A Universe Explodes is an exploration into whether it is still possible to ‘own’ cultural artifacts in the digital age.

The brief was borne of a specific change in our cultural landscape: the decline of 'owned' cultural artefacts.

Streaming is coming to replace physical items like books, DVDs, and CDs.

Yet we as humans remain wedded to the idea of ownership - as something with specific cultural, social, economic, even political value.

AUE is a digital book which is passed along a chain of owners, each owner putting their own mark on the book before passing it on - like a dedication in a physical book.

The book uses Blockchain technology to authenticate and record each ownership, so that at any time a reader can look up the previous owners - like a library book.

Meanwhile access to the book - which is published on the web - is free.

We conceived of a digital book which could be passed along a chain of owners, each owner putting own mark on the book before passing it on in turn - like a dedication in a physical book.

There were 100 copies of the book, each of which started out the same, but gradually changed form as they were rededicated along the chain.

The challenge came in establishing which technology would be capable of recording this chain of ownership, while at the same time enabling free access to the book to anyone online.

Blockchain emerged as an elegant fix for this problem because it offered something no other digital technology could: the ability to authenticate a transaction - in this case a record of ownership - with reference to a universally accessible, public database.

As our owners passed their book along the chain, behind the scenes records were written to the Ethereum Blockchain with 'smart contracts', which allowed us to record additional information about each ownership such as the date, a dedication, as well as the edits that were made.

The challenging technical components of the book were thus hidden from view, allowing the users to edit and share the book using familiar technologies like email, all from their phone.

Meanwhile anyone in the world could watch the experiment unfold in real time, seeing who owned which version, as well as traverse through the history of owners for a given version of the book.

By applying Blockchain technology to a specific evolution in the cultural sector, we hoped not only to explore new ways of attaching cultural value to ownership, but to broaden the awareness of Blockchain technology at large, so a new generation of developers can be inspired about its possibilities.