The KSM Art & Social Experiments Initiative is supporting artist, researcher and writer Wassim Z. Alsindi in the creation of a new body of work exploring the cultural and artistic imaginaries that have emerged around cryptography, decentralisation and peer-to-peer technologies.
For the six-month project New Cryptographic Imaginaries: from Cypherpunk to Sapphirepunk, Wassim will develop a new series of digital and physical works, alongside a series of texts exploring the concepts and imaginaries at their centre.
The project continues his long-term investigation into cryptographic culture and its evolution from the early cypherpunk movement toward newer, speculative imaginaries.
Over recent years, Wassim has developed concepts including ṣifrpunk, sufferpunk and sapphirepunk, using them as ways of thinking about the cultural and philosophical consequences of cryptographic technologies. These ideas have already appeared in his writing, lectures and collaborative projects, including the Sapphirepunk Manifesto and his 2026 essay Open Swords Software, published by Aksioma Press.
The new project moves these ideas from conceptual research into a sustained process of artistic production. The physical works will include prints on glass and wax sculptures, alongside a series of digital works. In parallel, Wassim will develop texts that expand, interrogate and contextualise the concepts embodied in the works.
Rather than treating cryptography simply as a technical subject, the project asks what kinds of symbols, narratives and cultural forms can emerge around it. It extends the cypherpunk tradition into speculative territory, examining how its ideas might mutate, persist or become strange in new technological and social contexts.
The resulting body of work will be able to move between physical and digital contexts, with the works and texts providing different entry points into the same evolving set of ideas.
Wassim Z. Alsindi artistic work spans art, philosophy, technology and experimental research. His practice is particularly concerned with what technologies produce beyond their immediate technical function: the philosophies, social structures, myths, aesthetics and unintended consequences that develop around them
He is the convener of 0xSalon, a counter-institutional collective exploring digital culture through discourse, residencies, publishing and creative practice. He holds a PhD in ultrafast experimental physics, is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Goldsmiths School of Computing, University of London, wrote for the MIT Computational Law Report, and co-founded MIT’s Cryptoeconomic Systems journal and conference series. His work has taken the form of experimental music, poetry, speculative fiction, sculpture, games, theatre, lectures and performances, and has been presented at institutions and cultural venues including ZKM, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, MIT Media Lab, Akademie der Künste, The Barbican and Unsound Festival.
https://www.wassim.xyz/