Digital artist Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, has brought NFTs back onto the scene at Art Basel with a pack of robotic quadrupeds that take photos of visitors and poop out printed artwork that doubles as crypto collectibles.
The interactive installation, titled “Regular Animals,” is on display at the Miami Beach Convention Center through December 7 as part of Art Basel’s program for new digital works, Zero 10.
Each four-legged robot wears a sculpted silicone head based on figures from the worlds of art and technology, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and Beeple himself.
The robots roam the floor and their cameras capture scenes from the fair, which are processed into stylized prints linked to the identity on each mask.
Project material indicates this some of those images contain codes that allow visitors to claim NFTs, linking the physical print to a token on a blockchain. A Luma event description shows that “1,024 free prints and 256 free NFTs” were distributed on Wednesday.
“We’re increasingly seeing the world through the lens of how they want us to see it, because they control these very powerful algorithms, and they have unilateral control over how we see the world in many ways,” Beeple said in a video interview with CNN.
Here at the Art Basel Awards, @beeple arrives with some friends. pic.twitter.com/ka13pLw3jz
— Art Basel (@ArtBasel) December 4, 2025
The robots will “just take pictures and develop these memories, and the memories will be recorded on some blockchain, because I think this is a great use of this technology,” he added.
The robots use a commercial quadrupedal platform equipped with sensors, cameras and a compact dye-sublimation printer that produces the images seen on the show floor, with each unit customized with a hand-sculpted platinum-cure silicone head, according to a technical description from the art magazine White wall.
“This is AI that reinterprets the images and what the humanoid sees. There is an analogy: we are increasingly going to see the world through AI,” Beeple said in an interview with The Art Newspaper.
Artists and technology leaders, like those depicted in the robot dogs’ heads, continue to “shape what we see, probably more than anyone else,” he added.
Each robot cost $100,000, except the one with Bezos as the head, which was not for sale during Wednesday’s VIP preview when all parts were sold out.
Printed photos taken by the robot dogs include a disclaimer describing that the artwork has been “tested and verified as 100% pure GMO-free, organic dog poop taken from the anus of a medium-sized adult dog.”
Declutter has contacted Beeple Studios and Art Basel for comment.
Beeple’s “crazy art projects”
Beeple’s latest work arrives more than four years after his record-breaking 2021 sale of “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” a 5,000-image digital collage whose NFT fetched a whopping $69.3 million at Christie’s.
That auction placed Beeple among the most expensive living artists and put NFTs at the center of a global market boom.
“I’m interested in crazy art projects that I couldn’t do before, but now I can,” Beeple said Declutter in a June 2021 podcast, when asked how he plans to spend the money.
The NFT frenzy had largely cooled by mid-2022, with volumes and prices falling across most segments. There was still some traction in early 2023.
“It’s crazy to me to think back to that time, because NFTs have been hated for so much longer than they have been loved,” Beeple said in an October 2024 interview.
In July this year, industry analysis showed that NFT sales increased by 78%, largely due to lower rock bottom prices, although this came at the expense of overall trading volume, which fell by 45% every quarter.