⟵   Mine Your own Business

Mine Your Own Business, 2018 – ongoing. Microcomputers, live data, found objects, displays, batteries and wires, dimensions variable.

Emerging in Puerto Rico after Hurricane María in 2017, amid a speculative influx of cryptocurrency businesses, these networked contemporary still lifes initially incorporated functioning Bitcoin miners scattered among discarded objects associated with consumption, performance, and pleasure. Deliberately using minimal energy and computational power, the miners were consequently barely “successful.” The works have since expanded to incorporate personal data, global statistics, financial markets, carbon trading, and the valuations of military and energy corporations alongside crude oil prices. Embedded among the residues of everyday consumption, these systems of data and valuation expose the material infrastructures and extractive relations underlying promises of technological decentralization and immaterial progress.

Mine Your Own Business, 2018. Microcomputers, live data, found objects, electroluminescent LED panels, batteries and wires, dimensions variable. Image: Raquel Pérez Puig

Mine Your Own Business (8), 2022. Microcomputers, live data, found objects, electroluminescent LED panels, batteries and wires, dimensions variable. Installation view, forking paths exhibition at max goelitz, Munich. Images: Dirk Tacke

Mine Your Own Business (8), 2022. Installation view, Operational Excellence exhibition at the CCS Bard Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. 

PersonaDataMine 002, disposable coffee cup, microcontroller display with Google ads targeted ad categories, 9 volt battery, 13,2 x 24 x 8 cm. Image: Raquel Pérez Puig

BTC Medalla, 2018. Aluminum beer can, live bitcoin cryptocurrency miner, 9 volt battery, 12 x 17 x 14 cm.

Rssi -66 dBm Ping Time 102ms (initial) Hash Rate ~ 4.55/s  Hashes Computed 2910/10m Location San Juan, Puerto Rico

PersonalDataMine 003, 2019, from the series Mine Your Own Business. Credit card, microcontroller display with Facebook targeted ad preferences, 9v battery, 21 x 13,2 x 3 cm. Image: Raquel Pérez Puig

Relentless.com, 2020. Online marketplace gift box, video rental VHS case, microcontroller with top net worth live display. 12.5 x 19 x 10 cm.

PersonalDataMine 004, 2019. Water Bottle, microcontroller display with market segmentation, 9 volt battery, 21 x 10 x 6 cm.

Marketvalue 005, 2019. Energy drink, live cryptocurrency market value display, 9 volt battery, 32.4 x 10.4 x 8 cm. Installation view, Futuro Modular exhibition at Rachel Uffner, New York.

Mine Your Own Business (Not Consent; Concealment), 2019. Microcomputers, live data, found objects, batteries and wires, 24 x 30 x 10 cm. Installation view, The Scaleability Project exhibition at A.I.R., New York.

Mine Your Own Business (Rigged), 2022. Energy drinks cans, microcomputers, live data (top net worth, cryptocurrency pairs ticker, bitcoin miner), wires. 30 x 26 x 23 cm.

Mine Your Own Business (Still life with coconuts), 2023. Coconut water cans, microcomputers, live data—bitcoin miner, random miner, wires. 30 x 26 x 23 cm.