ARTIST NOTE

Let us speak, then, of a world from which human beings have disappeared. It’s a question of disappearance, not exhaustion, extinction, or extermination. The exhaustion of resources, the extinction of species—these are physical processes or natural phenomena. And that’s the whole difference. The human species is doubtless the only one to have invented a specific mode of disappearance that has nothing to do with nature’s law. Perhaps even an art of disappearance.

—Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard’s prescient words echo in the digital age, where identity is no longer bound to the physical but is instead mediated through data. Everything That Disappears Leaves a Trace is an artistic response to this transformation, exploring the migration from the material to the digital and reflecting on how identity dissolves and reforms within networked systems.

Disappearance today is not an erasure but a shift. Unlike extinction, dictated by nature, digital disappearance is a human construct—the gradual fading of presence into an intangible, algorithmically governed reality. If, as Baudrillard suggests, "the ultimate goal of humanity is the transmutation of the real into the virtual leading to our eventual disappearance," then we are already living in that transition. Human presence is increasingly defined by digital infrastructures, where once-tangible experiences become data streams. Blockchain expands this shift, constructing a decentralized environment where identity, value, and culture are encoded in systems of verification, raising urgent questions about agency, autonomy, and the aesthetics of disappearance.

Everything That Disappears Leaves a Trace visualizes this slow dematerialization through The Melt, a process where static portraits are transformed into generative six-second visual identities, processed through a node-based visual programming system that distorts, displaces, and reconfigures pixels. Human images are progressively abstracted—first appearing as fragmented pixels, then forming into recognizable figures before collapsing in a six-second dissolution. These transformations are not merely acts of erosion but reflections on how identity is shaped and reshaped within an era of machine vision and algorithmic control.

Each Melt is generated through a combination of randomness and human intervention, modulated in real time via TouchDesigner and an Akai APC40 MKII MIDI controller. No two portraits dissolve in the same way—each one becomes a unique artifact, an imprint of its original form that can never be replicated. The result is a digital moving-image NFT that exists on the blockchain, while a printed Trace of the portrait’s final state is archived, embodying the duality of digital and physical existence.

As we immerse ourselves in virtual environments, Everything That Disappears Leaves a Trace critically examines the architectures of digital culture, where identity is fluid and often governed by corporate and state-controlled infrastructures. It speculates on a future where art functions beyond aesthetic pleasure, reclaiming digital authorship through NFTs and redefining digital artifacts as mechanisms of agency within systems of power. This project builds on ideas I explored in my essay Right-Click, Save, which examines how NFTs function as more than aesthetic objects, evolving into mechanisms of agency within digital and decentralized systems of power. While this project conceptually engages with digital identity, its primary concern is aesthetic rather than technical. It does not seek to build new identity infrastructures but instead reflects on their implications, questioning whether digital assets will evolve into new markers of selfhood.

The project unfolds in two parts:

• The Participatory Series invites individuals to submit their portraits for transformation, resulting in an NFT of their Melted identity while a physical print—a Trace of Migration—remains archived in the real world.

• The Curated Series presents figures born after January 1, 1983—the official birth of the Internet—marking the historical shift toward digital migration. These portraits form a speculative archive of identities shaped by digital mediation, mapping the slow dissolution of selfhood into the network.

Each iteration of Trace results in two objects: a digital NFT that remains in the blockchain and a physical print that stays tethered to the material world. This dual existence mirrors the oscillation between the digital and real, the recorded and the lost. Disappearance is not an absence but a transition—one that is aesthetic, conceptual, and political.

In the Anthropocene, a time when humanity’s impact on the planet is irreversible, it is ironic that we also find ourselves approaching our own disappearance. Trace positions itself at this threshold, questioning whether digital migration is an evolution or an erasure. As presence becomes untethered from the physical body and anchored in data, the work interrogates what remain