🇫🇷 Une documentation en français est également disponible.
Since 2021, Prenez Place ! has been questioning the subjects of Money, Commons and Democracy through debates conceived as an artistic, scientific and civic gesture.
Invoking by nature a collective intelligence and a multidisciplinary approach, the project initiates a new phase in the summer of 2022: the B side.
The B side, in its nomadic, open form, is a series of itinerant debates-performances that will take place, initially, this summer 2022, on squares, marketplaces, parking lots, in hospitals, train stations, forests, public/private/open places.
These debates-performances will integrate installations, dance, music, singing,... and a Blockchain module.
The objectives are numerous. To turn the citizen debate into an object and an artistic act. To bring out a new democratic space, a new form of agora, of human deliberation. To go beyond the systematic ranking of speech with the help of a more decentralized network of voices, supporting the emergence of deliberation. To make alive the possibility of another weave, the possibility of another understanding and other practices of democracy and therefore of our relationships with others, with other species of living beings.
Blockchain and Web3 technologies, open and decentralized, question in themselves the subjects of Money, Commons and Democracy. In Prenez Place ! we also use them as a support for an incremental and indelible memory of the deliberations. A collective narrative is constructed from the conjunction of the debates-performances and builds its own memory.
Audio recordings of these debates - in their entirety, as well as sectioned into fragments - are made available on these networks, as collections of non-fungible tokens (NFT). Time-stamped, certified, an unfalsifiable link unites these records and supports the creation of an open narrative.
While these NFTs exist as such, they can never be owned. After their creation, any purchase or transfer will necessarily burn the token. This rule is written into the smart contract by allowing the transfer of a token only to an address that no one controls. Thus, each token is burnt on the Blockchain as a last performative gesture of creation of a Common.
During the debates-performances, a unique weaving is also made using a Jacquard loom. A piece of information present on the blockchain and uniquely identifying each debate is used as a random seed to design a unique punch card, thus responsible for a fragment of the tapestry.
This project uses various Web3 technologies, following a general approach that can be described as Protocols, Not Platforms. Indeed, the solution interacts directly with decentralized networks - for storage or certification for example - without ever requiring a central server.
- The NFT contract used is formally compatible with the ERC-721 standard in its interface. It has been edited among other things to make the tokens burnable, creator of Common.
- The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) allows to store and exchange the metadata associated to the tokens - audio recordings, visualizations,...
- The Filecoin blockchain via the NFT.Storage service ensures the permanence of the storage and the availability of this data.
- Another smart contract is used as a simpler Store to logically centralize a list of keywords to be recognized during the debates.
- Different sub-graphs on TheGraph have been developed to index and facilitate the exploration of the information thus stored on the blockchain.
- Finally, a graphical client has been developed to assist in the recording of debates and the automatic creation of new tokens.
Below we expose with more details the main features of this graphical client. 👇
By clicking on Start a new debate, the initialization starts. We start by declaring the location of the day's debate.
When the rest of the device, including audio configuration, is ready, click on the button Start Debate to start recording.
During performance, the screen allows on-the-fly, when keywords are spoken, to create audio fragments . In practice, if the keyword decentralization is spoken during the debate, for example, one just has to click on the icon next to the word decentralization in the list - one may use the text search field to find it - and an audio clip of the few seconds before the click is recorded.
When the debate is over, click on End debate - you will be asked to confirm - to close the recording of the entire debate.
The History of Debates button logically allows to explore all past debates.
Finally, the last entry of the main screen allows to edit the list of keywords that will be accessible during the recording.
At the bottom right of the screen, a button allows to access the settings of the application.
| Description | Exemple | |
|---|---|---|
rpcPath |
RPC endpoint of the blockchain hosting the NFT contracts. | https://polygon-rpc.com |
ethPrivateKey |
Private key to create NFTs. It must control the collections used and have enough ether to support the transaction fees. |
0x0000..0000dead |
ipfsApiToken |
API token for NFT.Storage service. | xxx.yyy.zzz |
debatesNftAddress |
Address of the smart contract for debates' NFTs. | 0x6AC3F32051D82dd76Df9a1C1C6db44b549135b86 |
fragmentsNftAddress |
Address of the smart contract for fragments' NFTs. | 0x64F873c5fdc1cE5d61Fd8db2c0d37894C88f1349 |
⚠ Use this project at your own risk. This experimental program is available on an "as is" basis, without warranty of any kind, express or implied. The authors expressly disclaim any and all warranties including, without limitation any warranty or representation whatsoever regarding the operation of the program.
Smart contracts have been deployed on Polygon and may be on sale on Open Sea.
- Debates collection:
0xc6c4bbDd9a7a437dfcCBde2076F6eBa397A2eDf6. - Fragments collection:
0x4C553840bBbC70e37F73Bb4e985749Aa63Eb1102.
During the rehearsals of the tour, other collections were used.
- Early debates collection:
0x6AC3F32051D82dd76Df9a1C1C6db44b549135b86.- Early fragments collection:
0x64F873c5fdc1cE5d61Fd8db2c0d37894C88f1349.