In 2011 I wrote a system poem. In 2024 I inscribed it into the Bitcoin blockchain.
In 2025 I finished a photographic work, ICE | July | 1982, built around William Gibson’s concept of Black ICE: the cryptographic membrane that, in the novel, wraps data against intrusion.
This page is an attempt to pull those four dates into a single thread: a short piece of writing, followed by a few closer readings, in addition to two interpretations of the cyberpunk aesthetic.
interpretants / flow / rhythmically
phases / infer / conclusively
conscience / projects / vertically
—
walk through / assimilate / authenticate
dichotimise / diurnally / referentiate
refer / transfer / illuminate
—
The first poem – intepretans, phases, conscience – would theoretically generate 216 distinct full-poem variants (3! × 3! × 3!) if the noun phrases were harmonized to a uniform number, whether singular or plural, in an adverb-last configuration, and 216 in an adverb-first configuration.
As it stands, the poem is a machine that can only “run” in 12 grammatically congruent configurations before agreement breaks down.
Inscription #74857184
The combined poems was inscribed into the blockchain as ordinal 74857184 (links to ordinals.com).
William Gibson and Cyberpunk Aesthetics
The image is titled ICE | July | 1982, and the caption calls it “William Gibsonian Black ICE.”
ICE stands for Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics – the defensive software that wraps corporate data in Gibson’s cyberspace, rendered visually as shifting walls of light and shadow in what was termed a consensual hallucination.
Black ICE is the lethal variety: countermeasures that don’t just block the intruder but kill them, feeding neural damage back through the deck into the body of the cowboy [hacker] trying to crack the system.
So the image below is doing something specific. It is not decoration. It is a visual analogue for what the bitcoin inscription does to the poem.
The text has been wrapped in a protective membrane, in a sense, and the membrane in this case is the Bitcoin blockchain: cryptographic, distributed, effectively unbreakable by the standards of any single attacker, there’s a general consensus that quantum computers might change that.
The dark, crumpled, vaguely liquid surface in the image reads as the kind of thing William Gibson was reaching for in 1984 when he described ICE: something you can almost see through, something with depth, something that moves and refuses to resolve into a clean shape.
The date in the title of the image, 1982, predates the book’s publication by two years and sits squarely in the period Gibson himself was drafting it – a private nod to the moment the idea was forming, rather than the moment it landed.
What ties the whole gesture together is that Gibson’s ICE and a blockchain inscription are solving the same problem from opposite directions.
ICE protects data from being read. An Ordinals inscription protects data from being erased.
Both rely on cryptography. Both depend on a distributed substrate rather than a single vault. Both are, in their way, a late-twentieth-century answer to the old question of how you keep something – a secret, a poem, a name – intact against time and against other people.
Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Permanence
Permanence and impermanence are a recurring theme in poetry, my favorite two being Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 18′ and William Wordsworth’s ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal’.
Storing for Eternity?
System Poetry and Linguistics
In 2011, I wrote a series of short “system poems” composed of three to five lines, with words connected both paradigmatically (along the axis of selection) and syntagmatically (along the axis of combination).
The work was inspired by the tradition of structural linguistics, for example, Roman Jakobson’s efforts to link Saussure’s linguistic structures with cognitive operations.
The framework made it possible to generate at least twenty distinct lines from the same basic structure.
At the time, I didn’t think of it as generative art, but I can see the parallels now, even though the term “generative” is usually associated with visual art.
Sun, 2026
In 2026 I returned to the same machine. Sun: A Triptych for the Solar Eclipse is timed to the total eclipse crossing continental Europe in August, the first totality visible there since 1999. The eclipse belongs to Saros 126, an orbital family of seventy-two eclipses unfolding between 1179 and 2459.
The 2026 grid is three nouns, three verbs, four adverbs, doubled by syntax. Three times three times four times two is seventy-two. One linguistic variant for each cosmic event in the cycle, across thirteen centuries.
The fit is the point. The 2011 poem ran in twelve grammatically congruent configurations before agreement broke down — the noun column mixed plural with mass-noun singular, and the machine stalled. The 2026 grid regularises to plural across the noun row. Every column is internally consistent. The machine runs.
