"THE FUTURE OF THE PAST" BY MISHA MOST

In 1968, Philip K. Dick published "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". The book narrates a story of android hunters who distinguish themselves from humans using empathy tests. It was later adapted to a cult cyberpunk film, "Blade Runner". Stories about androids are always stories about what it really means to be a human. Some ideas about the future that were expressed in science fiction and scientific hypotheses of the 1960-70s have already become a reality in the early XXI century. Yet some fundamental questions remain unanswered. Like, will we turn into androids when Metaverse comes? Will we live in a world of the Spatial Internet where the physical reality will be indistinguishable from the augmented one? What we know for sure by 2021 is that museums will exhibit more and more works created not by men, but by robots.

Misha Most stands as one of the pioneers in this field. Since the early 2000s he has permanently studied the future through his urban art practice. He is the author of the world's first fully programmable flying graffiti-drone and the largest public art in Europe according to the Guinness World Records as of the date this Wall was minted. A human turning into an android is the first mural of his prominent series "The Future of the Past". The mural is dedicated to the perception of the future and is executed on the facade of a residential building in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Thanks to the NFT technology, the inaugural work of the series has acquired a digital form and is immortalized as a part of the very first drop of Urban Files.