Matthias Tarasiewicz

Writer, technology theorist , project developer and enthusiast for immutable and unstoppable code. Researcher in future cryptoeconomics, privacy and decentralisation. Keybase, Twitter, Linkedin, Medium.com

• Director of the RIAT Institute
• Founder of Future Cryptoeconomics, a quarterly magazine about the future of decentralisation

I also work as tech consultant, research designer and project developer. To contact me for speaking engagement or any other inquiry, please go via this form, as other channels won't reach me easily. You can find a list of my verified social media accounts on keybase.

Rait Institute

I am directing RIAT, an independent research and development organisation thematizing the future of decentralisation and fostering the adoption of cryptography and privacy technology across disciplines. We work with cryptocurrency (bitcoin) since 2010 and foster a large international network around the globe. We are chain-agnostic, although my personal interest lies in ''fully decentralised systems'. RIAT is looking at the challenges and limitations of distributed systems by investigating future cryptoeconomics, code governance, and cryptopolitics. RIAT consists of a network of researchers, developers, entrepreneurs and experimentalists working on conceptioning, research design, project development and mentoring on future topics of decentralisation.

Open source, open hardware

I am an enthusiast for Open Source projects and I am board member of the OSHWA - the Open Source Hardware Association. I am faciliating open hardware projects, such as in the past the Apertus Open Source Cinema Camera and the Monero Open Hardware Wallet. I am actively working with and contributing to open source projects, and I am observing goverance of distributed open source projects. A very good example for a self sustaining and self-governing project is the Monero Community Crowdfunding System (CCS). The book Openism: Conversations on Open Hardware thematized the situation, that a lot of open hardware and DIY projects are working above industry standard and are the true driving forces of disruptive innovation, often trough reverse engineering or or radical open source strategies.

History

Hello world. I have a background as digital bricoleur and in computer science, and developed projects on the intersections of design and experimental technology since the last millenium. I worked with Open Source projects since my early childhood and I am an autodidact in many technological domains. I was a professional computer game tester and reviewer from 1986-1992. Later i studied computer science and did a diploma in digital and media arts at the University of applied arts in Vienna with Peter Weibel and Karel Dudesek. After different ventures and startups in early 2000 (big data, noSQL, distributed systems) i started the Coded Cultures initiative, a research platform to bring hacker culture and technology-based arts closer together. This resulted in the Coded Cultures Festival which was running from 2004-2016 and was showcased in Austria, Germany and Japan. In 2010 i founded the Artistic Bokeh group, a taskforce for DSLR video hacks and radical media arts. I developed the first bitcoin-based artwork, bitcoincloud, which was initially shown in 2011 as part of the "Art and Capital" exhibition. Bitcoincloud was maybe the most inefficient Bitcoin Mining rig, as it only mined when visitors were watching the artpiece, in order to thematize the "attention economy". In 2012 i received a three year research grant from the austrian science fund (FWF) and set up the Artistic Technology Lab at the University of applied arts in Vienna. There i started the Experiments in Art and Value series, with “Blockchain Performance” (2012), a co-production of Artistic Bokeh & Spacebank (Fran Ilich) in which 20 Ai Weiwei Sunflower Seeds have been purchased with Bitcoin and Artistic Bokeh & Société Réaliste: "Too much money" (2014). Also in 2014 i wrote the paper "Cryptocurrencies as distributed community experiments", as a chapter for the Handbook of Digital Currency - Bitcoin, Financial Instruments and Big Data. From 2014 onwards i only worked and researched on decentralisation and different blockchain technologies, and also coordinated the Apertus Open Source Cinema EU Horizon2020 project. Since 2017 i am solely working on the RIAT research agenda and coordinate publication projects and technological research and development. I am currently responsible for the research design and for the long term strategy at the RIAT Institute.

Publications (selection)

Future Cryptoeconomics Issue 1, ISSN 2617-6289, Oct.2018

Faceless Praxis in the Age of Zero Trust: Strategies of Disappearance and Distributed Pseudonymity in Art and Research in: Faceless: Re-inventing Privacy Through Subversive Media Strategies, DeGruyter, Edition Angewandte, 1st edition (June 11, 2018). ISBN-13: 978-3110525137

Forking as cultural practice: institutional governance after the DAO. Proceedings of the 23rd International Symposium on Electronic Art ISEA 2017. Manizales, Colombia

Openism: Conversations on Open Hardware. Wagner, Newman, Tarasiewicz & Wuschitz (Eds.), Edition Angewandte, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-3950414066

Cryptocurrencies as Distributed Community Experiments, in: David Lee Kuo Chuen, Handbook of Digital Currency. Tarasiewicz, Matthias and Newman, Andrew, 2015. Academic Press (3. Juli 2015)

Tarasiewicz, Matthias and Newman, Andrew, 2014. Experiments in Art and Value: Burning Bitcoin to buy Ai Weiwei, in: Runway Australian Experimental Arts, Issue #26: Money

Tarasiewicz, Matthias and Newman, Andrew, 2013. Experimental Cultures and Epistemic Spaces in Artistic Research, in Cleland, K., Fisher, L. & Harley, R. (2013) Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEA2013, Sydney.

Tarasiewicz, Matthias, 2013. Artistic Technology Research, in Wilson, M., Van Ruiten, S., SHARE Handbook for Artistic Research Education, ISBN 978-90-810357-0-5

Tarasiewicz, Matthias, 2013. Query public(s) in the next society: »Artistic Technology Research« as [dispositif] and synergetic discipline for the agency of research and development in next (media) cultures in “A Peer Reviewed Newspaper about BWPWAP”, Transmediale Berlin & Aarhus University Denmark ISSN: 2245-7593 (PRINT) ISSN: 2245-7607

Coded Cultures - New Creative Practices out of Diversity. Tarasiewicz, Russegger, Wlodkowski (Eds.), Edition Angewandte, Springer Wien New York. 2011