Dimensions: Height:74.75" Width: 74.5" Depth: 1.75"

Medium: Phygital NFT accompanied by oil on canvas

Edition: 1/1

Series: The Orgasm Project

Credit line: Artist: Raghava KK

Collaborators: Abhijeet Satani | Harshit Agrawal | Artmatr Curatorial advisor - Myna Mukherjee

Artist Statement:

NFTs have expanded the digital world, enabling us to reconsider and reestablish our creative relationship with the Internet. NFTs provide the opportunity to digitize, publicize, and perpetuate any digital information. At the same time, the physical and digital world continue to meld with the development of new technologies, giving rise to transhumanist ideologies that envision a future where humans harmoniously embody both the biological and the technical.

What does this mean for the future, then? If we can tokenize any data, and our personal experiences are being turned into data more each day, where does this end? I do not answer the question “where does this end” — but I do answer where it begins. La petite mort is the result of my own exploration into what it means to tokenize the most human, most intimate, and yet most shared experience — an orgasm.

I have worked for years with neuroscientists, AI engineers, roboticists, and artists to create a process through which my brain waves during orgasm could be recorded and elaborated as a digital work of art, fabricated into a matching physical work using a 3D robotic painter, and finally tokenized for eternal commemoration on a blockchain network. La petite mort is a phygital NFT, meaning an inextricably linked physical work and digital NFT with all its genomic data inside — the multimedia and metadata from the complete creative process.

The auction at Sotheby's will allow the winning bidder to own the result of my exploration and take the first step into this open question: Where does this end?

• Raghava KK, 2021