XCOPY / KO

Bård Ionson

bardionson.eth

Bård Ionson profile picture
Identity
Pseudonym
Links
Wallets
bardionson.eth0x01cb023186cab05220554ee75b4d69921dd051f1Primary
KnownOrigin
1 copy, held May 2019 – March 2022

Bård Ionson describes his practice as crypto and generative art concerned with distortions between physical, electronic, digital, and spiritual realities.1 His stated toolkit spans artificial intelligence and GANs alongside VCRs, CRTs, oscilloscopes, lasers, scanners, photography, sound, smart contracts, and blockchains; he records his first blockchain mint in 2018.1 His published CV documents works or exhibitions at venues including Oxford’s Weston Library, Kunsthalle Zürich, CADAF in New York, NFT Factory in Paris, and Expanded Art in Berlin and Essen.2 It also lists works in the Bodleian Library and Museum of Crypto Art collections.2

Ionson has drawn on XCOPY directly as source material. Discussing a work on X in February 2026, he described it as ‘partly inspired by 2001 and the faces of XCOPY as we all move into the future’, explaining that its bones were photographs ‘reborn into a GAN model’ while ‘the faces by XCOPY is another GAN’.3 In January 2026, in an exchange tagging Art Rescue Lab, he asked whether the smart contracts of ‘EBay/knownOrigin, MakersPlace and Async Art’ could also be obtained.4

Collecting record

DateWorkCopyEventETHTransaction
The Doomed20/100Minted·0x1889…a538
The Doomed20/100Transferred out·0xd70a…3a7a

References

Interviews and first-person sources

  1. Cited for this account: Discussing a work on X in February 2026, he described it as ‘partly inspired by 2001 and the faces of XCOPY as we all move into the future’, explaining that its bones were photographs ‘reborn into a GAN model’ while ‘the faces by XCOPY is another GAN’.

    BardIonson, Post: XCOPY imagery and generative adversarial networks, 11 February 2026, x.com/BardIonson/status/2021731367290040815 (accessed 7 October 2026). ↩︎

  2. Cited for this account: In January 2026, in an exchange tagging Art Rescue Lab, he asked whether the smart contracts of ‘EBay/knownOrigin, MakersPlace and Async Art’ could also be obtained.

    Bård Ionson, “Can we get the smart contracts from EBay/knownOrigin, MakersPlace and Async Art …,” X, 25 January 2026, x.com/BardIonson/status/2015286311188648081 (accessed 7 October 2026). ↩︎

Exhibitions, market and institutional records

  1. Cited for this account: His published CV documents works or exhibitions at venues including Oxford’s Weston Library, Kunsthalle Zürich, CADAF in New York, NFT Factory in Paris, and Expanded Art in Berlin and Essen.

    Bård Ionson, Bård Ionson CV, PDF, 2025, bardionson.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Bard_Ionson_CV_2025.pdf (accessed 7 October 2026). ↩︎

Press and criticism

  1. Cited for this account: Bård Ionson describes his practice as crypto and generative art concerned with distortions between physical, electronic, digital, and spiritual realities.

    Bård Ionson, “About,” bardionson.com/about (accessed 7 October 2026). ↩︎