What the later poem gains in tightness it gives up in reach. The 2011 nouns — interpretants, phases, conscience — name three different orders of phenomenon: a sign-theoretic term from Peirce, a term from physics, a term from moral psychology. A reader has to bridge them. The 2026 nouns — apertures, auguries, apparitions — are three modes of one event: something appearing through an opening. Sonically bound by the triple a-, thematically sealed.
The earlier poem is, I’d argue, semantically richer. The later one is grammatically cleaner. The relation between them is not replacement but revision: a fifteen-year experiment in what a small grid of words can be made to do, and what it has to give up to do it.
One word in the later grid does not belong to the system.
Now is the only deictic — a word whose meaning is fixed not by linguistic convention but by the moment of its utterance. It appears in eighteen of the seventy-two variants. Fifty-four can be read from anywhere. Eighteen require someone present. The grid splits, at exactly one quarter of its outputs, into the readable-from-anywhere and the readable-only-from-here.
The 2011 poem stayed in the register of analysis throughout. The 2026 poem lets a body into the room.
Inscription Data
Inscription number: #74,857,184
Inscription ID: 8898f1b3ed9fd16c476bc34ee9e778debec4b9a949…eab5b0i0
Owner: bc1qrjw0…anh9eqlq
Content size: 262 bytes
Sat number: 492,655,752,995,728
Creation date: Aug 24, 2024, 5:18 PM (1 year ago)
Creation transaction: 8898f1b3…62eab5b0
Creation block: 858,264
Poem inscribed into the blockchain
Content of the poem
Thematically, the poem is not about bitcoin, nor was it originally written for the medium of ordinals, as the technology wasn’t available in 2011.
The focus is on ensuring a degree of permanence for the poem by burning it into the bitcoin blockchain.
Prior Use of the Bitcoin Blockchain for Art Projects
Bitcoin Ordinals was used by Chinese artist Yue Minjun for his work, The Human Collection, in May 2024. This collection utilized Ordinals for storing metadata such as titles, descriptions, and mantras.
In his art, Yue Minjun reinterprets significant historical and cultural events, including the moon landing, Woodstock, and Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.
His collection is considered the first major contemporary art project on the Bitcoin blockchain. As the saying goes, the street finds its own uses for things – a phenomenon now extending into the world of art and technological infrastructure.
Etymological glossary
Assimilate – Latin ad- (“to”) + similis (“like”); absorb and integrate.
Authenticate – Greek authentikos (“genuine”); verify as real or true.
Conscience – Latin con- (“with”) + scire (“to know”); moral awareness.
Dichotimise – Greek dichotomia (“cutting in two”); divide into two parts.
Diurnally – Latin diurnalis (“daily”); occurring during the day.
Flow – Old English flōwan; to move smoothly or continuously.
Illuminate – Latin illuminare (“to light up”); to clarify or enlighten.
Infer – Latin in- (“in”) + ferre (“to carry”); derive logically.
Interpretants – Latin interpres (“interpreter”); meaning generated by a sign (Peircean semiotics).
Phases – Greek phasis (“appearance”); stages in a process.
Projects – Latin proicere (“throw forward”); planned work or to extend outward.
Refer – Latin referre (“carry back”); to mention or relate.
Referentiate – From referent + -iate; to treat as a referent (rare usage).
Rhythmically – Greek rhythmos (“measured flow”); in regular beats.
Transfer – Latin trans- (“across”) + ferre (“carry”); move from one to another.
Vertically – Latin vertex (“top, turn”); upward or perpendicular movement.
Walk through – Old English wealcan (“roll”) + þurh (“through”); step-by-step guide.
Analysis of the Rhythm of the Blockchain Poem
Here’s a short analysis of the poem’s rhythmical structure in its generative version number 1.
The poem alternates between shorter words (often 1-2 syllables) and longer, polysyllabic words (3-5 syllables), creating a dynamic, varied rhythm.
The shifts in syllable counts between lines give the poem an irregular, syncopated beat.
The alternation between short and long words allows for moments of pause and emphasis (particularly on shorter words like “flow,” “refer,” and “projects”), followed by more extended, flowing words that elongate the rhythm per line.
This creates a sense of push and pull in the rhythm, with sections that feel rapid and clipped followed by more fluid, flowing phrases.
Was the Poem Written by AI
No, the poem was crafted entirely by hand in 2011.
