The digital artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, is causing a stir at Art Basel Miami Beach with his work Regular Animals (2025). The installation, on show in the new Zero 10 digital art section, features robotic canines fitted with hyper-realistic heads resembling tech moguls such as the Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
Other humanoids featured in the installation include Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and Winkelmann himself. Each robot costs $100,000 (in an edition of two plus one artist’s proof), but the Bezos piece is not for sale. All the works were sold during Wednesday’s VIP preview.
Elon Musk, leader of the pack among global tech billionaires and a robot dog avatars in Beeple's dystopian Zero 10 project Liliana Mora
The pieces excrete certificates of authenticity as they move and jostle around a specially constructed pen. Crucially, a QR code on the certificates also allows buyers to purchase accompanying NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
Beeple tells The Art Newspaper that each robot canine is continually taking pictures of its surroundings, which appear on the certificates. The images produced are interpreted according to the style of each dog. “That one reinterprets in the style of Picasso, and so on. Some of the robots produce the NFTs, some just produce prints and certificates,” he says.
The free certificates pooped out, which Beeple is handing out at the fair, state that this “artwork has been tested and verified as 100% pure GMO-free, organic dogshit originating from a medium adult dog anus”. The humanoids are recharged at regular intervals and placed in the pen in performative handovers.
The artist Beeple (centre) discusses his robotic dog sculptures in the Zero 10 section of Art Basel Miami Beach Liliana Mora
Beeple adds: “This is AI [artificial intelligence] reinterpreting the images and what the humanoid is seeing. There is an analogy; we’re increasingly going to view the world through AI. We’re also seeing the world through the lens of artists and tech leaders like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg who shape what we see, probably more than anybody else.”
In 2021, Beeple sold a record-breaking NFT at Christie’s for $69.3m (Everydays: The First 5000 Days, 2021). Before the pandemic, he worked as a graphic designer and animator, creating concert visuals for performing artists such as Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and Nicki Minaj.