Chimerical Intelligence Lab @ ARTeCHÓ

On 12 June 2024 the Chimerical Intelligence Lab took part in the ARTeCHÓ Learning Experience at WIELS in Brussels, a day bringing together art, technology and philosophy to look behind crypto art, blockchain and NFTs. The event was organised by Startup Europe Regions Network (SERN) as part of ARTeCHÓ.

About ARTeCHÓ

ARTeCHÓ (Art, Economy & Technology) is a European initiative by five institutions: Startup Europe Regions Network (Belgium), Baltan Laboratories (Netherlands), FZC-Etopia Center for Art & Technology (Spain), Frankfurt School Blockchain Center (Germany) and MEET Digital Culture Center (Italy). It is co-funded by the European Union through the Creative Europe programme.

At its core was a seven-month fellowship for 15 artists and designers, combining online sessions, mentoring and residencies: a kick-off at MEET in Milan in May 2023 and a two-week residency at Etopia in Zaragoza in November 2023. The programme set out to build a peer-learning community around crypto art, blockchain and NFT marketplaces, exploring these decentralised technologies while staying critical of their economic and ecological implications.

Cnidarian Economics

The lab's connection to ARTeCHÓ runs through Cnidarian Economics, the project Ianis Dobrev developed as one of the 15 fellows, and one of the lab's ongoing topics. It asks how the intelligence of financial systems could be redesigned by looking at ecosystems rather than at the human brain: instead of an AI built on short-term, self-interested profit, a “chimera intelligence” that borrows from the many ways other species live and organise, individually, socially, as swarms and as colonies. Read more about the project in Baltan Laboratories' residency page.

Further reading

• ARTeCHÓ: Investigating Decentralized Action in Art, the programme's publication (Baltan Laboratories & ARTeCHÓ, 2025), including work by Ianis Dobrev
• artechoproject.eu, the ARTeCHÓ project website
• The original event listing on Eventbrite