Billionaire Bots and the Art of Digital Excretion at Art Basel

Mike Winkelmann enters the spotlight of Art Basel Miami Beach with a pack of metal mutts that combine the uncanny valley with a biting punch at contemporary power brokers. Regular Animals, a squad of eight robotic canines wandering a gated enclosure in the fair’s new Zero 10 digital art section, was launched this week by the digital artist from Charleston, South Carolina, known as Beeple. Each has a lifelike silicone head sculpted after a titan of industry or creativity, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and even two versions of Winkelmann himself.

These aren’t idle statues; they cruise the room, take photos of the crowd, and occasionally raise their hind legs to release rolls of printed diplomas from their undersides. These certificates serve as certificates of authenticity, complete with QR codes that link to NFTs, all while the dogs’ rear displays display “poop mode” in bold letters.

Landon Meier, a sculptor, helped create the heads, which capture every wrinkle and grin in hyperreal detail. Musk’s version glares forward with his trademark focus, ready to send a tweet from the kennel. Bezos looks like he’s calculating shipping rates for the apocalypse, while Zuckerberg’s expression suggests unending scrolling sessions. The artist portraits offer a layer of self-reflection: Picasso’s splintered stare, Warhol’s cold detachment, and Winkelmann’s own replicated features, one grinning, the other wide-eyed. The complete lot, priced at $100,000 each in editions of two and including an artist’s proof, sold out during the VIP preview on December 4. Only the Bezos bot remains off the market, a deliberate decision that emphasizes its position in the commentary.

Using animatronic joints, they shuffle and pivot across the enclosure floor, resembling a pack of interested hounds. Recharge stations are nearby, because even wealthy bots require downtime. Visitors lean in close, phones out, while the dogs halt to take in their surroundings. Built-in cameras input images into onboard AI, which then reinterprets the scenes using lenses based on each figure’s history.

Warhol’s work could flatten into repetitious pop emblems silk-screened in electric colors. The tech trio’s outputs are lean algorithmic: Musk’s in stark black-and-white blueprints, Zuckerberg’s as glitchy metaverse grids, and Bezos’ as massive, efficient networks. Each print comes with a funny label that reads: “100% pure GMO-free, organic dogsh*t coming from a medium adult dog anus.” Scan the barcode on select ones to receive a free NFT memento, which will be recorded on the blockchain for three years until the bot returns to basic mobility.

Winkelmann created this setup to explore how a few voices shape our daily world. Musk and Zuckerberg develop the algorithms that select news feeds and search results, whereas Bezos’ enterprise provides on-demand entertainment. Artists like Picasso and Warhol formerly shaped culture with canvas and repetition; today, silicon successors do so with servers. The canines exemplify that handover, with their excretions serving as tangible outputs of processed perception.
[Source]