Beeple Studios
The Ongoing Story of the First Human Born in the Metaverse
About the Artwork
I am excited to explore concepts through this artwork that tap into the full potential of the medium of digital art in a way that has never been done with its unique potential to dynamically change over time. This artwork allows the ability to remotely and seamlessly change the video in both the physical sculpture and NFT, with the message and meaning of this piece continuing to evolve over the course of my life.
A traditional work of art is more akin to a finite statement, frozen in time at the moment it was completed. With the ability to update this artwork, it is more akin to an ongoing conversation that I can continue to add new meaning and context to over time. Just as the virtual person depicted in the artwork is on a journey, this artwork itself is a journey whose end is unclear even to me.
The Journey
HUMAN ONE is an evolving narrative told across chapters. Each chapter marks a new phase of the artwork's journey — a shift in landscape, theme, and meaning — exhibited at world-class institutions across the globe.
This opening chapter traces the beginning of HUMAN ONE's journey through a shifting landscape of art historical references, from Dalí's melting clocks to Warhol's soup cans to Giacometti's Walking Man. It frames the explorer as a figure born out of the canon of modern image-making, carrying forward the visual language and cultural memory that shaped the present moment.
This chapter places the explorer within the ruins of the war in Ukraine, moving through a ghost city marked by destruction, displacement, and loss. Torn flags, shattered environments, and holographic traces of fleeing civilians turn the landscape into a fragmented memory of conflict and survival.
This chapter introduces a vibrant, ceremonial landscape in which colorful beams of energy erupt from the ground as a nod to the invention of fireworks and the symbolic charge of the Year of the Rabbit. It marks the first site-responsive evolution of the artwork, expanding HUMAN ONE into a work that can absorb new cultural contexts while continuing its endless journey.
This chapter deepens the sense that the explorer is breaking down, with more of its body overtaken by machinery as the boundary between human and machine begins to collapse. It presents HUMAN ONE as a figure in visible transformation, caught in a state of decay, instability, and irreversible change.
This chapter imagines the opening phase of a future war between humans and AI, placing the explorer within a landscape shaped by long-standing fears of conflict between creator and machine. Glitching code and technological disturbance overtake the environment, turning the journey into a meditation on control, survival, and the mythologies surrounding the singularity.
This chapter surrounds the traveler with an intensely colorful, visually exuberant environment inspired by Japanese culture, where beauty, spectacle, and ornament unfold in every direction. Against this vibrant world, the explorer remains burdened by its increasingly damaged body, creating a tension between external wonder and internal deterioration.
Where It's Been
HUMAN ONE turns toward the feedback loop between human behavior and machine learning, exploring a world of prompts, rewards, and corrections that suggests humanity itself is becoming optimized for the machine.
View Details →
Semi Artificial Rainbow — an intensely colorful environment inspired by Japanese culture, set against the explorer's increasingly damaged body.
View Details →
Tales from a Synthetic Future — Beeple's first-ever solo museum exhibition.
View Details →
HUMAN ONE's U.S. museum debut in Bentonville, Arkansas.
View Details →
Beeple's first sculptural work exhibited in Asia.
View Details →
International museum preview in dialogue with Francis Bacon.
View Details →