CV06 | Raiden Apartment
"CryptoVoxels applies the universal logic of economic society in a pixelated world constructed by rough particles."
Different from other virtual land platforms, CryptoVoxels focuses on creating the concept of virtual real estate transactions (which is also the main selling point of CV’s promotion to its investors). In order to further give virtual land more realistic attributes, artist Xie Linyou built a temporary building for lease on the virtual land held by RAIDEN. He plays the role of a real estate contractor, promoting his development of a secondary virtual space called Thunder Apartments to other artists and users of the platform through over-embellished advertisements.
In this way, the basic transaction mode of CryptoVoxels, which only stays in virtual land sale, takes a step forward and reproduces the interest chain in real estate development: Developers at different levels maximize the potential value of space within a limited plot, and through layers of contracting and distribution, construct the land transaction rules that we are familiar with today (development contracting – sale/lease – transfer/sublease).
At the same time, on the basis of the most consistent with the laws of capitalist reality, “RAIDEN APARTMENT” challenges the original institutional function and publicity of lightning House, and further completes the commercialization attribute of “RAIDEN APARTMENT” based on the secondary leasing behavior extended by virtual real estate.
In addition to revealing the reality of the separation between the simple original intention of “decentralization” of the current blockchain technology and the status quo of “transaction centralization” of the capital market, the practice of “RAIDEN APARTMENT” also reveals Xie Linyou’s attitude toward decentralization of power in the virtual space: Technological iterations have not brought about positive systemic change, and the meta-universes and virtual utopias built on them are constantly pulling us back to our current social reality and heralding the latest form of late capitalism.
Guided Tour
Artist
Xie Linyou graduated from the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany, and later from the Royal College of Art in the United Kingdom, where he received a Master’s degree in experimental animation. Most of his works are metaphors for group phenomena in the context of The Times, and he is good at splitting and recombining existing concepts through 3D images to achieve the purpose of blurring boundaries and giving them new meanings.
About the curator
Yunyao Chen lives and works in Shanghai and Beijing. He graduated from the Department of Digital Media at Beijing Normal University and received a master’s degree in contemporary Art Curation at the Royal College of Art in the United Kingdom. His curatorial practice and research focus on spatial politics in the context of urbanization, the publicity of digital media, and the digital humanistic landscape in the public environment.