Bio-Robots With the Faces of Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg Defecating NFT Prints: Beeple Stages the Most Talked-About Performance at Art Basel Miami

At Art Basel Miami Beach, it was impossible to miss the installation by digital artist Mike Winkelmann — better known as Beeple. His new project, Regular Animals, features a pack of animatronic dogs fitted with hyper-realistic silicone masks of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and even two versions of Beeple himself. The masks were crafted by legendary special-effects artist Landon Meier, famed for his eerily lifelike creations.

The robo-dogs roam the space, constantly snapping photos of visitors. Then, at random moments, they squat and eject printed artworks — visual “NFT droppings” rendered in the aesthetic of whichever face they’re wearing.

Zuckerberg’s prints are metaverse-coded, Musk’s are robotic and monochrome, Picasso’s are pure cubism, and Warhol’s inevitably lean into pop art.

Predictably, reactions ranged from “this is so creepy” to “this is the strangest thing at the fair.” Beeple said that was exactly the point.

“We used to look at the world through the eyes of artists. Now we look through the eyes of Musk and Zuckerberg,” Winkelmann explained. “Their algorithms shape what we see. I wanted to play with that idea.”

The Bezos “dog” has its own twist — it produces no prints at all.

“Bezos also shapes how we see the world,” Beeple joked. “So he needed to be in the piece.”

All seven robotic dogs have already been purchased by private collectors for about $100,000 each, though the buyers agreed to let them go on tour across major art fairs.

Visitors, however, aren’t leaving empty-handed. The machines “excrete” 1,028 prints marked Excrement Sample, each accompanied by an ironic disclaimer warning of potential “unwanted emotional responses” in collectors. Among them, 256 prints contain a Scan to claim QR code, turning the paper droppings into actual NFTs.

Given that Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days sold for a record-breaking $69.3 million in 2021, these new artifacts may become another gold mine for crypto-art hunters.

The installation instantly became a magnet for both fair-goers and billionaires. Google co-founder Sergey Brin was reportedly spotted at the event, though it’s unclear whether he made it to the robo-dogs themselves.

Photo: Page Six