The RUTHVEN Origin Passport
Why every PAPER TRAIL work carries a record of its origin, written the moment it was made.
Every PAPER TRAIL work carries a RUTHVEN Origin Passport. I built it because the question that matters about an artwork has changed. When anything can be made to look like anything, “is it real?” is no longer the point. The point is “where did it come from, and can I check?”
Most provenance records are written after the fact, when a work is sold. The Passport is written at the moment a work is made: which pieces were cut from which of my earlier works, from which years, what was generated and what was found, and in what order the machine laid it all down.
It is fingerprinted and anchored on IPFS, where I cannot quietly change it later. Type the work’s number into the verify page and your own browser fetches the artwork and its record, checks one against the other, and shows you the result.
The image forgets. The record remembers.
See a Passport: PAPER TRAIL #0068 · the collection: ruthven.ai/origin/paper-trail · the essay: Artist Automation