I’m interested in the different structures that sit inside the word identity. Jack Butcher’s KYC asks the collector to construct and claim a synthetic face. Identity emerges through selection: a generated person is adjusted, chosen, and then tied back to an established public identity through verification on X. In that sense, the work performs its own inverted version of KYC—the face is synthetic, but the act of claiming it still depends on proving who is making the choice. Sean Bonner’s KYP shifts that logic in a way I find especially interesting. Instead of beginning with a generic synthetic bust, he brings an identity he has already chosen to inhabit—his CryptoPunk—into the same visual language. The distinction feels important to me. One work asks: which face will you choose, and claim as yours? The other asks: what happens when a chosen identity is translated again? That overlaps closely with questions I’m exploring in Surfacing, where identity is also passed between systems: networked.art glyphs are translated through SelSurfTen, while I’m separately investigating what happens when culturally established identities like CryptoPunks are subjected to the same process. I collected KYP because it sits directly inside that territory: identity not as a fixed image, but as something selected, performed, inherited, verified, and repeatedly translated. I’m grateful Sean made this intervention. It gives me another way to think about questions I keep returning to in my own work. 🌴yson.eth
KYP
by Sean Bonner