Years ago I had the idea of engraving a BIP-0039 key phrase on a steel plate and encasing it in a ceramic sphere in such a way that the key phrase could not be surreptitiously read; the sphere would have to be broken in order to remove the key phrase. The entropy of the glaze firing encasing and attesting to the continued integrity of the private key, itself a form of entropy, strongly appealed to my sense of aesthetics. And, I thought, if the artifact were visually pleasing, or at least interesting, I could reasonably hope for it to continue to survive on its aesthetic merits for some time after my passing.
I had not yet soured entirely on the concept of cryptocurrency when I had this idea, so my initial intent was dual: first, I essentially wanted to make an intergenerational cryptocurrency piggy bank. The original and primary use of BIP-0039 was and has been to create hierarchically derivable cryptocurrency wallets/private keys. So it would be natural for me to put some amount of cryptocurrency on the wallet, for it to either grow into some significant amount or to waste away into a mere curiosity.
Second, I wanted to make an intergenerational confessional. Any secrets encrypted to a PGP key derived from the BIP-0039 phrase would be unreadable until the sphere was broken. The encrypted secrets could be stored anywhere, but I would personally offer a storage service for anyone who trusted me sufficiently. (I could have, after all, retained a copy of the key phrase before encasing it.)
A group for the governance of the sphere would have to be assembled from the set of people interested in participating in the experiment. They would be able to vote on the destruction of the sphere for the recovery of the key, and for the addition of people to their ranks; at the death of the last member, the sphere would be passed down to a person or group previously agreed upon by the remaining members, to be destroyed and the secrets released (decrypted) at their discretion.
The dual nature of the sphere as a container of currency and a container of secrets interested me as a potential source of tension. At what point would the value of the currency inside outweigh the value of the secrets inside? But this seemed like it would be a curse; better as a movie or short story than as a lived experience. This was enough on its own to dissuade me from including any cryptocurrency, but then I wound up souring on the whole concept entirely.
The first thing that turned me against cryptocurrency was the way that it has unfolded and abandoned the values of the first adopters over the years. I know I'm not alone in this feeling. While there is, in theory, value to a form of exchange that can't be blocked, in practice it's just followed the logic of capital and helped to re-entrench the ruling classes. I want to stress that this is not a function of having "insufficiently righteous" people at the helm. This is a fundamental and unavoidable flaw in cryptocurrency itself. You cannot make an unaccountable currency and expect it to do anything except strengthen unaccountable power brokers and worsen inequity. Observing this has been instrumental to my political education and has helped push me further to the left. I regret the time I spent learning this lesson, but I'm glad to have learned it.
The second thing has been the utter disregard for environmental damage from most corners of the cryptocurrency world. As it has revealed itself to be just another tool of the capital class, this shouldn't have been surprising, but I'd hoped that the people building everything, the people at least nominally interested in the technological side of things, would have been willing to discard old and inefficient approaches for newer, more efficient ones. Instead there has been little more than doubling down on cult psychology and chasing after the approval of the very same people that cryptocurrency was meant to depose. There have been half-hearted attempts at greenwashing from within that scene, but those fall over under even the slightest bit of scrutiny. Fundamentally, the proof-of-work darling of that world is an environmental disaster, and every last coin that gains any traction does so, and must do so, by further entrenching the world's worsening inequity.
While the cryptocurrency part of it was pretty quickly discarded, I did at least continue consider using it as an intergenerational confessional for a while longer. At the very least, it would make for an interesting art installation. I wound up discarding that idea as well, however. On the one hand, it couldn't be used for anything serious because the "secret holders" were necessarily putting all their trust in whoever had physical possession of the sphere, as well as myself. (I could have retained a copy of the key phrase!) At the same time, I couldn't prevent people from using it seriously, which could wind up having the side effect of putting people in actual danger if I, or whatever sphere-holder, proved unable to assure the integrity of the key phrase.
The sphere itself could wind up likewise becoming a source of serious tension and strife, since secrets do have value. It had the potential to occasion conflict between people who wanted to get at what others had encrypted and those who wanted their secrets kept. The whole concept was rickety and dangerous, I decided. Really, the best protection for secrets is to construct a world where secrets need not be kept, and while that sort of world may be forever out of reach, a higher form of art would be to at least try to reach for it, rather than to fetishize (and endanger!) the keeping of secrets as I was in the process of doing.
I did end up constructing the artifact, however. While I pondered all these things and slowly wound my way to my conclusions, I reasoned that I could at least make an initial version to at least test the concept. I threw a bowl and fired it with a steel plate of the type I was planning to use, with some of the steel shavings I planned on including to frustrate any attempts at x-raying. The steel shavings did stick to the bowl and they didn't stick to the plate, so I continued on to making a sphere.
After some tests with engraving and reading about other people's tests regarding the legibility of stamping and engraving after exposure to high heat, I wound up stamping a key phrase on a circular steel plate. I threw two bowls on the wheel, leaving a foot on one of them for stability. Then I filled the footed bowl with steel shavings, placed the plate on top, piled more steel shavings high over it, and sealed the other bowl over the top with a bit of slip. The only way to get the key would be to break the vessel. Any attempts to replace the vessel with a copy would be frustrated (I thought) by the nondeterministic nature of glazing and firing ceramic (though I've since learned that there are artists up to the task of this sort of replication).
I'm not a great potter. My attempt at a sphere wound up being more like an egg; fine enough for a proof-of-concept, though, and one which I won't be pursuing further anyway. My plan now is to break the egg, empty it, recycle the steel, and then put it back together with lacquer as a testament to the ways my understanding has changed over the course of the years. I think if a piece shapes you as you shape it, it deserves to at least be honored privately as art, however rough the end result may be.