A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal
Vs Sonnet 18 & ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal’
The structure of the bitcoin poem contrasts with standard English metrical lines in iambic pentameter by favoring four-syllable lines in loose structure in contrast to ‘A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal’, mentioned in the introduction, that uses iambic tetrameter (lines with 7 syllables in four iambs) and iambic trimeter (lines with 6 syllables in three iambs) leading to a more regular and flowing rhythm.
Sonnet 18, on the other hand, consists of 14 lines of almost pure iambic pentameter depending on the pronunciation of the words: ‘temperate’, ‘owest’, ‘wanderest’ and ‘growest’.
Glossary: A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
Slumber – Old English slumerian (“doze lightly”), related to sleep; light or gentle sleep.
Did – Old English dyde, past tense of do (dōn); action or performance.
My – Old English mīn; first-person possessive pronoun.
Spirit – Latin spiritus (“breath, soul”), from spirare (“to breathe”); life force or soul.
Seal – Latin sigillum (“small signet”), diminutive of signum (“sign”); to close or fix.
Had – Past tense of have (Old English habban); possession or experience.
No – Old English nā (“not ever”), from ne (“not”) + ā (“ever”); negation.
Human – Latin humanus; of or relating to mankind.
Fears – Old English fǣr (“sudden danger”), later færan (“to frighten”); anxiety, dread.
She – Old English sēo, feminine pronoun; female subject.
Seemed – Old Norse sœma (“to conform”), via Old English sēman (“to conform, fit”); appeared.
A Thing – Old English þing (“assembly, entity”); object or concept.
That Could Not Feel – Feel: Old English fēlan (“to perceive by touch”); to sense.
The Touch – Old French touchier, from Vulgar Latin toccāre; to make physical contact.
Of Earth – Earth: Old English eorþe; ground, soil, world.
Years – Old English gēar; unit of time.
Reel – Old English hreol (“to whirl”), possibly related to spinning; to stagger or rotate.
What Are Bitcoin Ordinals?
A bitcoin ordinal refers to a way of uniquely and inscribing single satoshi (the smallest unit of bitcoin, a bitcoin consists of 100,000,000 satoshi) on the bitcoin blockchain. Ordinals were introduced through a protocol developed by Casey Rodarmor in 2023.
Ordinals enable the tracking and numbering of each single satoshi, making them distinguishable from one another based on the order of mining and movement within the blockchain. Ordinals work entirely within the existing bitcoin structure and do not require any sidechains or separate tokens.
Unlike bitcoin transactions where satoshi are fungible (interchangeable), ordinals allow for a system where individual satoshi can have unique data (known as inscriptions) attached to them.
The inscriptions, such as my bitcoin poem above, can contain images, texts, etc. in form of files, making the blockchain a medium, or infrastructure, for new forms of content creation and distribution, a distributed storage aiming for permanence and immutability.
Also see:
The Meaning of “The Time Is Out of Joint” in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Blockchain Inscription Versus NFTs
It’s important to differentiate. Many NFTs on other blockchains (like Ethereum) do not store the artwork file directly on the main blockchain ledger; instead, they store a token and metadata that points to where the art is stored (often on decentralized storage like IPFS).
The Bitcoin Ordinals protocol is notable because it generally involves inscribing the full content (the art itself) directly into the witness data of a Bitcoin transaction, meaning the art is fully on-chain and stored within the robust security of the Bitcoin blockchain itself.
Neuromancer, and Unauthorized Images
One footnote. Neuromancer was published in 1984 and has remained, remarkably, unfilmed for more than forty years. Options have come and gone; adaptations have been announced and abandoned; an Apple TV+ series has been in development since 2022 without, at the time of writing, reaching a screen.
The novel’s images – the matrix, the Sprawl, Black ICE – have circulated instead through other people’s work: The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell, countless lesser imitations, and the covers of countless paperbacks. They have never had an authorized picture.
Net-poetry, me, and Grokipedia
« From the 2010s onward, net-poetry adapted to mobile devices and social media, leveraging Web 2.0’s emphasis on user-generated content and APIs for distributed forms. Platforms like Twitter enabled bot-driven poetry, as seen in Allison Parrish’s works, which algorithmically generate and post verses using natural language processing to explore language’s computational limits.
Emerging blockchain technologies introduced immutable, decentralized poems, such as Kasper Bergholt’s inscription of verse into the Bitcoin blockchain via Ordinals protocol (2023), ensuring permanence and ownership in distributed ledgers. »
