Self-Identifying is a series of images created by programs written
in PostScript, formerly the lingua franca of design and printing. They
have been turned into self-referential and self-reproducing “Quine”
programs that print their own source code. While doing so, the
programs create a cryptographic identity not just for but of
themselves, and cryptographically sign the results. This mirrors the
cypherpunk conceptions of personhood and political subjectivity that
gave us Bitcoin.

Bitcoin secures the being of its value and its users from state
intervention with cryptographic identities managed by a simple
scripting language, Script, that curiously resembles PostScript in
both name and structure. Unlike Script, PostScript is “Turing
Complete” – it has loops. This is why it can access other resources on
the computer it is running on, such as command-line cryptography
tools.

The crypto community’s statement “Not your keys, not your coins” is
the “I think therefore I am” of the blockchain age. Through its
self-verifying programs, Self-Identifying asserts these historical
philosophical ideas about selfhood against the contemporary backlash
against self-determination.