Wanderer is an autonomous, digital flâneur, an internet-based entity that roams the map of our physical world through an endless sequence of directional choices, recorded immutably on the blockchain and visualized through web-based map services.
Drawing on the Situationist practice of the dérive, the act of drifting through urban environments guided by emotion and chance, this work reimagines the wandering artist as a persistent algorithmic agent, animated not by human will but by server logic and blockchain transactions.
While walking, Wanderer reflects on the early promise of the Internet as an open and free space, at a time when that openness is increasingly being enclosed.
Wanderer is a multilayered project.
At its core is a server application that walks across OpenStreetMap. It has its own crypto wallet and, at
every junction, sends a 0 TIA transaction to itself. The resulting transaction hash, a unique string of
characters, functions as the throw of the dice, determining the next turn. And so, Wanderer moves endlessly
into the world.
At Paris Photo 2025 at the Office Impart booth, the exhibition version will be presented as a dual-channel
work of net art:
One screen shows Wanderer walking live on the world map.
The other recites its route in navigation blurbs, “Go left,” “Passing a church,” “Move straight,” “Walking on
asphalt”, as a continuous, algorithmic poem.
A second layer exists as a smart contract on Forma, enabling online viewers to collect junction points as NFTs. Each NFT is a unique on-chain SVG poem, composed of navigation blurbs from the chosen location, intertwined with a generative typographic ornament that visually “wanders.” Each junction can only be minted once.
Wanderer begins its journey inside the Grand Palais at the opening of Paris Photo 2025, and will continue to wander for as long as the technology allows.
Wanderer will begin walking at 5 PM on 11 November 2025.
Wanderer is premiering at my solo presentation with Office
Impart at Paris Photo 2025 held at the Grand Palais in Paris. The launch will be initiated and
celebrated with a drink at the booth and simultaneously go live online for the world.
Each NFT costs 1 TIA + gas fees.
Wanderer is an open edition: there is no cap on the number of NFTs, though each junction can only be collected
once.
To pay with TIA, simply use your regular Ethereum wallet.
You can exchange ETH for TIA at bridge.forma.art.
Your TIA will appear in your Ethereum wallet in MetaMask, just switch your network from Ethereum Mainnet to
Forma.
Visit wanderer.leegte.org to follow Wanderer live at any time.
Connect your wallet via MetaMask (desktop or mobile).
Zoom out to see the full scope of the voyage.
Choose your favourite area and zoom in until you see the small blue junction icons.
Click or tap a junction to open its balloon.
Click or tap Mint to claim it.
When minting is complete, the junction will change to a red marker to embed your NFT.
You can also view your NFT on modularium.art.
The idea began with imagining an autonomous internet agent capable of wandering the world.
The work consists of a server-based application that communicates with a crypto wallet. By sending 0 TIA transactions containing GPS coordinates in their metadata, the entire walk is immutably logged on the blockchain. The transaction hash from each step acts as a pseudo-random generator that determines the next move.
This makes the path deterministic: if the walk were replayed using the wallet’s transaction history, it would retrace exactly the same journey.
The system was developed by Jasper van Loenen and Bram de Groot.
Join the Leegte Discord server to meet other collectors, discuss Wanderer and earlier collections, and stay informed about new works.
Since the late 1990s, I have been creating art on the Internet, websites, apps, installations, videos, prints, sculptures, audio works, and drawings. The networked computer has always been my muse, a lens through which I explore the peculiarities and poetry of the digital world.
My work has been exhibited at Whitechapel Gallery, Centre Pompidou, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, ZKM Karlsruhe, and Ludwig Museum, and is held in both private and institutional collections.
This is my twelfth NFT drop.
Visit www.leegte.org
to explore my work.
Represented by Upstream Gallery (Amsterdam)
and Office Impart (Berlin).
First of all, thank you Office Impart to honor me with a solo presentation at Paris Photo!
Endless gratitude to Jasper van Loenen and Bram de Groot for transforming a simple idea into a living system, navigating the intricacies of map APIs, algorithms, and all the complexity that is concealed behind this minimal work.
Special thanks to Sam Spike and Achilleas from Forma / Celestia for the invitation to realize this project on their blockchain, and to the Forma team for their smart contract development and support.