I'm bringing you an art too esoteric for the 1960s when I created it, but ready now in Steemit's time, where I'm making it Cryptoknot.
I'm Michael Sullivan Smith and I've been relating art to the digital future since making knots into circuitry to create conceptual art a half century ago; more or less making my life into the wait for what I'm jumping right into in introducing cryptoknot's story here today.
My second post is already ready. That post will be about my guess at what is the real value being built by the Steemit platform, and why I feel that my past and future relationships with digital art have a place in Steemit's trajectory. Following that, I'll tie you up in this gripping story of cryptoknot.
For this intro, now, we'll start with the origins of a system for propagating a cryptography idea, way before crypto was dreamed of being what it is today. Over the years I've stuck with this system, giving it's “graphy” side ample presence in galleries and, after the Graphic User Interface hit the Internet, on blogs, web sites, and social media, making sure it resonated with my less enigmatic interests as an inventor, artist, and author, to keep it alive while waiting for its moment to arrive. Until now, though, I couldn't make this much more than crazy talk to most, and even as I spread it freely around for anyone to pick up on, there was no one else as crazy as I was seeing it. For going on half a century I've continued to let this identify me as a bit weird and eccentric... something I've grown to appreciate in others. You can Google my name or my land art sculpture, “The Great Knot”, to see the ways these intrigues of the knot have been variously represented in the 21st century, and even in the Internet Archive (Way Back Machine).
In brief, I've fashioned the knot into a cryptographic surrogate for unique material objects, making these into plans that only exist in a graphic registry. I realized this registry concept was the best I could do when confronted with the potential of an infinite number of individually unique knot objects in a never ending systemic sequence of identifiable forms. Back in that far, far away world of the 1960s, I'd made the knot into an art that functioned like blockchains add blocks now: immutable and as certifiably unique as any cryptographic key can manage to be.
Now, fast forward to the present day, when I've realized this is understandable as a surrogate to value, referencing a token or a CryptoKitty, and no longer absurd. By fitting this original conceptual art into a recognizable relationship to the blockchain, a way exists to formalize it.
What I am doing here in the Steemit community is seeking an honest viewing of this on its merits, in a place that is at the vanguard of becoming comfortable with the concept of cryptocurrency. What is now this Cryptoknot concept is planned to be developed through autonomous participation, exactly like Bitcoin's proof-of-work, only with a next knot designed to fit a sequence, not mined. It's all on my web site, built as a “white paper”. And, actually, I'm here to recruit participants... but that's a bit further down the timeline.
It's more than serendipity that Steemit caught my interest. When the distributed ledger hit TED Talks I suddenly had this hopeful feeling. When I got to Steemit in my constant rounds of surveillance of the blockchain topic, I heard what I'd been waiting to hear: a mix of technology savvy and, I guess, a hint of the heady artist community I thrived in a half century ago in lower Manhattan when this art was conceived.
Everyone on Steemit seems to want to demonstrate that mixing it up in a cutting edge sandbox of ideas will change the world. So I just figure that I can give you, as a community, a story that no one else has been, up to now, ready to relate to, and get some honest attention to it, and attract those who are really ready to move it along in the way I've imagined it for so long.
On that note, I'd like to end this introduction to this story with a thought on Steemit as a community. We have a common story, as human beings, that comes down to the reason we search... that the potential of finding something enables hope. In a world where constant change means constant challenges, searching empowers hope. I see this Steemit community being like me; hoping that among those constant changes, a new method, or a new process, or a new spark of insight that matches the trajectory of our hopes is found in these many searches. If those Up Votes are a bond of hope that inspire us to put our own writings and videos here where we know they will be searched out and found, then we can give our own source of hope to the world.
My hopes are with my art finding participants here on Steemit, but I am equally excited to have the opportunity to play a part in growing Steemit's potential. So give your Up Vote for all our ambitions, and “follow” me to not miss the next installment in this story of the past and future of 
