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The installation titled ‘Regular Animals’ captured attention at the fair, which opened this Friday and runs until Sunday.

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The mechanical dogs with the heads of these humans wander around a kind of corral, where they walk, blink, take photos of the public and defecate photographic prints or NFTs, depending on the “dog” in question.

Each head was crafted by mask craftsman Landon Meier, with a realism as disturbing as it is fascinating.

The impressions they “expel” carry styles that refer to the 20th century of art: the ‘Warhol-dog’ generates images in a pop key, Picasso’s distorts them into cubist geometries, Musk’s opts for a futuristic black and white, and Zuckerberg’s flirts with the aesthetics of the metaverse that the creator of Facebook pushed.

Not everyone generates art. The ‘dog-Bezos’, for example, does not produce print: its inclusion responds rather to its symbolic weight “as a figure that defines what millions see, consume and buy,” explains the team at Beeple, the alias of visual creator Mike Winkelmann.

When the robots sit down to “do their business,” the public watches with a mixture of fascination and horror. Some describe the experience as “creepy” or “as twisted as it is brilliant.”

“Now we see the world through the eyes of algorithms and these technological figures. Before it was artists who shaped perceptions, now it is the code magnates,” Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, told the press.

For those looking to take a souvenir, the “dogs” will expel 1,028 prints, some (256) with a QR code that allows them to be claimed as NFT.

It is a piece between satire, criticism and performance: a mechanical beast that vomits reflections on fame, identity, digital capitalism and the role of art in an era dominated by algorithms.

The banana

Art Basel Miami Beach has been the scene on multiple occasions of works that spark viral debates. The most iconic was the banana stuck to the wall with silver tape by the artist Maurizio Cattelan, sold in several editions and consecrated as a symbol of the absurd and conceptual art.

In the past there were also installations that questioned consumption, fame and the limits of art, such as the solid gold toilet or portraits created with artificial intelligence before the subject became mainstream.

In this context, Beeple’s robotic dogs join a long tradition of works that take advantage of humor and “shock” to interrogate contemporary visual culture.

Art Basel Miami Beach is considered the most influential contemporary art event in the United States, bringing together galleries from more than 35 countries, collectors, celebrities and creators every December, turning the city into a global epicenter of trends.

The fair combines its main section at the Miami Beach Convention Center with dozens of satellite exhibitions that occupy hotels, beaches and entire neighborhoods.