02 / EXHIBITION & PERFORMANCEAn opening.
An opening.
A life. A finale.
A work unsealed in public. A gallery that keeps it until it expires. An audience returning for the last block.
Imagine the exhibitionA LIVING COLLECTION / 420 WORKSINSCRIBED ON BITCOIN · 2025
What if art
could expire?
Forever on-chain.
Only briefly alive.
420 generative works, each with a life of its own.
The collector chooses when it begins.
Bitcoin keeps the time.
EVERY BLOCK CHANGES SOMETHING.
96 open276 sealed46 expired2 immortal
THE FIRST SPARKFROM THE DIARY
APRIL 2025
APRIL 2025
“I want the work to beLEMONHAZE · APRIL 29, 2025
more human and expire
just like we do.”
Before BEST BEFORE, there was a question about the time we have left. Then a message, a conversation, and a summer of making something that could live—and end.
Begin with the diarySome are waiting to begin. Some are living. Some have already ended. A few never will.
Explore the ledger Lifespans, activations & recordsReading the collection…
01 / THE PROCESSFinding a way
Finding a way
to make it alive.
A summer of painting with code, from early texture experiments to the living works in the collection.
Explore the processLEMONHAZE × ORDINALLY
“The irreplaceable value
of the time we have in our life.”
Before the works,
there was a conversation.
Follow the conversations and experiments that shaped BEST BEFORE, from the first idea through a summer of making.
DECEMBER 2024 — SEPTEMBER 2025PRELUDE + SIX PARTS
First steps
Hello sir! Hope you’re doing great. I’m reaching out cuz I’m flirting with an idea/concept for a new work that would require chain interactivity (which is beyond my depth), and so I was wondering if you could be the right person (complementary) to make this thing come to life with me?
While I’m still in the very early stages of brainstorming and iterating on the details of this potential project, here’s a brief overview of the general idea: “Best Before” (temporary title): Artworks with a date of expiration. Quite literally.
Each piece (inscription) has its own expiration date in Bitcoin block height, randomly determined at birth (mint/inscribe) within a given set of parameters.
Once expired, the original visual (artwork) should change to display “EXPIRED” on a plain black background – and nothing else – aka the artwork is now gone, and all we see is that plain 'EXPIRED'.
My goal here is to explore the contrast between Bitcoin’s promise of permanence and the reality that we, humans, have an expiration date (death) embedded in our DNA from birth (even if that date is unknown)... Permanence vs. Impermanence. example of artwork outputs (image below)
I have quite a few more things in my mind already, but these are the big lines to give you an idea of the technical work required.
Timeline? I'm flexible but aiming to bring this to term sometimes during the summer late-July-ish... I haven't talked about this project with anyone yet - other than you, here, in this message.
And if it's not your thing, not possible, or any reasons, I will totally understand and respect the decision - but still feel free to point me in another potential direction if you know of one.. (ex: Lifo was the 2nd on my list to reach out after you) Thanks in advance.
Cheers.
-Lemon
Love the concept. With some flexibility on timeline like you say this would be interesting for me - the next 2-3 weeks are already really busy for me, but for a launch in July or so it should work. Let me think through the technical work a bit, but at first glance it sounds doable and conceptually very interesting.
Hey! How are things looking on your end? I'd have capacity starting from next week to start digging into this. Just talking to Danny, exciting to see you in the Artist Circle...
Hey mate! Things have been good - a bit busy with making my new website hopefully I can get things to work "fine enough" to deploy a first mini version this weekend and be ready to focus on this next week - if anything maybe from Wednesday if things dont work out as planned for my site ahah But yeah, next week Ill be good to put my mind officially on this!
No rush, Wednesday is good for me. If you want, we could have a call to kick things off? But we can also do things async, both are fine for me.
Lets make a first intro call yes - but then we can work async its fine. I’m in Vietnam UTC+7