Primavera De Filippi’s contribution builds on her decade-long exploration of blockchain-based lifeforms. Her pioneering Plantoid project (2015–ongoing) takes the form of plant-like sculptures animated by smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, capable of accumulating cryptocurrency, commissioning artists, and generating new iterations of themselves. Alongside this, the project Arborithms (2024–ongoing) envisions forests of generative digital trees encoded with their own “DNA,” which evolve and reproduce through human interaction. Taken together, De Filippi’s practice opens up questions of authorship, agency, and governance, demonstrating how blockchain can operate not only as a tool for certification but also as a medium for creating living, evolving digital ecologies.

Primavera De Filippi is an artist and legal scholar at Harvard University, exploring the intersection between art, law and technology, focusing specifically on the legal and political implications of blockchain technology. Her artistic practice instantiates the key findings of her research in the physical world, creating blockchain-based lifeforms that evolve and reproduce themselves as people feed them with cryptocurrencies. Her works have been exhibited internationally including Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; HEK Museum of Digital Arts, Basel, Switzerland; Furtherfield Gallery, London, UK; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; and Biennale di Venezia, Italy; as well as festivals such as Burning Man, Nevada, US; Fusion Festival, Lärz, Germany; and Synesthesia, Sesimbra, Portugal, and online galleries such as Feral File.