“I’m excited about creatives taking control of their future”
This interview was originally published on MORROW collective medium page
Puzzles and playfulness: Marguerite deCourcelle on the bridge between content and ownership.
Marguerite deCourcelle’s Torched H34R7S. (2015). The final part of the puzzle chain leading to the 1FLAMEN6 wallet. Within this painting she hid 4.87BTC. Coding done in collaboration with Rhea Myers
by Anna Seaman
In Shakespeare’s 1601 poem, The Phoenix and the Turtle — known to some as the first great metaphysical poem — the two protagonists die. Interpretations vary but it is assumed that the poem charts an unrealised love affair between two birds — a phoenix and a turtledove — who represent truth and beauty. Its tragic end is countered with a hopeful prayer that this ideal union will re-emerge — like a phoenix from the ashes.
When Marguerite deCourcelle aka coin_artist appropriated the poem in 2015, she created a painting depicting a chessboard upon which two fallen pieces lie and a phoenix and a turtledove are twisted together among some vines. But this was no normal painting, it was a complex puzzle and part of a series of smaller puzzles collectively called The Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto, which she devised in collaboration with Rhea Myers, a hacker, coder and another pioneering crypto artist. The painting — TORCHED H34R7S — was the final piece in the puzzle chain and its brushstrokes hid a code to a private key to the 1FLAMEN6 wallet. Before releasing the puzzle to the crypto community on the Bitcointalk forum, deCourcelle loaded the wallet with 4.87BTC worth $1400 — about half of all her assets at the time. It was not without irony that BTC was at the lowest point of a bear market in 2015 and in the following years, it emerged from those doldrums to reach new and dizzying heights — much like a phoenix rising from the ashes. When the puzzle was solved* and the wallet drained three years later, the BTC value was close to $50,000. However, the painting was more than a reflection on the possibility of new growth when truth and beauty, or crypto and art, it was an artistic ode to deCourcelle’s love for gaming and the cryptic nature of cryptography.
*Solution to The Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto 1FLAMEN6 puzzle
To solve the puzzle, one had to look carefully for symbols and codes. In the rows of flames at the edge of the canvas, a series of zeros and ones were encoded. The colour and shape of each flame made up a four-character piece of the binary series. A further part of the code was represented by six ribbons in the bottom right-hand corner. The puzzle-solver was required to link the zeros and ones together and then translate them into the private key. It was esoteric, it was fun, but it was also visionary.
“I had no idea how viral it was going to be in the beginning,” she said. “At first I hid things all across the internet and in a Minecraft server that we were hosting. It was my first dive into the community from a technical angle — and the playfulness that we unlocked blew me away.”
She also said that she was tapping into what she considered to be a very important factor about the emergence of cryptocurrency. “I saw BTC as a huge tool for artists, no matter what the medium — it was an opportunity to get rid of the middleman between people and the artists,” she said.
Marguerite deCourcelle’s Dark Wallet Puzzle (2014). Painting depicting Cody Wilson and Amir Taaki — so-called crypto anarchists and founders of Dark Wallet. Within this painting she hid 3.4BTC.
Therefore, more than simply a game, it was a commentary on the economics of art. deCourcelle admits she was influenced by Andy Warhol’s views on art as a commodity. “Warhol once said ‘if you are going to buy a painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall’ and that really stuck with me,” deCourcelle said. “Warhol also said that art is what you can get away with — in many ways it was these concepts that interested both myself and Rhea.”
In 2018, when the puzzle was finally solved, deCourcelle had co-founded Blockade Games. “The puzzles were also a tool for community building and attracting talent,” she says. So, with a community around her, she decided to do something more ambitious.
In March 2018, her team launched Pineapple Arcade, a series of crypto themed arcade games for which they remade old classic games and hid cryptocurrency prizes within them. Some of those prizes admitted players access to Neon District, a cyberpunk role playing game that was immersive and had a huge emphasis on both storytelling and art.
“Since our crypto community resonates with cyberpunk and the sci fi genre, we wanted to make the game rich and beautiful. It was gritty, edgy and colourful with active animation and active game play.”
It also spoke to the new kind of ecosystem for creatives that emerged alongside cryptocurrency and Web 3.0.
“We created a platform in which users can take their assets and have a way to interact with them and make them their own — the game was the bridge between the content creation of Web 2.0 and the ownership of web 3.0,” she said.
Marguerite deCourcelle’s ‘F473 (FATE)’ (2021) digital-born game with generative elements using HTML, CSS, React.JS, Javascript, dedicated web page and polygon smart contract
In 2021, deCourcelle teamed up with 10 other contributors to create “F473” (FATE) — a digital-born game with generative elements that enabled players to collect and use NFTs. It was auctioned at Christie’s as part of Proof of Sovereignty: A Curated NFT Sale by Lady PheOnix.
Her practice both as an artist and as a collaborative developer is to redefine the way the public engage and interact with art. She is passionate about democratizing creative expression enabling a wider audience to unlock and celebrate their unique creative talents. “The journey has been fun and organic but there is a serious undertone,” she said. “I’m very excited about the idea of artists and creatives having this opportunity to take more ownership and control over their futures.”
Marguerite deCourcelle
This editorial is part of a series of essays and interviews contextualizing MORROW collective’s {R(Evolutionaries);} project, exhibition and sale commemorating a decade of blockchain art. Launched at Art Dubai Digital 2024 and brought to market in collaboration with SuperRare and Sotheby’s.