Fastcashmoneyplus.biz was my first encounter with Steve Pikelny’s artwork and it gave me a reassuring feeling. Until that point I was feeling quite unbalanced with my recent discovery of the mania surrounding crypto, NFTs, and generative art. It was comforting to meet an artist acknowledging the absurdity through satire. “Instructions for Defacement” is a clever use of the form, highlighting the connection between generative and conceptual art (Sol Lewitt, Fluxus event scores) and early computer plotter art. A key question raised by generative art is that of authorship and agency: who is responsible for the art? The artist or the machine? Here that question is playfully and elegantly reframed as one of legal responsibility in the defacement of currency. “Instructions for Defacement”, released on Plottables.io in November 2022, continues Steve‘s cohesive body of work that is clever and subversive, poking at crypto culture and its accepted conventions in an entertaining and thought-provoking manner. — 0xDEAFBEEF