Down the Rabbit Hole

white rabbit with pockThe Lewis Carroll material runs deeper here than the surface count suggests. Three hundred and seventy-one images, but the unifying figure is not Alice — Alice barely appears. The recurring character is the Mad Hatter, transformed into the Mad Hatter of Bitcoin, and his attendant: the White Rabbit, pocketwatch in hand, fly-goggles strapped on, late as always. Thomas has done what every artist who grafts a borrowed mythology onto his own preoccupations eventually does. He has decided he is one of the original cast.the mad hatter of bitcoin…

photograph of the mad hatter…The most-iterated prompt in the cycle — white rabbit with pocketwatch wearing fly goggles — runs in dozens of slight wordings, and the visual outcome is consistent enough that you stop reading it as a quote of Carroll and start reading it as a character design. The fly goggles are the signature. They appear on the rabbit, on the Hatter, on James Bond (see The Bond Sequence), on Spock, on a bull, on Madbitcoins himself. They are this archive's brand mark. They say: I am late, I am running, I see things you do not, I will not take my goggles off. They are also unmistakably the goggles of the broadcaster — the on-camera prop of someone who livestreams crypto news while wearing aviators because they look right under the studio lights.8 bit mad hatter --v 3

The Hatter sequence is structurally a propaganda series. mad hatter with fly goggles in…Mad hatter with fly goggles in propaganda poster style — fifteen runs. Mad hatter bitcoin propaganda — twelve runs. Mad hatter obey propaganda poster. This is a deliberate reference to Shepard Fairey's Obey iconography by way of Soviet poster art; the prompts ask for high-contrast block color, the typography of conviction, the centered single figure addressing the citizen. The Hatter is being recruited. He is being made into a symbol that can be carried at a march.

16 bit mad hatter video game…Two anchors:

• mad hatter of bitcoin giving a…Mad hatter of bitcoin giving a flyer to a girl wearing fly goggles (twenty iterations). The Hatter has descended into the world. He is doing outreach. He is on a sidewalk. The girl wears the goggles because she has converted; the rabbit hole has produced a believer. This is one of the few prompts in the entire archive where the Hatter is not posed centered-and-symmetrical. He is in conversation. He is a missionary.

• the mad hatter of bitcoin wearing fly goggles and

  Mad hatter reading books (twelve). Quieter, more interior. The Hatter is alone with a stack of volumes. After all the propaganda posters and proselytizing, here is the figure at rest, which is to say studying. The propaganda needs the homework.

mad hatter with fly goggles…Then there is the 16 bit mad hatter video game run, which is the cleanest evidence of where Thomas wants this character to live next. Not a print. Not a poster. A game. The Hatter is being scoped for a side-scroller. He needs sprite sheets, idle animations, a level one. Whether the game was ever sketched beyond the prompt does not matter; the intention sits in the archive.mad hatter of bitcoin giving…

mad hatter of bitcoin giving…If the Raccoon collection is the artist's commercial face — the brand mark, the mascot for hire — the Rabbit Hole collection is the artist's theology. It is what he believes. The world is asleep; a small population can see; the Hatter and the Rabbit are the messengers; the goggles are the means of seeing. This is a religious posture as much as a satirical one, and the archive does not blink at the seriousness of it. Carroll wrote a children's book about the absurdity of the adult world. Thomas has read it as scripture and is illustrating his Bible.8 bit mad hatter --v 3

cartoon of the mad hatter of bitcoin wearing fly g

The collection's restraint, oddly, is that he does not draw Alice. The convert is implied but never embodied. The viewer is being asked to take Alice's seat.