Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and Warhol — all in dog-pooping form?
A truly unique art installation has gone viral at this year’s Art Basel as it kicks off the annual event in Miami, Florida.
Skin-colored robot dogs with Madame Tussauds-caliber wax heads of famous billionaires and artists — including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso — walk around a pen and “poop” photographs in a work titled “Regular Animals,” by Charleston-based Beeple Studios.
“The picture that they’re taking, they sort of reinterpret how they see the world,” Mike Winkelmann, a.k.a. Beeple, said in an interview posted to TikTok. “So it has artists, and it also has Elon and Zuckerberg.”
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“And increasingly, these technologists and people who control these algorithms are deciding what we see, how we see the world. And then I’m in there — I just throw myself in there,” he added, pointing out how his head is also on a robot dog.
The robot dogs roam, sit and bump into each other, and every once in a while, their backs blink with the words “poop mode” before producing a digital picture to be left on the floor.
“Thanks, I wasn’t planning on sleeping tonight anyway,” one TikTok user wrote.
“Those are almost as unsettling as the actual people,” another person said on the platform.
“This is genius and terrifying at the same time,” a user on Art Basel’s Instagram account commented.
“Is this real or AI?” one person questioned.
“The reaction to Beeple’s work reflects his unique ability to ask incisive questions about emerging technologies that stop viewers in their tracks,” Zero 10 curator Eli Scheinman told Fox Digital. “‘Regular Animals’ articulates one of the core objectives of this new global initiative — to reconsider how artists working in digital environments can bring their concepts and ideas to life across robotics, sculpture, painting, print making, generative systems, and fully digital works.”
Winkelmann told CNN that the robots were designed to cease operating after three years, with the primary function of recording pictures and storing them on the blockchain.
Art Basel confirmed to Fox News Digital that each edition of the “Regular Animals” robot has sold out, each one for $100,000.
The installation can be found at the Zero 10 exhibition, “a curated space dedicated to art of the digital era,” according to the event website.
“With Zero 10, we’re aiming to give digital-era practices a considered curatorial context and create space for dialogue between new and existing audiences, while helping to nurture a sustainable ecosystem around them for artists, galleries and collectors alike,” Art Basel Fairs global director and chief artistic director Vincenzo de Bellis told Fox News Digital.
Beeple’s claim to art fame came during the non-fungible token (NFT) craze in 2021, when his NFT artwork “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” sold for more than $69 million at Christie’s, instantly making him one of the most valuable living artists.
Art Basel Miami Beach runs from Dec. 5 through 7 and brings together 283 leading galleries from 43 countries. The art fair is known to attract the world’s wealthiest each year, regularly closing seven-figure art acquisitions.
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