A wild art display at Art Basel Miami Beach is going viral for its strange and slightly creepy setup: robot dogs with lifelike heads of tech billionaires that poop out photos.
Titled “Regular Animals” and created by Beeple (real name Mike Winkelmann), the installation features mechanical dogs fitted with hyper-realistic heads resembling Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and artists like Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso.
Even Beeple’s own face is included.
Robot Dogs, NFTs, And “Poop Mode”
The dogs roam around a penned area, occasionally flashing the words “poop mode” on their backs before dropping digital photos onto the floor.
According to Beeple, the photos are meant to represent how these figures and technologies reshape our view of the world.
“The picture that they’re taking, they sort of reinterpret how they see the world,” Beeple explained in a TikTok interview. “And increasingly, these technologists and people who control these algorithms are deciding what we see, how we see the world.”
The installation is part of the Zero 10 exhibition at Art Basel, a curated space dedicated to digital-era art.
According to curator Eli Scheinman, Beeple’s work “articulates one of the core objectives of this new global initiative—to reconsider how artists working in digital environments can bring their concepts and ideas to life across robotics, sculpture, painting, print making, generative systems, and fully digital works.”
Viral, Creepy, And Sold Out
Social media reactions have ranged from admiration to unease. One TikTok user wrote, “Thanks, I wasn’t planning on sleeping tonight anyway.” Another chimed in, “Those are almost as unsettling as the actual people.”
Beeple, who became a household name during the NFT craze of 2021, says the robots are programmed to operate for about three years. They store the photos on the blockchain, turning the prints into a kind of NFT.
Every edition of the robot dog has sold out at $100,000 a piece, Art Basel confirmed to Fox News Digital.
From $100 to $69 Million
Beeple’s rise in the art world was cemented in 2021 when his NFT collage “Everydays: The First 5000 Days ” sold for $69 million at Christie’s. The piece, a collage of 5,000 daily artworks he created over 14 years, made Beeple one of the most valuable living artists.
“I do view this as the next chapter of art history,” Beeple said at the time. “Now there is a way to collect digital art.”
With Regular Animals, Beeple continues to push boundaries, merging digital art, robotics, and satire into a spectacle that’s both thought-provoking and a little creepy.
Art Basel Miami Beach runs through Dec. 7 and features 283 galleries from 43 countries.
The fair regularly attracts the world’s wealthiest collectors and routinely closes seven-figure art deals.