Precedents & Lineage
Decentralized Futures is not the first time artists and technologists have come together to reimagine infrastructure.
It draws inspiration from historical movements where the systems of art were questioned, rewired, and rebuilt—often through collaboration, chance, and resistance.
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)
In the 1960s, artists like Robert Rauschenberg and engineers at Bell Labs, led by Billy Klüver, launched Experiments in Art and Technology. E.A.T. wasn’t a platform, it was a protocol of possibility.It invited artists and engineers to collaborate on unpredictable terms.
It treated failure as discovery.
It refused institutional gatekeeping and favored distributed experimentation.
Decentralized Futures inherits this ethos, recontextualized for a world shaped by AI, algorithms, and Web3 logic.
Like E.A.T., we are building not to commercialize — but to learn, provoke, and rehearse new cultural logics.
Fluxus
Fluxus was not a collective. It was a scorebook for cultural mutation.Rooted in play, absurdity, and social critique, Fluxus artists created instructional performances, open-ended rituals, and participatory events.
Rather than claiming fixed authorship, they created recipes—scores that could be performed and interpreted differently each time.
Protocols as Movement Materials
Where Fluxus used printed cards and manifestos, and E.A.T. used engineering logs and hand-written letters, Decentralized Futures uses open-source toolkits, version-controlled archives, and forkable rituals.A protocol is not a rulebook.
It’s an invitation to iterate.
A structure that grows by being performed.
The raw ingredients of a movement—not the menu.
We don’t need a new platform. We need a new ritual.
Decentralized Futures lives in the tradition of art-as-system.It is art that organizes.
It is infrastructure designed with poetics.
It’s not asking to scale. It’s asking to spread.
Decentralized Futures
is a collaboration between
Columbia DSL & the Solana Foundation