots and geometrical shapes. 

“Why are we stuck with the topographical shape of humans, even if we are in a world that is based on bytes?” asked Lopez rhetorically. 

While companies compete in creating realistic avatars with uncanny effect, Lopez does not see the need to stick with our human figures in the metaverse. “We have a code inside, so let’s leave the body for the atom world and use the code for the coded world,” he said.

To create this NFT, buyers mint it. They send Lopez a sample of their DNA. It is then analyzed in a lab in Spain, and the data is put into a JSON file. Once the file is connected to the NFT, it takes a new shape. The NFTs could be turned into 3D renderings in augmented reality and can materialize as unique sculptures. 

There is a map key that explains the meaning of every dot, knot and shape. The sizes of the circles indicate elements that control the likelihood of physical flexibility, size, and pain tolerance, among other features that could be deducted by analyzing one’s DNA. There are small figures that point to the general geographical origin of the person (Africa, Europe, South America, etc.), without specifying race or color tone. There are 19 different features represented in shape, but nothing in it identifies the holder’s sex. 

“With my new proposed design, we avoid the objectification and sexualization of the body in the digital world,” he said. 

Lopez argued that there are no security risks or possible breaches of privacy in his project. “People may be afraid to send their saliva, but anyone can take it from their last cup of tea,” he said. 

More than 45 people have already ordered their Introns.

Read more: Dubai Crypto Expo 2023: A Frustrating Walk Among A Maze of Crypto Exchanges 

Lopez is currently working on several new projects. He’s writing a manifesto about the imbalance between humans, the Earth and natural destruction. The text will be infused in the DNA of a 3-D-printed ear, then preserved in collagen, then buried in a glacier to strike a conversation about climate change and transhumanism.   

He is applying for patents to create an NFT perfume in which the liquid carries the NFT code so that people can physically put the tokens on their skins. He is also creating a project where he is infusing blockchain data into bamboo plants. The plant is a metaphor for the human spine, being bent by the constant weight of looking at cell phones and texting. 

“I made the term ‘biotoken’ to describe this technique,” he said, “It is the way to connect the blockchain with the real matter.”